Thursday 11 July 2013

Talks about Cleaning Conditions in the UK and relation with Migration and under valued jobs. (participation of Migrant Supporting Migrants and Latin Support Group)

Cleaning Conditions

Caution, Cleaning in Progress sign
Friday 12 July from 12 to 1pm and
Saturday 13 July 2013
4.00pm - 5.00pm
FREE
A performance by Suzanne Lacy for the Do It Exhibition. Join us for conversations with invited speakers around current issues connected to Manchester including low page, minimum and Living Wage debates, women's relationships to work, migrant workers and sweeping.
Sweeping the dust from the floor of a room,
spreading the dust in another room
so it won’t be noticed.
Continuing daily
                                           Allan Kaprow, 1995
Suzanne Lacy is responding to this instruction by the artist Allan Kaprow (1927-2006) Kaprow's work explored how art and life could converge through performance pieces, using everyday objects and familiar actions. 
The current performance -  Cleaning Conditions -  takes cleaners and the act sweeping as it’s starting point. Lacy is interpreting Kaprow’s instruction through the lenses of gender and activism, provocatively framing the instruction in terms of the social and political climate in Manchester. Conversations on immigration, class and the struggle for global equity will be framed within a context of current issues in women’s role in the care and service industries and the corporatisation of such labour.
 This is part of Do it an exhibition of artist’s instructions.
During Manchester International Festival Suzanne plans three actions.
Sweeping
For eight days nine rooms in the gallery will be swept by people who are not the cleaners of the gallery. 
Public conversations
Simultaneously the public is invited to participate in conversations led by a cross section of workers, including local activists and scholars, convened in front of the Ford Maddox Brown painting “Work” (1852-1863) in the Pre-Raphaelite gallery.
Private conversations
Throughout the festival staff members from Manchester Art Gallery will gather in cross-sector meetings to privately consider their complex personal relationships to the global gendering of care and service.
Performance Dates


Fri 12 July   12 -1pm
Sat 13 July  4 - 5pm
Sun 14 July    3 -4pm