Last month I asked some of the studio MFA students to begin clocking in their studio time every day. This is something that I have done in the past. Previously I would have totaled up everyone’s hours and paid them with a currency I invented. I had also made a product that people could buy with this currency, but really, the currency was supposed to be a stand in for the art object. Art object = money and money = art object. I’ve been thinking a lot about money lately and decided to set up a different situation. This time, instead of being paid with a money, the participants are paid with my physical labor. Each person is getting a specific amount of physical labor that relates directly to the amount of time that they worked. I do not know if this is how I want this project to run, but at least for this pay period this is how I have set up the situation.
My problem with this system (and I did not realize this until I had executed it) is that I am still giving the people a certain amount of “something” (in this case physical labor) based on the quantity of time they put in. Should I be addressing issues such as: maybe one of these people are more productive than others and so I should be giving them more physical labor per hour than with somebody else? What if one of them produces work/art that is more valuable, monetarily, because they had it in a gallery and someone bought it...should their "pay rate" go up? Something to think about. Also, what about the fact that everyone is working at their own pace to get done what they need to get done. Should I even be “paying” them per hour or should I be giving them each the same amount of “payment” in return. Lastly, it’s not like these people are working for me, providing services for me, or helping me make money…why should I arbitrarily have them clock in and pay them for it? Well, for now it’s just an exercise in payment, consumerism, exchange, and work. I don’t know exactly where to head with it, but I’m just going to keep doing it until I figure it out more.
We have had only one pay period so far. Joel already had me help him in the removal of his wooden porch from the Autzen Gallery. We placed back in his studio area. Also, I helped Bethany by making printouts of a number of journal articles for her. More to come…
If there are suggestions for documentation, please let me know. The picture you see above is from the first time I implemented this project at Oregon State University. I have no pictures yet from this new version of the project.
11/02/2007
Reworking the Time Clock
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5 comments:
this is a pretty interesting concept to think about. you are so cool eric.keep it up.
I just keep thinking of yves Klien throwing gold leaf into the river. In your case though, i don't see the balance between you and your employees (here I mean you seem to be putting in most of the effort by paying in labor). In my mind what was so good about your old currency was that it was worth as much as your employees work.
If you set yourself up as a sort of social batman to repay in equal the underpaid and overworked, ... I feel you have drastically changed your intent from what it was. Before you were a kind of pseudo-boss who recognized labor, now you more of a do gooder.
dan,
thanks for the observation. I've been struggling with these ideas. For this new phase there isn't really anything that is making me their boss and it's really bugging me. One of the problems is that I'm not in the studio with them, I'm out doing my own thing. I decided just to do it as an experiment in value. One of the problems I NOW have with the old version of this project is the money itself. I've decided that I don't like how money puts a price tag on our work...that we become "worth" a certain amount of money per hour. I wanted to avoid that, at least for the time being, until I can address it in a way that I'm happy with.
As far as the do-gooder thing. Well, you know that's not at all what I'm into, but I can't deny that there are elements of it in this piece, as there were in the "making your own money" project. But, I think what is more important than seeing it as a do-gooder thing is to see it as an experiment in value. How do we value money? And how can we change that? That's what I would like to look into. Are there alternate forms for payment, business, transaction...Right now, I'm just messing around with that stuff. And soon enough I will be launching a new project that lends itself more to the idea of the manager with lots of projects going on. I've realized that the Studio Operations Manager was sort of a platform project in which all my other projects could be funneled through that. That is one element that I don't want to lose, but I'm also not quite ready to start something similar up again...but I'm almost there. More to come...
Eric, maybe instead of paying them with your labor for their needs you could pay them by putting that time instead into your own projects, you could grant them a percentage of collaborative credit based on the time they "earn". I don't know that this really addresses your issues, but it seems an interesting way to point at the comparative value of object making vs action making.
great idea!
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