RESPECT AND RECOGNITION FOR DOMESTIC WORK
Campaign video, 2011
Ask! in collaboration with Andreas Siekmann
Video edited by Reinilde Jonkhout
Ask! is a group of cultural workers making alliances with (migrant) domestic workers in the Netherlands to research and address the conditions and demands of domestic work today. Ask! stands for Actie Schone Kunsten, a punning name using the traditional Dutch term for ‘fine arts’, which can also be read as ‘clean arts’.
The group formed after the GDR Town Meetings on the status of domestic labour in the Netherlands. By organising public actions and experimenting with forms of visual representation and rhetorical strategies, Ask! challenges the known gap between ‘real politics’ and the political, questioning the dominant economic systems that devalue our work and our rights for decent work and living.
Presented here is a reverse graffiti campaign in “dirty” areas of Utrecht, using isotypes depicting an ‘army’ of domestic workers created by Berlin artist Andreas Siekmann. It was exhibited alongside flyers and T-shirts of their five-point thesis, WHY WE WORK TOGETHER at Casco’s ‘The Grand Domestic Revolution-User’s Manual’ project exhibition in Utrecht.
More information is available at http://www.cascoprojects.org/gdr/User/Exhibition-Works-WhyWeWorkTogether
