Exhibition view I DON’T WORK ON WEEKENDS, — © Photo: Lucas Melzer

Curated by Vincent Schier

With: FAMED, Anja Kaiser, Luise Marchand, Irène Mélix, Ari Wahl, Yours truly, LoL

In the exhibition, I DON’T WORK ON WEEKENDS, the participating artists critically examine the concept of work and their own working conditions. The exhibition takes its starting point in the art and culture industry, but the examination of work structures and their social recognition and importance goes far beyond this sector – it is both historically and internationally situated and is public and intimate in equal measure. The project not only questions how work and its supposed productivity are socially valued, but also what possibilities and strategies for setting boundaries exist. It is not about the moment of refusing to work, but about the possibility of escaping a compulsion to produce and being able to make a voluntary decision, for example, not to work on weekends: 

I don’t work on weekends.

What a way to make a living (2022)
Site-specific installation

Yours truly, LoL (formerly known as Law of Life) understands the formation of a collective as a strategy in a culture industry oriented towards individualism. At the same time, the collective idea also becomes part of an artistic practice in the context of I DON’T WORK ON WEEKENDS, as the artists decided to develop a collective work for the exhibition. The spatial installation, which spans three rooms, was developed exclusively from existing installation aids and objects from the Kunstverein’s storage or was produced with the project budget for construction services. Thus, within the framework of the installation, fictitious works are imagined whose construction aids can be seen, while the works are missing and not exhibited – what remains are structures that should be present, hold, support, assemble or stabilize these artistic works.

Through this action, a void is marked as the expansive installation also addresses the insufficient financial resources that institutions are often able to provide in the context of cultural projects. Within the site-specific work and by relying exclusively on installation aids developed or provide by the institution this relationship and also that of showing and being shown, is reversed.

In a sound collage, the artists simultaneously discuss the working conditions at the Kunstverein Göttingen. They combine this fragmentary dialogue with noises, music, voice overlays and snippets of thoughts that reveal the oversaturation with and frustration towards the exhibition theme and refer to artists who, for decades, have been dealing with the topics taken up in the project.

Text by Vincent Schier