Home Work

Working and living do not merely exist side by side, as work itself has always been inscribed into living: many aspects of it – cooking, cleaning, doing laundry – are in fact unpaid labour. In addition to that the work-life-balance of many residents is askew for which the neoliberal dictum of self-fulfilment is to blame. For the exhibition ‘Home Work’ SOX has invited nine artists. For their contribution they were provided with MDF room boxes designed by Peter Behrbohm to use as display for their works. In the 1960es the architect and visionary Buckminster Fuller dreamt of using ‘mechanized office buildings’ as living spaces since they would be standing empty in the future ‘without wageworkers’. His visions have not yet become reality and artists still must continue learning how to work under restrictions. In the exhibition ‘Home Work’ artists are not only trying to interpret limitations as an opportunity without ever running danger of falling into a calculated optimism that approves of the social conditions. What will happen when artists continue doing their homework but will never be able to hand them in? When will this way of living caught between building stockpiles on the one hand and home-related accidents on the other collapse, when one of the vanishingly small advantages of downsizing is having to check less often whether there is something burning inside the ashtray and the light is switched off?