Rank and File
3 hours per day
06-07 until 10-07-2023
Kunstakademie,
Düsseldorf, Germany
The Rank and File performative installation portrays the ways in which creative people need to navigate the system of the gig economy. The work was presented as part of the graduation as Meisterschülerin in the class of Dominique Gonzales-Förster, Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.
Description:
In this performative installation the visitors enter through an extension room build in front of the actual entrance. The extension is made to look like a typical German office place. The visitors are told to sit down in a waiting area by a performer who is acting in the role of a governmental employee. The performer interacts with the public as well as with the other performers that are pendulating in between the two rooms.
When they are told to move on, the visitors enter a second room, where they can observe a different installations brought together and animated by performers: A wall fitted with Velcro, a traditional Romanian goat costume and an installation made out of metal, plaster and mini-computers fitted with screens made to represent a digital public. One of the windows in the room is closed up with black-out foil that only leaves the light to come through a cut out sentence: “Once you made it, you will make it again and again”.
Click on any of the images to enlarge
Idea:
This work is showing the pendulation in between the creative world and the bureaucratic world and the fact that they need to communicate with each other even though they do not have the same vocabulary. Also, it is showing different elements like luck and good fortune, or the layer of digitalization, that come together in order to com- plete cycles of producing, exposure and administration that people in and outside of the creative industry need to deal with in order to survive.
By combining symbols of luck and good fortune represented by the Romanian tradition of the Goat-Dance which is always performed in Romania in the first day of the New Year in order to lure good luck and fortune for the year to come, this performative installation is creating a bridge in between the ritual and the capitalist structure of the modern world. “Rank and File” is bringing together an ancient time a future orientation, the gig economy and the capitalist structure, all of them in a critical position.
All the parts of the “Rank and File” project can stand alone and individual pieces but also they are fitting together in a constellation that puts everything in perspective.
Performers: Salmo Albatal, Luca Calaras, Eunbi Oh, Karisma O. Ekeh, Saskia Tamara Kaiser, Nadine Karl, Emma Rüther, Qijia You
Costumes made by: Stephanie Hahn, 22/4_HOMMES_FEMMES, LiveLabsStudios and Pavel Lupașc.
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