In the glassworks, Reijmyre Glassworks, 2018
“The task to develop a product of and about labour in the Performing Labour framework, prompted me to study the work that was happening in the factory; both the work of the glass workers and that of the artist-guest-workers (including my own). What struck me was how hard it was for us (artists) to keep up with the factory schedule. It was not so hard to be there at 6:45am (at least for me who is used to getting up early). What was hard was to take breaks at the designated times.
I’m not sure I know how to separate work and life. I always take my coffee while working and have conversations about my work at home (which is maybe the perfect state of a worker in our capitalist society). The Break Blower was an attempt to create a product that could help regulate a confused worker such as myself (with a defined work day with many short, actual breaks), but also an idea of how other people and places could be synchronized with the particular rhythm of Reijmyre Glassworks, if the piece was transplanted somewhere else.
At the glassworks, twenty-two of the inflatable glass objects where placed around the factory and connected to the existing pressurized air system that the glass blowers use as part of the glassmaking process to cool or release the glass at precise points. Through plastic tubes, pneumatic couplings and electric regulators, the air flow was controlled and timed so that the Break Blowers would inflate and deflate during the assigned break times.
I was interested in the relationship between the transparency of the inflatable latex parts and the glass bubbles that the glass blowers usually start off with in the glass blowing process, but also the relationship between working and resting, breathing and blowing.
My process of making the piece actually started off with trying to inflate different transparent materials parallel with the glass blowers inflations. I cannot blow glass, but I can make other transparent bubbles I thought, imitating them in my own way.
I guess this was part of an ongoing process of trying to be part of this place; an expression of an underlying desire for acceptance that has been there ever since I started working in Rejmyre over ten years ago. One of my first attempts at making a product during the Performing Labour project was a big inflatable break bubble (made with a big roll of plastic wrap, tape, a fan and a timer) that was set up around one of the abandoned break tables (there are less workers at the factory now than some years ago). The Break Bubble, like the Break Blowers, was set to inflate during break time, as a sort of monument to the break.
Sissi Westerberg studied at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, in the department of metal design, where she worked with experimental jewelry art. She now primarily works with sculpture, video, and installations, often with a clear relation to the body. In recent years, her work has focused on site-specific projects rooted in the industrial environment of Rejmyre, as well as public art commissions in other locations. Sissi has had solo exhibitions at Rooster Gallery in New York, Uppsala Art Museum, Eskilstuna Art Museum, and Östergötlands Museum. She has been active internationally through exhibitions and artist-in-residence programs in Australia, the USA, Indonesia, and Colombia.
Since 2009, Sissi Westerberg has served as the director of Rejmyre Art Lab’s Center for Peripheral Studies and as project manager for the Post-MFA program Nordic Studio for Continued Engagement.