Did we put an office in the gallery, or a gallery in the office? Come see for yourself. Through events, interactive departments, and participatory archives, we repurpose the vocabulary and technology of the office and contemporary art in order to facilitate encounters with the human side of work, the absurd side of labor, and the creative side of knowledge.
Office Work is a social practice project by Carrie Sinclair Katz, Jon Gourley, and The Big Conversation Space (Niki Korth and Clemence de Montgolfier) that recognizes the so-called Kulturkampf ongoing in the San Francisco Bay Area and aims to use the jargon of 'work spaces' to forge a common understanding.
Plants provided by San Francisco Plant Co.
April 4-25, 2015
StoreFrontLab
337 Shotwell Street
San Francisco, California 94110
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| Sunday 5 April, 1 - 5 pm | Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon: Art & Bureaucracy |
| Become familiarized with Wikipedia's guidelines and learn how to edit Wikipedia to help improve articles about art, offices, art and labor organizations, bureaucracy, systems, public art, workplace behavior, and more. Discuss how these topics are covered on the encyclopedia, and learn how you can help improve them by providing neutral, high quality edits. Share your knowledge. | |
| Friday 10 April 2015, 5:30 - 9 pm | Mid-Point Open House/Office Party (Opening Reception) |
| Come to the office to engage with our creative departments, review our files, share your stories, find what you’ve lost, land your dream job, or just enjoy a drink and have fun with our photo copier. | |
| Friday 17 April, 6:30 - 8:30 pm | Meeting about Nothing |
| After Samuel Beckett wrote 'Nothing is more real than nothing,' (Malone Dies 1959), the (f)utility of modern office meetings has undergone a dramatic shift. Or has it? In efforts to analyze the current state of Nothing, an emergency meeting has been called, which includes presentations by Daniel Yovino, Niki Korth, and other experts on Nothing. Your attendance at this meeting is neither required nor optional. | |
| Wed 22 April 6-10 pm | Office Birthday Party! |
| The offices of Gourley and Korth are both celebrating their birthdays, and you’re invited to the office party! Come enjoy the sheet cake and mingling around the water cooler. | |
Every workplace has a legend, and no story is too mundane. JOBS is an interactive archive and production platform that is collecting and growing narratives involving bureaucracy, offices, studios, libraries, and other places of work for archival purposes and eventual publication in the peer-reviewed Journal of Bureaucratic Stories. Following written or verbal donation in the gallery space, narratives are then filed and made available for review or annotation by visitors.
Department of Lost and Found (DLF) was established to facilitate the return of lost items through the creation of a centralized space dedicated to their finding. At DLF, visitors are invited to both create and post their own lost/found posters, and peruse those that have been posted, both digitally and around San Francisco.
The Archive of Marks accrues its contents through meetings with the Archivist (Katz) to explore the marks incurred thus far in ones' lifetime. These will be collaboratively indexed, cross-referenced, catalogued, and preserved within the Archive. Tactics will be employed to secure or displace memory. Confidentiality, and the complexities therein, will be considered.