This project emanates from a decade-long engagement with the glass factory-town of Rejmyre, Sweden. It involves the implementation and inhabitation of an artist-guest-worker program within the factory and the production of a conceptual product line, of and about labour.
The project was conceptualized and led by Rejmyre Art Lab’s co-founder, Daniel Peltz, and with research funding from Stockholms konstnärliga högskola (as part of Peltz’ Visiting Professorship at SKH). Peltz began the work by negotiating with the glass factory’s management to create a position for ‘artist-guest-workers’.
The conditions of labour were important in shaping this work, each artist (including me) employed in this artist-guest-worker role worked the same hours, was paid an equivalent wage and was subject to the same tourist gaze as the other glass factory workers. Working under these conditions, I tasked the group with developing and producing a conceptual product line (products of and about labour) in response to the situation of our own labour and the labour of others around us (tourists, tour guides, glass workers, administrators, shoppers, sales people, museum staff, etc).
-Daniel Peltz
CONTEXT
Like many contemporary industries, the Reijmyre Glass Factory has turned to auto-exhibitionist tourism to supplement a struggling economic position. Within this context, the workers’ labour becomes both process and product, embodied and disembodied. They enact functional craft gestures and produce industrial products, while simultaneously producing a tourist spectacle that renders their labouring bodies, and gestures, as pure aesthetic products.
THE PROJECT
This project considers how a conceptual performance of labour, about labour, in the context of this hybrid industrial/tourist factory, might be used as a strategy to invoke a parallel state of consciousness in a group of artist-researchers. From inside this state, we attempt to explore the evolving roles of the contemporary labourer.
ARTIST GUEST WORKERS
In 2016, the Ensemble Residency Performing Labour was held, where artists was invited as guest workers in the glass factory.
International participants section 1: Alex Auriema (US), Robyn Backen (AUS), Ioana Jucan (RO), Filip Olszewski (US), Daniel Peltz (US/SE), Sissi Westerberg (SE)
Etnografer: Ioana Jucan (RO)
Nordic participants section 2: Unndór Egill Jónsson (IS), David Larsson (SE), Meri Linna (FI), Daniel Peltz (US/SE), Sissi Westerberg (SE)
Etnografer: Konstantin Economou (SE)
PUBLICATIONS ABOUT PERFORMING LABOUR
Beginnings of a performative ethnography of Performing Labour, assembled by Ioana B Jucan
Exhibition catalouge, from the exhibition at Norrköpings Konstmuseum 2018
Product catalouge, from the ensemble residency Performing Labour
Watching Making, book published by Gallery F15 with a chapter on Performing Labour
Break Blower, short documentary about Sissi Westerberg’s project Break Blower during Performing Labour