Helsinki, Finland – 22/9/2022
On tour!
Searching for a Job? is touring with Experimental Employment Office.
In spring 2022 Experimental Employment Office was invited to host a one day workshop at employment service pilot for highly educated immigrant women by Emplyment Espoo (Työllisyys Espoo), Culture Espoo (Kulttuuri Espoo) and Espoo City Theatre (Espoon kaupunginteatteri). New paths coming: we developed an experimental board game ”Game of (Work and) Life” for the workshop. The workshop is happening 27th of September and we are very excitedly waiting for what is to come… Read more of our touring here!
Helsinki, Finland – 1/4/2022
Paths opening from the realized work
Excerpts from the video work can be viewed from here.
11.3.2022
”For me this connects to divers ecologies of resistance and co-production (ideas of Félix Guattari), which precarization and crisis of wage labor create. Now places of resistance are being built trough sensitivity, compassion, cooperation and self- and co-organization.
Art is precisely the thing, which has the kind of practice where moments of sensing and understanding can be built. In the same way, breaks can be built in art that create cuts into prevailing views.”
– Hanna Helavuori (translation from Finnish to English by Lauri A. Mattila) ”2574 unelmaa työstä – Lauri Antti Mattilan ja Juhani Haukan Etsitkö töitä? haastaa perinteistä talousajattelua” 7.3.2022. The original article can be found here.
In media:
Narratiiveja 16.6.2022: ”Millaista työtä tekisit, jos voisit tehdä mitä tahansa?”
Voima 16.3.2022: “Millaista olisi rakkaudesta kumpuava ja omia tarpeita kunnioittava työelämä? Se sisältäisi paljon hoivaa, osoittaa nykytaideteos”
Kulttuuritoimitus 26.10.2021: “Etsitkö töitä? -taideprojektissa kahdeksan ihmistä sai mahdollisuuden tehdä juuri sitä mitä tahtoo”
O povo 28.6.2021 (Brazil): “Do Mondubim à Finlândia: bailarinos cearenses vão expor trabalhos na Europa”
Blog do Lauriberto 25.6.2021 (Brazil): “Projeto artístico selecionado em Edital na Finlândia é desenvolvido com jovens da Rede Cuca”
Helsingin sanomat 19.11.2020: ”Nellan unelmien työ. Etsitkö työtä -hanke on tuottanut muun hyvän lisäksi tietoa suomalaisten unelmista ja työpahoinvoinnin syistä.”
Kulttuuritoimitus 1.3.2020: ”Parasta juuri nyt”
Helsingin Sanomat 4.3.2020: ”Lauri Mattila teki moraalitonta myyntityötä, kunnes sai tarpeekseen – Nyt hän tarjoaa ihmisille mahdollisuutta ansaita 2 400 euroa kuussa itse keksityllä työllä”
Ylen aamun Jälkinäytös keskusteli projektista 5.3.2020
Lestijoki 7.7.2020
Teatteri &Tanssi+Sirkus -lehti
Lapin kansa
Ilkka-Pohjalainen
Forssan lehti
Hämeen sanomat
Satakunnan kansa
Keskipohjanmaa
Radio Nova
Me Naiset
Helsinki, Finland – 24/9/2021 – Free for publishing
Finnish artists paid people to do the job people had self suggested
Searching for a Job? -exhibition opens space for future working life at the Finnish Labour Museum Werstas in Tampere, Finland.
Searching for a Job? –exhibition has opened at the at the Finnish Labour Museum Werstas, Tampere, Finland. At the same time, a biblically thick book carrying the same name has been published by distinguished poetry publisher Poesia. Both are part of Searching for a Job? -project by performance artist Lauri Antti Mattila and documentary filmmaker Juhani Haukka. The project turned employing into work of art and invites people to rethink future working life.
In the project, the logic of job search was reversed and instead of looking for ready-defined jobs, people were allowed to determine what job they would most like to do. The application was open in the spring of 2020 and 2574 applications were received. Eight of the applicants were selected by lottery to work for 1-2 month grant periods. Work was done between autumn 2020 and summer 2021. Jobs were documented by filming and writing.
Of the eight jobs, at one job, an elderly lady worked as a narrator for nature films, another as a mother’s hospice and the third as an independent astrobiologist. One job was to write letters on an island, another played music with the trees in Saarijärvi. One employee dealt with difficult father-child relationships through interviews. The youngest of the participants wrote a book and published it. The farthest job was in Brazil, where the applicant organized a dance workshop for young people.
From the extensive application material, artists Haukka and Mattila edited a documentary book that opens up a view on people’s work proposals and thus their thoughts on enjoyment, desires, dreams and working life. According to Mattila and Haukka, hundreds of applications testify the problems of current working life. In times of environmental crises, ideas of work and its meaning need to be completely rethought:
– The project revealed that beneath the surface is an incredibly diverse activity and a huge amount of energy, when only given permission and opportunity. Based on the application material, the needs for change in working life are widely identified and people are ready for change. People would only need structures that enable the change – such as a fair basic income, say Lauri Antti Mattila and Juhani Haukka.
The exhibition, which seeks to activate the visitor, consists of a documentary video installation, texts and sound works. As a part of the exhibition works an Experimental Employment Office. An alternative institution, which takes a form of a series of workshops, provides a space for alternative ways of thinking working life and society. In the first workshop in the series, Work and Persevarance on Saturday 2.10., artists Mattila & Haukka will be talking with guests researcher Paavo Järvensivu and long-term unemployed Terhi Vuojala-Magga, second workshop on Heritages of Work, will be held on Saturday 30.10. The workshop will feature visual artist Minna Henriksson, psychohistorist Ilkka Levä and cultural researcher Mona Mannevuo.
The exhibition has been produced in collaboration with the Finnish Labour Museum Werstas, the Live Art Society (Esitystaiteen seura), Circus Maximus and Poesia. The project has been funded by the Kone Foundation, the Alfred Kordelin Foundation, Arts Promotion Centre Finland.
(For now, the book is only available in Finnish.)
Press photos:
http://www.werstas.fi/etsitko-toita-nayttely-ja-kirja-luotaavat-tulevaisuuden-tyoelamaa/
Additional information:
performance artist Lauri Antti Mattila, lauriantti.mattila@gmail.com, +358 40 742 7787
SEARCHING FOR A JOB?
The Finnish Labour Museum Werstas
24.9.2021-3.4.2022
Väinö Linna Square 8, Tampere, FINLAND
http://www.werstas.fi/tule-werstaalle-en/?lang=en
tel. +358 10 420 9220
The museum is open Tue-Sun 11-18
ALWAYS FREE ADMISSION
Helsinki, Finland – 14/04/2020 – Free for publishing
In the midst of the crisis Finnish art project hires people to design their own jobs
While more and more companies are laying off people because of corona, Finnish art project is searching for employees and encourages us for rethinking of working life.
Through corona crisis rebuilding the society is closer than anyone could have guessed. Searching for a Job? turn the process of employment into art, by inviting people to dream up a job that would be impossible to do otherwise – and then making it a reality. The Finns employs seven people for two months – to do any job they’ve come up with. It’s a unique, Finland-wide live art project by Helsinki-based artists Lauri Antti Mattila and Juhani Haukka.
Seven employees will be selected based on applications left on the project website. Applicants can either write out a free-from job proposal or complete a questionnaire and have a job proposed for them. The online application process runs until the 7th of May. During the first month, over a thousand applications were sent in, featuring job ideas ranging from training reindeer to documenting the silence of Finland.
The world of work is undergoing a rapid, multi-faceted transition, with the rise of AI and automation rendering more and more jobs obsolete. Meanwhile a number of surveys show that an increasing percentage of employees find their work meaningless. In Searching for a Job?, art participates in rethinking of society through a radical questioning of the concept of work. It is an exploration of possibilities of work and art in the post-fossil era.
Lauri Antti Mattila, one of the artists, says: “We should free ourselved of the coercive aspects of work life. Change requires structures. This piece presents a basic income utopia that creates space for reconsidering our ways of being.”
“The project isn’t just a commentary on work life or a fantasy about a different relationship to work – it literally creates an alternative kind of work life and reality, by realizing jobs and paying for them”, summarizes Juhani Haukka.
Searching for a job? is a joint production by Live Art Society, Circus Maximus art collectives and the Finnish Labour Museum Werstas. It is funded by the Kone Foundation, Arts Promotion Centre Finland and the Alfred Kordelin Foundation.
Project website: https://etsitkotoita.org/eng
More information & interview requests:
Lauri Antti Mattila
lauriantti.mattila@gmail.com
+358 40 742 7787
Juhani Haukka
ju.m.haukka@gmail.com
+358 40 509 1208
Searching for a Job? – is a participatory art piece that’s searching for employees to do the work they would like to do.
Finnish art project Searching for a Job? turns employment into art
Etsitkö töitä?
Searching for a Job? is a participatory art project that combines experimental architecture, social sculpture and documentary filmmaking and came out in a form of multichannel video installation, book, exhibition and workshops. The project spreads into urban and media spaces, film, museum and literature, turning employment into art and contemplating the possibilities of art and work in the era of post-fossil reconstruction. It is art participating in rethinking of society.
Photos: Visa Knuuttila
Searching for a Job? is a study on work, time and community by Helsinki-based artists Juhani Haukka and Lauri Antti Mattila. They started the project in the spring of 2020 by offering two-month grant periods for people to do exactly the job they want. The project radically questions the concept of work, by severing it from the prevailing profit based logic of market economy and exploring the idea of work as a practice of positioning oneself in relations with the world and the idea of livelihood/income detached from capital.
The application process opened online in February 2020. By completing the questionnaire, the applicant participated in a raffle that allowed eight people to work for 1-2 months, doing the job proposed by them or planned in collaboration.
Searching for a Job? created a space for extraordinary deeds: the ones that are quiet, were abandoned, lost in a hurry, dreamed of, did not get done. Ones that need to be done. Or that do not exist yet. That could be dreamed and realized into this world. A good deed. Work that perhaps has not been possible to carry out, or that has seemed too crazy, too wild, too ordinary, non-profitable or vague. That might in the end turn out to be of utmost importance, or that could open a possibility for the most important, in surprising ways.
The project spreded worldwide, while other working in Finland, the farthest work was carried out in Brazil. Age of the workers ranged from a schoolchild to a pensioner.
Jobs were documented and the material was transformed into a multichannel documentary video installation, audio works, 500 page encyclopedic book (Poesia 2021) and a series of workshops which take place and are on display for the first time in Searching for a Job -exhibition at the Finnish Labour Museum Werstas from 24.9.2021 to 3.4.2022.
Working group
Juhani Haukka, Iines Korhonen, Visa Knuuttila, Lauri Antti Mattila, Sari Paljakka, Menni Renvall, Oula Rytkönen and Pilvi Tyrväinen
Workers
Elisa
Hanne
Jan
Lea
Minna
Nella
Pauli
Tuija
Co-production
Finnish Labour Museum Werstas, Live Art Society/Esitystaiteen seura, Theatre Circus Maximus and Poesia
Support/Funding
The project is funded by the Kone Foundation, the Alfred Kordelin Foundation and the Arts Promotion Centre Finland.
Photos on this site can be freely used in articles about Searching for a Job -project. Photographer’s name must be mentioned.
Etsitkö töitä? 