9 to 5

From Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, I will make work about work.

I will try not to be late. I will try not to work extra hours. I will take lunch breaks, cigarette breaks, toilet breaks. Every morning, I will stumble out of bed, tumble to the kitchen, pour myself a cup of ambition ...

In a situation where weird similarities between artistic modes of production and post-fordist working conditions make artists role-models for dealing with the challenges of immaterial and/or precarious labour, I want to use the secure environment of the art school to reflect on the theme of work.

I will consider former jobs where the seemingly anachronistic 9 to 5-model was very much a reality for me. Was my job as a sales assistant at a card shop actually a happening commissioned by Birthdays Limited? Has the 1960s desire for a blurring of art and life (formulated e.g. by Allan Kaprow) been fulfilled in the often precarious working conditions of workers in the so-called creative industries? Is there an escape from art? Can I go on strike?


Daniel Ladnar, Swansea, January 14th - January 18th 2007


9 to 5 was presented as an installation at the MA Contemporary Dialogues Show Entrance and Exit, Swansea, June 2008, and as a lecture performance at Showroom Aberystwyth in June 2008, at emergency 08, greenroom, Manchester, September 2008, and at Supper Club, The Basement, Brighton, March 2010.

9 to 5, January 14th

I am working but it isn't.

It's my first day at work. I was there on time, but nobody else was. Was wearing my new suit. Spent the morning waiting, sorting stuff out and settling in. Just a regular first day. Will have to work extra hours though because still not everything is sorted out (I am showing initiative). I've got no internet in my room and there are difficulties with putting images online. I like the room I'm working in, though. Only that there are too many chairs. This makes me feel lonely. But there is a ventilation system that makes a comforting nerve-wracking humming sound.
Tomorrow, I will have my second first day ...

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will make art for food


means of production

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You did think you were dressed to the occasion, but then you realise that through your new white shirt everyone can see your nipples.
You might as well be standing there with no shirt at all.

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John wrote to me in an email:
"The first thing you've told me about your work this week is that you will take breaks, and quit at five. I don't know what you are doing, but I know you aren't doing it all the time. That must be what defines it as work."
Why are the breaks so important? What I am proposing for this week has to do with a certain desire for alienation ... (I should try to define this more clearly over the course of the week ...)
(I am doing this quite a lot:
"..."
But it is the first day ...)

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9 to 5, January 15th

5 minutes late. This actually feels like going to work

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For what is called "The Experiment" in the first year of the MA I'm doing here in Swansea, we were all presented with a task. This was mine:

Allan Kaprow: Chores
"Sweeping the dust from the floor of a room/ Spreading the dust in another room, so it won't be noticed/ Continuing daily ..."

9 to 5 is my response to this task. It reminded me of the job I had at the Austrian National Library: Cleaning books in the music collection. I started thinking about libraries and dust for a while, before I then realised that something else interested me about the task I was given. It proposed an activity that you are doing everyday, for yourself, for no apparent reason other than it being art. It seemed to me to formulate an antithesis to what a 9-to-5-job would usually be considered to be: a daily activity that you are doing for somebody else, and only for one reason: to get a paycheck at the end of the month. Alienation. Your work is not your life.
Kaprow, on the other hand: the blurring of art and life. I was going to get "Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life" out of the library today, but they have no copy of it. So I am going to judge a book by its cover (or rather its title) here (which is okay, I only have limited time, I'm under constant pressure to perform/make performance art). It's again the question I ask in the announcement for this project: Has the desire for a creative, unalienated activity and way of life formulated by artists since the 60s not been fulfilled, channeled into the realities of work in the creative industries (should I say culture industry?), and beyond that? Do not skills like creativity, Eigeninitiative (what's that in English?), idealism, visual competence, the ability of self-promotion, communication skills etc. that would be expected from artists today look good on most job applications? Identify with your work, your company, your product. Be a company. Be your work. Be your product. Don't let yourself be exploited, exploit yourself.

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Costume 1: National Library
At the National Library, I cleaned books and music sheets (Mozart, mostly) using a vacuum cleaner. I was wearing a mask and latex gloves against the dust. I brought my own apron. When I told a friend about my job at the library, she told me to give my vacuum cleaner a name. I did not want to. I did not want to be personally involved with my work. I enjoyed going home not thinking about it. Yet I had written in my application how much I love books.




If you're paid by the hour take your time
For example: You're asked how long it will take you to finish a certain task. You think it will take three hours. Tell them you need five hours to finish it, be finished after four hours: you win one hour while still appearing to be a fast worker.

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Dust
Score for a happening
Go to the music collection of your local library. Collect the dust from a book of or about a dead composer. Take the dust to a silent room. Spread it on the floor. Wait for the ghost/the music to appear.

Dust II
Score for a happening
At the library, find a book covered with dust. Take it out. Bring it back clean the next day.

Work
Score for a happening
Sit at your desk. Wait until it is covered with dust. Go back to work.

Work II
Score for a happening
Sit at your desk. Wait for the phone to ring. Wait for the phone to stop ringing.


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9 to 5, January 16th

It's working. I did not want to get up this morning. I did, though, took a shower but didn't bother to shave, put on my suit, had breakfast and left. Was there on time. Tired, although I've had enough sleep. Now I'm sitting here, contemplating what I'd rather do. I am going for another cigarette. I am bored.

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Costume II: Manpower - I was wearing everyday clothes
In 2004, I was commissioned by Manpower and the German Post to make a piece about human communication in a period of transformation, about missed opportunities and ephemerality. No: I was hired by Manpower to work for the Post in the dead letter department at Frankfurt Airport. I was hired for three weeks, but fired along with my co-workers after one week because we couldn't return the amount of letters a day that was required. We were told a number on the first day, I don't remember what it was, but we did never even get close. Most of the letters we had to return to their senders were either adressed to people that had died, or, less frequently but still quite often, to places that didn't exist anymore: Karl-Marx-Stadt, Karl-Marx-Universitaet. I usually don't like my art to be that symbolic.

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The Room Next Door: Open Access Life Drawing
Today I peeped into the room next door. There is a sign saying Open Access Life Drawing. I am claiming the status of art for what I am doing. This is very much a given considering the environment I am doing it in: an art school. While this morning I complained, now that my working day is coming to an end I have to admit to the luxury of what I am doing. There are no material needs behind it, and who would care if I didn't come to work tomorrow?



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9 to 5, January 17th

In preparation for today, I took some time yesterday morning to make little sculptures from Blu Tack and put them on the wall next to my desk. I put little post-it notes next to them with the titles. This morning, five past nine, I opened the door to my room to find that - even though I had put up a sign saying "Please don't remove anything. Thanks!" - the post-it notes had been moved to the trash, and I found a big lump of Blu Tack in one of the plastic bags on my desk.

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When I worked at Birthdays, we used Blu Tack a lot to put up signs and posters. On a quiet day, I would stand behind the counter and make little Blu Tack sculptures.

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Costume III: Birthdays
I worked as a sales assistant at Birthdays for almost a year. I got paid minimum wage, had a contract for 16 hours a week but as there was usually a lack of staff I would often work twice as much. When I finally quit I was - apart from the manager - the person who had worked there longest.
Thinking about Birthdays now, what comes to mind are a number of anecdotes: about the blind man coming into the store now and again asking me to read poems from Anniversary cards to him till I got the suspicion he actually just liked being read love poetry to; about the woman who tried to steal the big Winnie-the-Pooh soft toy every now and then, but then was happy to just carry it around the store for a while; about having to wear a grave digger costume to work for Halloween. But that's not what it was about: when I was asked what had happened at work after a day at Birthdays, I would usually just say: nothing much.

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When I worked at Birthdays, I usually started at nine but had to be there at quarter to to count up the tills. I wasn't getting paid for counting the money, though.

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Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Valentine's Day ... the working year structured according to the holidays. Christmas music from end of November. Michael Jackson singing about seeing his mummy kissing Santa Clause. The regular music selection: there should be an investigation what listening to sad love songs all day does with your mind. When I hear certain songs being played somewhere today, my reaction is a mixture of panic and relief.

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Some days I just didn't want to sell helium balloons anymore.

9 to 5, January 18th

Last day at work. There will be no plan for the day today.

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Something I should have done yesterday

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It is the last day. I should come up with something great to finish things off. But I'm tired, and my thoughts keep drifting to the presentation I have to do about this project on Tuesday (the format: Pecha Kucha - originally invented as a forum for designers now taken up by the business world - weird similarities to my project). Also, I found out that the whole building is closing down at 4.30. But I think it's okay to go home early today, I have worked some extra hours, mostly at the beginning of the week. I have made no plan for today, because I felt I didn't have time before to reflect on what I have been doing the last few days. Having made no plan, the first impulse I had today that was to go back and take some of the pictures again, make them better.
On the one hand, I didn't censor myself this week - I put out lots of things without giving it time to consider them properly. On the other hand I did censor myself - because I knew I would put out stuff immediately I probably didn't take many risks, didn't even consider doing things that would have needed time to be thought through properly. And more so, I didn't consider putting nothing out. Maybe this would have been the most risky thing to do: nothing. It's not a strike. It's not a holiday. I'm still here, but it's over.

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