But Čule’s work goes well beyond the questioning of work culture alone to embrace several other very current issues, including gender roles, women’s representation in mainstream culture, social interaction online and the influence of internet on identity politics. The breadth of her works has also included a rethinking of established narratives, with her work The Horizon reconstructing a classic cinematic trope by having a model hanging from the edge of the Trump building — signifying a state of profound financial and personal crisis.
H A P P EN I N G spoke to the artist ahead of the opening of LISTE.
Could you tell us about the work you are presenting at LISTE?
The video Facing The Same Direction was shot whilst queuing outside an Apple Store in NYC in the days leading up to the launch their latest product, and also in an apartment in Chinatown that was put up for rent online. The film revolves around the “Doing What You Love” (DWYL) culture and its oppressiveness. I was interested in exploring the idea of participation, in relation to the process of democratization of information and the way this motto is used to distribute work.
The video’s main character, Alex, is a woman who starts a crowdfunding campaign. Asking for "the greatest number of people to participate by making the lowest possible contribution,” the money would be used to “pursue independent interest in projects, rather than working for a wage in the typical sense.”
Maja Čule, Facing The Same Direction, still from HD video, 2014
Over the years, your practice has touched on several themes — from gender stereotypes to contemporary work culture, as well as narratives surrounding internet culture. How do they come together to form the body of your practice?
In my videos, I explore social relations through constructing scenarios that engage with both performance and modes of image production. It was when I began working with video — using performance and representational images — that I began to notice and decipher constructed gendered fantasies.
For example, a famous company producing pens and pencils created a special edition pen marketed to women — it was called “for her.” It featured a thinner pen profile, sold in pink packaging. I collected user comments from various web stores selling the product and put them together in a book called “Thinner Barrel“. Comments ranged from snarky reactions to .pdf files with excerpts from dissertations on gender performativity. We tend to imagine a difference, between you and me, when we consume things, but this difference is not really there. Exceptions are visions of impossible realities.
What projects are you currently working on, and what is the relationship between offline and online existence of your work?
My work completely relies on actions I take part in offline. However, at the moment I’m making drawings and preparing video work that involves a group of people I met online. We will be working together in exploring how the experiences of cultural production distributed online are being reenacted in the nature.
The evolution of the internet and social media over the last 10 years has redefined the place of technology in our lives. Do you think that the US and specifically NYC are places where you are more readily confronted by this?
Facing The Same Direction explores some of those ideas, with a focus on the relationship between problems such as exhaustion in the workplace and the idea of finding love and pleasure in work. The video is looking into the origin of the DWYL ideology and into the side effects of experiencing time through standards of productivity. If the human body depends on blank states to process experiences, rest, and prepare to be able to participate in new ones, that means that being very busy turns people into desensitized and close-minded bodies. ‘Work less’.
My last four video works were shot in public spaces. I was interested in exploring the issues one might face when attempting to record in public spaces. Recently I visited a country where certain institutions and government organizations charged an extra fee to take photos. Elsewhere, photographing requires complicated permits, whilst in certain spaces there is no “public space” as we define it, with agencies enforcing their rules on image reproduction.
Maja Čule, Facing The Same Direction, still from HD video, 2014.
