!publish!

content/research/maddeningrhythms.md

@@ -15,6 +15,8 @@ Maddening Rhythms is the name we gave to the experimental publication you are ho
 
 The zine comes complete with its own library of resources, some of which are documents taken from the Luigi Firrao archive at Fondazione ISEC, which we are making available here for the first time in digital form. In its digital version, Maddening Rhythms runs on Sandpoints, a still-in-development digital platform for collective writing, learning, and experimental publishing. This free software tool allows readers to easily copy onto a USB drive a single folder that contains the whole website, alongside a PDF library of all included references, and to read it offline in a browser or move it to another server. Furthermore, in situations that call for paper, it is possible to automatically export the publication into a PDF that is ready for on-demand print. The use of Sandpoints is a small step in embedding our work in a more susteinable technopolitical infrastructure, specifically relevant here perhaps, as we are critically discussing the evolution of  exploitation via technologically-driven processes.
 
+# Structure of the zine
+
 Maddening Rhythms is organized around 5 'factors' or chapters, each centering on one aspect of the experience of the Lebole workers and using it to introduce a broader reflection on their struggles at the intersection of health, environment and refusal of work and gender stereotypes. 
 
 [**The American department**](https://maddeningrhythms.sandpoints.org/factor/americandepartment/) collects documents on the history of managerial techniques known as 'scientific management' and the circumstances that lead to the introduction of MTM (Methods-Time Measurement) in Italy.
@@ -32,7 +34,7 @@ We believe that reactivating some of the stories, techniques and imaginaries tha
 
 
 
-# The story from which we started: Lebole, c. 1964
+# The story from which we start: Lebole, c. 1964
 
 In 1964, the all-female workforce of the apparel manufacturer Lebole in Arezzo, Tuscany, were among the first ones in Italy to experience the transformation of their workflow according to the teachings of MTM (Methods-Time Measurement), a new methodology for analysing and organizing chainwork imported from the USA.  In the span of less than a decade, these women, many of whom were accomplished tailors before entering the factory, went from a semi-artisanal organization of labour, to a progressively more fragmented and repetitive segmentation of tasks, to a fully scripted repetitive performance with maddening rhythms.  With the introduction of the MTM method, their movements were measured and minutiously analysed by a team of experts, who then "choreographed" the execution of each motion in a new, time-saving manner. In short, the workers were expected to behave like ROBOTS. 
 
@@ -49,7 +51,7 @@ By developing in their own form of musical production, Lebole's workers interven
 Finding their own voice and fighting for keeping it was more than a metaphor for the Leboline: with bitter irony, amongst the many health-related struggles these women carried on, one was against the indiscriminate use of formaldehyde, a compound used to augment the firmness of clothes, but which has a harmfull impact on the troath and vocal chords. 
 
 
-# Luigi Firrao 
+# Fondo Luigi Firrao at Fondazione ISEC
 
 We first encountered the story of the Lebole workers and the impact that MTM had on their lives and health conditions during our research residency at the archive of Fondazione ISEC in Sesto San Giovanni, near Milan. Their story was "told" to by Luigi Firrao, who followed it meticulously for a number of years. Firrao had a number of interviews with the Leboline, where he chatted with them about their experiences, as well as recording the powerful lyrics of their political choruses. He then wrote several newspaper articles denouncing the hidden violence of the new management techniques which were silently creeping in Italian factories since the early 1960s. Firrao also left us an exceptional collection of newspaper cut-outs, articles, and reportages on the theme of MTM and its impact on the life of the workers.