Contemplating Labor (2017)
Amos Adamson Museum
Paldiski. Estonia.
Contemplating Labor was an installation, an action, a video performance, that occurred during
the Apocalypse Now-workshop, held in a former sovied military town of Paldiski in western Estonia.
In the Work I constructed an installation, at a remote serene beach, from a suit I used to wear in my former job as a taxi driver and then set it on fire. The process was filmed on 35mm B&W film and results were then
presented at the local gallery in a group exhibition by the workshop participants.
The work is me contemplating the precariety of contemporary living as an artist while holding a steady stream of temporary low income jobs to sustain myself.
It is also an experiment in my ongoing process of constructing something I call temporary sculptures, pieces of art that exist only for a short period of time and are perhaps not witnessed by people other than the artist, from any other vantage point that how it has been documented. Documentation, archiving, as an artform.
The action was documented on video with my cellphone camera by a fellow artist, Panu Ollikainen. A Documentation which was then also exhibited at the opening event at the gallery.
