Event
She Works Hard for the Money | A Listening Party
Thursday 23 March 2023
A Listening Party drawing on Ruth Ewan’s ongoing music archive, A Jukebox of People Trying to Change the World featuring performer Debbie Armour

Drawing on Ruth Ewan’s ongoing music archive, A Jukebox of People Trying to Change the World, Ruth and Debbie Armour present a live evening of lyrical story telling and song. The event will explore the category 'Work' from Ewan’s jukebox project, connecting into Dundee’s labour history and one time reputation as a ’She Town’, where the majority of the workforce were said to be women. This event will take place within the exhibition Harun Farocki: Consider Labour.
Booking
The listening party is free to attend. Book a ticket via Eventbrite.
Biographies
Ruth Ewan is an artist whose research-led and critically engaged practice has drawn attention within contemporary art and socio-political history. Her work addresses ideas of power and questions representations of time, rebellion and repression. Her work grows from context-specific research resulting in a wide variety of forms including events, public works, performance, writing, large scale installations and print. Often working collaboratively she has created music projects, walks, radio programmes, design projects, workshops and books.
Ewan’s work is recognised internationally and she has shown at venues including; Tate Liverpool (2022); Collective, Edinburgh (2022); Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle (2022); Project Arts Centre, Dublin (2021); The Cooper Gallery, Dundee (2021); Edinburgh Art Festival (2018 & 2020); Pitzhanger Gallery (2020); Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2019); CAPC, Bordeux (2019); Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration, Paris (2019); Victoria and Albert Museum (2018); 32nd São Paulo Biennial (2016); Camden Arts Centre, London (2015); Tate Britain (2009 & 2014). She has realised projects for The High Line, New York (2019); Glasgow Women’s Library (2018); Create, London (2012); Art on the Underground (2011); Frieze Projects (2009) and Artangel (2007 & 2013). In 2016 she was awarded the Arts Foundation Yoma Sasburg Award for Art in Urban Space.
Her work is in the collection of Tate London, McManus Galleries Dundee, Museum of Modern Art Warsaw, FRAC Champagne Ardenne, The Scottish Parliament, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh University and CAAC Seville.
Debbie Armour is a singer and musician, working primarily with traditional song. Broadly, her work is motivated by ideas of persistence, resonance and deep cultural roots. In her primary project, Burd Ellen, she uses British and international traditional song as a foundation to build conceptual works and explore tradition in a contemporary setting. Her last two albums have been included in The Guardian's Top Ten Folk Albums of the Year (2020 & 2022). She is a mother of four, and lives in Nottingham where she runs her record label, Mavis Recordings.
About the exhibition
Bringing together the ten-screen video installation Labour in a Single Shot with Farocki’s most celebrated filmic essays; Workers Leaving the Factory (1995), Georg K. Glaser – Writer and Smith (1988), and In Comparison (2009), Harun Farocki: Consider Labour at Cooper Gallery critically questions the technological, aesthetic, and political conditions of making labour visible.
Re-inventing the 'filmic essay', Farocki’s thought-provoking oeuvre investigates how capitalism, consumerism, media, technology and war intertwine with all our lives for the past century. Influenced by theatre director Bertolt Brecht, philosopher Theodor Adorno, and film director Jean-Luc Godard, Farocki’s unique style of non-narrative-filmmaking consistently addresses practices of labour and the production of images that are concerned with understanding, reflecting and confronting modern society.
Read more on our exhibition page.
Access
The gallery is on two floors. First floor has ramped access and disabled toilet.
Second floor is accessible via lift and for wheelchair access via a stairclimber. The event will take place on the second floor.
Please email in advance if you require lift or stairclimber access so we can arrange support.
Please note alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks will be available.
Large print versions of the exhibition information handout are available, please ask our Guides.
All enquiries please contact: exhibitions@dundee.ac.uk
Image credit
Mill worker. Dundee Photographic Survey, 1991. Courtesy Dundee Libraries. With thanks to Erin Farley.
Funding support
This event accompanies the exhibition Harun Farocki: Consider Labour which is supported by the Goethe Institut, Glasgow.

Cooper Gallery
exhibitions@dundee.ac.uk