Cheap Finnish Labour

Albert Braun, Jörgen Erkius, Ulrika Ferm, Maria Nordbäck and Peter Rosvik
at XX1 Gallery in Warsaw 1.2–15.2.2007

In every culture there are similarities. Is it possible to melt in, to become a temporary part of the different and the unfamiliar? Or is the only possibility to orientate in an unfamiliar environment to do what we would usually do? Or is it possible to to make alternative choices out of this position, to make a difference? What actually happens when you try to melt in, to be part of the other, the unfamiliar? Is it not then that you can alter perspectives and in this way notice and make visible that which is everyday and extraordinary existing right in the core but not seen? Or is it the other way around, we end up at the margins, or even worse in a void between spaces that is neither familiar nor unfamiliar, or even both? Can one create a turning point in this void and become a hero in someone's world?

The collaborative work was developed on site in the gallery during one week.
Cheap Finnish Labour invited Jörgen Erkius to work on site. Also local practitioners were invited to participate in dealing with the absolute close environments of the XX1 gallery and through the finnish artists alienated precence explore alienation and belonging; taking and giving and concepts like in-sourcing and out-sourcing.

During the week the group painted the ceiling in the gallery, scrubbed the floor and invited the nearby illegal street sellers to legally sell their stuff in the gallery.

A sliding door was turned in to a blackboard with a text inviting the nearby illegal street sellers to legally and payed sell their stuff in the gallery space. In the end the exhibition consists of a video, the documentation of the streetsellers, a very clean floor, a freshly painted ceiling and two sets of drums that could be used by the audience for a loud communication. During the opening two professional drummers were providing rhythms and vibrations.