Worker on the Line!
The worker has been put on the line! “On the line”. With a push towards rampant productivity and endless days of labor, I found myself closing in and shutting down. The point of the performance was no longer about communicating an important message to the visitors, it was about making t-shirt after t-shirt and without halt in the pursuit. As a result, the relevance of the piece to the visitors was waning…(or so I perceived) then what was the use in my ceaseless working, making, laboring, producing? Oh, to learn.
Yes, I came into this project not only because I wanted to be a conduit through which the lives of nearly 20 million individuals enslaved in the world today, could be brought to the forefront of the consciousness of the general public, of the consumer, but also, I wanted to learn. And through this reiteration of the initial performance piece conducted in Helsinki over a year ago, I have learned, much, and quickly. Most everything that I have learned, however, through this process, came to light when I was able to reconnect with other human beings–to converse about the performance at hand, not merely pour myself into said performance and become lost. But to be found through connecting with others; this is when, this is where, the worker is truly “on the line”…
The saving grace of the worker on the line *is* the line. A communal pursuit, commiseration, the acknowledgment of time, place, purpose. “You are not alone in this plight!” (I, however, am…) But every time someone comes into the gallery space and asks, “What are you doing?” and we get past my initial frustration at having to explain the obvious: “Making t-shirts!” it is there that they join me on the line, and we are not alone in our plight.
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