Day Job: American Peril, 2007
With Mark Shaw
Chashama West 37th Street Storefront, New York
8 hours/day, 5 days/week for 10 days
I work in an imitation youth-oriented clothing store in eight-hour “day shifts” of live and video performances. I do not take breaks. I alternate between performing mundane retail-oriented tasks such as folding clothes and a more interpretive physical approach, creating sculptures around my body with clothes hangers or hanging upside down on a garment rack.
The space is full of images of me appropriated from retail marketing campaigns and cheeky signage, yet it offers personal reflection as its only commodity. The sign on the locked door reads “Don’t come in, we’re open” and in fact nothing is for sale. I make eye contact with as many passers by as possible. A Russian pop music radio station plays loudly both inside and outside the store.
Photos by Mark Shaw