Fadyl’s research on the evolving definition of vocational rehabilitation in New Zealand, along with documents from the country’s social history, are drawn together here in a brochure designed by David Bennewith. The publication’s structure is informed by Edward Tufte’s theories of information visualization, as well as the format of a “timeline” native to social networking sites like Facebook, playing on the tropes of information design familiar to post-Fordist labor culture. The material also became the subject of a video animation made with Timur Si-Qin. The project was accompanied by a computer game by Pippin Barr and a “food Twitter” feed by Rafaël Rozendaal.
Envisaging Vocational Rehabilitation tracks a trend that has emerged in the last century of labor culture: “vocational rehabilitation” is a social process wherein people are made fit to work. Typically, this involves overcoming some kind of condition – whether that be a physical disability or psychological burnout – that inhibits one from contributing to the workforce. Drawing on research by Joanna Fadyl, whose PhD centers on the topic, Envisaging Vocational Rehabilitation asks: in what kind of world is such a process wanted and needed?