Searching for a Job?
24.9.2021-3.4.2022
Searching for a Job?
Exhibition at The Finnish Labour Museum Werstas from 24th of September 2021 to 3rd of April 2022
What job would you have, if you could do anything at all? What sort of labor is meaningful in times of climate crisis?
Excerpts from the work can be viewed from here.
The contemporary art piece Searching for a Job? sought out individuals for a grant-assisted period of 1-2 months, to be spent doing the job of their desires. Job suggestions were sent in via internet form from late February to early May, 2020.
The suggestion was permitted to be a precise description for a job to be carried out – or be comprised of unspecified wishes, if the applicant wished a job proposal on the basis of the form.
By the end of the application period we received 2,574 job suggestions. Of these, 16 were chosen randomly to join us in a job interview. Of those interviewed, five jobs were chosen to be performed; in addition to which, project founders Juhani and Lauri chose three applications out of all the submissions to be carried out as well. The workers all worked within the period between autumn 2020 and summer 2021. The jobs were documented visually and textually.
The exhibition at hand opens multifaceted windows into jobs that were realised and suggested through videos, sound clips, and texts – including a full book anthologizing the suggested jobs. It is a birthing space, a temporary construction into a different kind of labor and the plural world that such labor might produce. An experimental Employment Office also operates during the exhibition, opening a space where labor, work, jobs can be thoroughly redefined.
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, Circus Maximus and Poesia
Support/Funding
Alfred Kordelin Foundation, Kone Foundation, Arts Promotion Centre Finland
Special Thanks
Auvo
Johannes Bäckman
Tiia Hietanen
Juhani
Lauri
Laura Pietiläinen
Katriina Tavi
Thank you to everyone who applied for the project!
We thank Finnish Labour Museum Werstas (Linda Heinonen ja Ulla Rohunen) and Live Art Society, with whom the exhibition and the project has been produced.
We thank Cooperative Poesia (Olli-Pekka Tennilä ja Kimmo Kallio) who published the book.
Thank you Alfred Kordelin Foundation, Kone Foundation, Arts Promotion Centre Finland and Theatre Circus Maximus, who have supported the project.
”It is true that a calling hepls liberate people, but it is equally necessary to liberate the calling itself.”
Antoine De Saint-Exupéry
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