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Taking on the role of the protagonist of 140 Arbeitstage, the bureaucratical agreement between the artist and the employer of his money job sits right in the center of a stage-like frame. The framed document is a manifestation of the artist's legally binding decision to change his job title from 'Working Student as a Bartender' to 'Artistic Performance with Bartending Duties'. Without changing the competency framework, the artist's employer recognises the duties performed by the artist as a performance-based exploration as part of his broader artistic production. By doing so, the time-consuming task of earning money through labour legally considered outside of the artist's artistic practice receives legal validation as part of artistic labour.
The preamble to the document states that this amendment to the contract comes into effect when the employee’s student status ends. This acknowledges the significance of an art student’s graduation as a pivotal moment of change in not only status, but also labour relations and economic subjectivity.
The work extends Tornike Gognadze's ongoing interest in the concept of the stage and the backstage, the front and the back into the reality of maintaining an art career. It reveals the challenges of funding artistic practice and redefines what constitutes artistic labour. It merges the front and the back of being an artist into one holistic action. The performative act inherent to 140 Arbeitstage and its conceptual dimension engages with the precariousness of establishing and sustaining an artistic practice, exposing a volatile economic system. Conversely, the sculptural framing of the work embodies the material scope of Gognadze's artistic production, fusing idea, action and object into one piece.
Text: Mattis Thomsen