It is a managerial tale that turns into a nightmare. The decor ? A start-up that cultivates its trendy image where it is good to work. Without skimping on green plants, glazed open spaces, and other meditation rooms made available to employees. Characters ? Relaxed executives, but whose smile, more or less forced, will freeze. Because there is an intruder among them: a consultant recently hired by management as part of a well-being at work program. His job ? Walk the corridors of the company and greet everyone she meets by placing her hand on their shoulder.
“Personnal touch”, the name of his company, provides human contact in work environments. Because “Touching yourself is the most fundamental human experience” and “Integrating these contacts into a workspace makes it possible to strengthen team dynamics, to encourage colleagues to be more open, more confident in each other and therefore more productive and creative”. Except that the employees do not hear it that way. At first surprised, disoriented by these intrusions into their personal bubble, they will quickly be overwhelmed, complain by mails interposed to their hierarchy, rebel. The discord sets in and the varnish of this managerial best of worlds begins to crumble.
The conspired consultant is actually a Finnish artist, Pilvi Takala, a follower of this type of performance. His video is one of those presented as part of the exhibition “Development variables” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tours, the CCCOD, until January 2, 2022. And when we contemplate this theater of the absurd, we are hard pressed to say whether it is a fiction or a a documentary, as the tracks are blurred.
Indeed, the work of Pilvi Takala is indeed a staging. But Florent Audoye’s performance merges with reality. Here, no video, but a fixed-term employment contract framed and exposed. The artist was hired by the CPME Paris Ile-de-France (a federation of small and medium-sized enterprises) as responsible for happiness at work. And he lent himself to the game, chaining talks with his colleagues, leading workshops, even brushing against burn-out himself, as the task seemed immense to him. This is what he recounts in the quirky diary he kept during this experience, depicting his spleen as his mission passed him.
Florent Audoye, #teamworkmakesdreamwork (the world before). Exhibition “Development variables”. Credit: CCCOD.
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More than fifteen contemporary artists are brought together for this exhibition, which focuses on work. Starting point common to all these steps: the successive confinements that we have just gone through. From forced idleness for some to widespread teleworking for others, the business world has been forced to rethink its organizational methods. This unexpected breach in our routines has prompted us to reassess the meaning of work in our lives and the artists selected by the CCCOD echo it.
Celine Berger. “La Ronde”, video. Exhibition “Development variables”. Credit: CCCOD.
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That art is inspired by the turbine is nothing new. In the 1970s, many artists had developed a radical critique of the professional world, with anti-capitalist overtones. The axis chosen by the CCCOD for this exhibition is different: it focuses more on parody, play, humor. But the point is no less scathing.
This is evidenced by the brass engraving by Rennes artist Thomas Tudoux, an urban panorama that compiles numerous towers and bell towers, from Royan cathedral to that of Brazilia, including New York skyscrapers. A kind of best of architecture of places of economic and religious power, but whose trade acronyms and other religious symbols have been replaced by T’s, suggesting that the whole of society obeys the sacrosanct value of time-work.
Thomas Tudoux, Value T, brass engraving. Exhibition “Development variables”. Credit: CCCOD.
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A whole part of the exhibition is also interested in the passive resistance that we can oppose to the invasive nature of work on our lives, through a praise of laziness and sleep.
Here again, a work by Thomas Tudoux attracts particular attention. This is a series of beautiful graphite drawings, which represent a cubic chamber. In the middle, a bed, in which a sleeping character contorts. Is it the bed in a bedroom or a hospital room? The ambiguity is obvious, a way for the artist to underline how our society has difficulty in accepting rest and fatigue.
For Thomas Tudoux, sleep is the last portion of our time that has not yet been exploited by neoliberalism, but his drawings also represent sleep as if it were a disease.
Thomas Tudoux, “Decubitus Complexes (study)”. Exhibition “Development variables”. Credit: CCCOD.
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On the opposite wall is another series of photos by Yugoslav artist Mladen Stilinovic, which uses the same theme, in a more ironic vein. His work, entitled “the artist at work”, shows him lying in bed, sleeping soundly. The productivist injunction? Very little for him!
Free yourself from work
We often say of work, that it allows us to give meaning to our existence, but also a social identity. Sure, but it can also be nonsense. Anthropologist David Graeber had shown this with his pamphlet on bullshit jobs, the “stupid jobs” that are useless.
In a video, Francis Alÿs pushes this logic to the limit. We see the artist strolling through the streets of Mexico, pushing an enormous block of ice, which gradually melts, until it disappears completely. In doing so, he points out the absurdity of certain tasks, and questions how to do it, which often takes precedence over the result.
Francis Alÿs, “Paradox of praxis 1 (sometimes making something leads to nothing)” (left). Mladen Stilinovic, “Artist at work” (right). Exhibition “Development variables”. Credit: CCCOD.
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The CCCOD exhibition is rich, it calls out to the public, ready to smile. We make fun of managerial precepts, we debate salary hierarchies, we talk about formatting, molding, but also emancipation. Impossible to detail here all the works which appear there.
But we would be remiss if we did not mention the highlight of the show: a hypnosis session to project oneself into post-work society.
Put it like that, it may seem surprising, but it is exactly that: this installation by Danilo Correale entitled “Reverie, on the liberation from work”, invites the public to lie down on a seat in the shape of a lounge chair. Opposite, a giant screen projects psychedelic colored shapes, while a captivating voice invites us to let go, to close our eyes, to imagine ourselves falling backwards, before opening our eyes again to let ourselves be caught by the spirals that scroll across the screen. One way we are told to relax the body and the mind, to better prepare for the advent of a post-work society. It appears that several visitors fell asleep during the session. A sign that they understood everything and entered into resistance to the managerial cult of performance.
Danilo Correale, “Reverie, on the liberation from work”. Exposure Variables of fulfillment ”. Credit: CCCOD.
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The exhibition “Development variables” is visible at the Center for Contemporary Creation Olivier Debré, in Tours (37), until January 2, 2022.
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