27/4/2010
Part-time Playtime
Villa 54, Berlin
Marco Giani, Cecile Ibarra, Nicolas Manenti, Anna Mawby and Serena Vestrucci. The work experience is stripped away from its normal everyday context in order to reveal its fundamental symptoms, the most significant of which is repetition. Each of the 5 artists, informed by this basic criterion of work, confronts a specific characteristic of repetition: monotonous, mind-numbing, time-consuming.
As the global economic catastrophe persists, world leaders are under increasing pressure to create more jobs and financial security. For many, then, work is equated to livelihood and a daily purpose, making it a prominent issue in current social discourse. Yet our understanding of its actual form, impact, and tendencies remains greatly obstructed by its calculable, monetary worth.
Part-time Playtime is an attempt to investigate work itself, specifically its mundane nature. Like the characters in the urban anthill of Jacques Tati's film Playtime, the artists' "fruits of labour" result from a series of ritualised motions, at different times obsessive, compulsive, and arbitrary. The work experience is stripped away from its normal everyday context in order to reveal its fundamental symptoms, the most significant of which is repetition.
Each of the five artists, informed by this basic criterion of work, confronts a specific characteristic of repetition: monotonous, mind-numbing, time-consuming. Simple tasks of no practical application are invented and replicated endlessly, until completion, or until an abrupt stop. The idea of recurrence functions purely as a productive impetus, urging the artists to keep up and produce; in other words, to work.
Image: Marco Giani
Thanks to Pharus-Plan Verlag
Opening: Wed. 28 april 2010, 19:00
Opening in the Galerierundgang event at Landsberger Allee 54!
Landsberger Allee 54 Berlin