Printed Matter is pleased to announce the publication of Depreciating Assets, a new artists book by Jessica Vaughn investigating labor, diversity politics, and the material environment of the American workplace. With a new lens to the artists multidisciplinary practice, the project examines how affirmative action and other office equity measures are intersected by corporate infrastructure and, specifically, the physical layout of office space. Across four interwoven sections and related appendices, Vaughn assembles her photographs and critical writings alongside xeroxed images, diversity training video stills, and manipulated open source documents of the US Government. The project considers and distills the symptoms of late 20th and 21st century work culture produced by open office plans and modular architectures promise of malleability, compliance, and universality provisions that bid for increased efficiency and productivity at the expense of visibility for Black workers and workers of color. Vaughn looks at how minimalist design gestures of the modern office (as envisioned by Rem Koolhaas formative essay {28}Typical Plan,

Brooklyn-based artist Jessica Vaughn primarily works with discarded and mass-produced materials to create artworks that convey the complex histories of place, production, and use. Assembling open-source US government documents, print materials of the HR industry, and photographs of banal office spaces from Vaughns own work history, Depreciating Assets explores labor, diversity politics, and the material environment of the workplace, and specifically how modular architecture is an outcome of neoliberal labor policy.