Occupational Enterprises
performance
01:00:00
2017

Occupational Enterprises is a performance during which I rearranged 200 white bricks into a series of structures for an hour at Space Camp Gallery in Baltimore, MD. Each construction was toppled before building another. The sound of the moving, stacked, and collapsed bricks was transmitted by a pressure-sensitive microphone attached to the floor that was subsequently looped and distorted.

This piece is inspired by several texts as well as personal history including Hito Steyerl’s essay: “Is a Museum a Factory?” and Pietro DiDonato’s novel Christ in Concrete. Steyerl’s work observes that many places where employees worked on factory lines have recently been transformed into sites of artistic labor. DiDonato’s book tells the story of an Italian immigrant bricklayer who is killed on the job due to unsafe conditions and whose eldest son is forced to leave school to support his family. As my ancestors were Italian-American industrial workers, the performance ultimately reckons with questions about how artists relate to our working-class forbears and contemporaries.