So I have a concommitant question. What is it like to have a real, proper job, recognised broadly by society? What is it like being a wage worker? What does office work involve? What do you do all day? It seems to me like everyone I know who works in an office spends a lot of their time goofing off on the internet. Do you feel useful to society, that you are contributing to it's wellbeing in some small way? Or do you feel llike you're getting away with something? Is there any guilt invovled? Whats your daily routine in an office?I can't evern imagine what it's like working in that environment...I am kind of intimidated and awestruck by bureacracy.
Firstly, different industries are different. Lawyers for example have to record 6.5 billable hours per day and so they do not goof off at all usually because they have to make up the time anyway. Plus they usually have too much work. You practically will never see any other lawyers goof off at work.
ReplyDeleteI'd be caurious to know what other jobs are like and what people are like in their work too (who do you refer to that goofs off?) I have heard lawyers be described both as "abused children" and "having stockholm syndrome" and that they get used to this really intense, guilty anxiety to do work - law firms are very much like the foucauldian panoptican, especially with the time clock.
So i think most people have great anxiety to do their work well and also guilt when they dont. But some places have healthy office cultures (so im told) where people all openly goof off and show eachother things on the net and make jokes etc.
All offices are pretty similar to The Office. That is why the show is so popular. It is an exact replica of office life. Its not awful so much as incredibly middling and underwhelming. But for people thta do work they find interesting its probably similar to what you do in a day. In fact, the average artists practise is becoming more and more like a corporate job in which it is mostly project management and arranging for things to be assembled and organised and engaging a variety of people and services.
The main thing about office life are cultural, in the way people relate to each other. Every office has their own codifications for example, in my office if you run into a coworker in the lift you say "busy day?" or "are you busy?" - business and qunatity of work being the world lens. other firms and industries are different.
theres also some interesting points to make about heirarchy and class but ill save that for another day. the other thing is the awkward interactions int he toilets and kitchens and how you always see the same people in the kitchen all day .
Most people will say they feel useful to society in varying degrees, but i think most people who are not at that top all hope for some higher calling at some point, but they really don't know how to achieve it. The other half are absolutely suited to concrete tasks and results and like the structure of short term risk reward payoffs and feel very satsfied at completing tasks well and pleasing their coworkers.
ReplyDeleteI am entirely disfunctional and you cannot base any findings on me. Most people would be horrified at my routine. I basically spend most of my time on the internet and berating myself for being a sell out and trying to imagine what a sustainable lifestyle could possibly entail. Its not like i have the dignity or discipline to actually do my work and then plan art projects like i imagine i do - really its a state of constant paralysis.
I never feel guilt in relation to my employer and i don not feel i am making a contribution because i actually don't. Having said that i can now no longer imagine any service or action that could be deemed "usefel to society". Its such a broad term that it has little meaning for me and I cannot imagine many services of value. That even goes for art to some extent, I see many impressive art works i like and I feel totally excluded and opressed by them.
Another point: can you provide some comment on this work i would like to do. Basically i want to hook up data sensors on a bunch of workers from different professions, and at each one a few workers from different level in the org. the data sensors will be on their bodies similar to animation studios. the data will recors all their physical movements for 1 day. the data willthen be used as a basis for making holograms of their bodies which will be beamed onto a stage. eash industry will be done separately. each worker from each job will be superimposed onto the same space and sped up. it will look like a dance performance of a multilimbed individual.
what d yout hink? i am having troble finding holographs atm though.
Funnily enough, I've been working in the Kunsthalle this week, and today they gave me a desk in the office so I guess now I can experience it first hand. Really cool idea, though I don't know if the hologram technology even exists. Could you do it fictionally, make a video of it from videos of people working. The other comment I'd make is, I guess one thing they press on you in art school is to not have everything worked out before you begin. It's really hard to accept and it really gave me the shits at the time, but it is actually more interesting in the end for yourself and the for the work if you begin with a question or premise intially, then experentially work out what to do as you go. I always see it as like travelling, when you look at where you have to get to it seems ridiculously daunting but if you take it one step at a time, and take each challenge or problem as it presents itself, you work your way by increments to the destination you want to get to.
ReplyDeleteI need much more concptual discussion regarding what you say about art making process. I really can't come up with a paradigm from which to approach working in general. I dont really understand how you do domething open ended. FOr example i think that not having an end vision or goal in mind has been responsible for every failure in my life so far.
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