#516 Sabotage - Berger

In this work, I made two drawings simultaneously in wet filler while the panels were placed on the floor: one with my feet wearing plastic clogs (sabot in French) and the other with a long stick. The finished work connects the stick drawing with wool yarn in a loose weaving pattern attached to the sides of the panels. Three dried roses hang from the top edge.

This work was done during a residency at Fossekleiva Culture Centre, located in old factory buildings in the village of Berger, which once had a significant textile industry.

This work expresses labour as a force of nature, entrapped and harnessed by the capitalist structure. It also hints at the gradual betrayal of the workers' movement by the trade unions and the labour parties.

While doing this work, I've been thinking about the subject's relationship to work – to its function in the economic structure as labour. The usual view is that the struggle for power takes place along a dividing line, with the workers on one side and the employer on the other. However, the employer's function is more integrated into his subject than is the case with the worker. There is a split, or alienation, in the worker between his function in the workplace and his experience as a subject. The worker stands at the intersection of the power struggle, with the employer on one side and his position as a subject on the other. The struggle for economic power in society thus takes place within the subject as worker, not between worker and employer.

I wanted to explore the duality of the worker's loyalty and function. On one hand, there is a loyalty to the workplace's needs, which is often at odds with the worker's personal needs. This conflict underscores the interdependence and incompatibility of these two aspects. On the other hand, the worker's function, which the employer can exploit, also holds a liberating force concerning other workers. This duality suggests that only through unity can the inherent alienation within each worker be overcome.

The shoes worn to produce this work are a modern variant of clogs made in plastic. In French, clogs are called "sabot," which is the basis for the word sabotage. The soft ambience of the bourgeoise was shattered when the working class entered a room with their wooden shoes. Another reason is perhaps that the workers allegedly threw their clogs into the automatic looms when they were introduced in France to protest their making them redundant.

In another way, you may also call this work a sabotage (in the sense of a collage or frottage) as clogs make it.

Clogs are the shoes of the common people and the working class. Historically, they were made of wood for use in factories and the fields, but today, workers use plastic. They are also popular as leisurewear for the mainstream or the so-called masses.

The series features works with an appendix placed on top of the work or close to it. This object is exterior to the image plane, the illusionary "window" in the picture, but is still an intrinsic part of the whole. It connects or makes visible the two dimensions of an artwork - its inner logic and its relation to its surrounding.
The title references the famous Coca-Cola campaign and Immanuel Kant's notion of the thing in itself. It means that subjects can only experience the phenomena as they present themselves through perception. It is always fundamentally different from what the things are outside language boundaries - in themselves.

Res Ipsa is a compilation of works made by an act shaping the filler once it is prepared inside the frame. The works thus function as a recording device and give a statement of the event taking place while the filler was still wet.

Res Ipsa is Latin for "the thing itself" and is part of the juridical term "Res ipsa loquitur" (the thing speaks for itself), used when an injury or accident in itself clearly shows who is responsible, such as an instrument left inside a body after surgery.