Now, Ivorypress Publishing House is preparing the launch of a new volume of the LiberArs series, devoted to small-format artists’ books. The publication is a new work by the artist Santiago Sierra, titled El trabajo es la Dictadura (Work is Dictatorship), and will be the result of a performance held in Ivorypress Space, Madrid, throughout nine working days. Thirty people will fill out, by hand, the 1000 blank copies of the book that will be published, repeatedly writing the sentence ‘Work is Dictatorship’, for the minimum wage recommended by the National Employment Service.
The workers will be unemployed people, hired through a public employment offer of the National Employment Service. They will use a standard pen to fill out the blank books, which will be printed only with straight blue horizontal lines such as the ones in school notebooks. The work involves a profound reflection, finger-pointing the current social situation in Spain regarding employment conditions. The performance, which will be held at Ivorypress Space, will be open to the public from 22 to 30 January from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and from 4:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.
The resulting artist’s book El trabajo es la Dictadura will be commercialised and sold for €24 each. The final price equals the whole production cost of the book, with no benefits. This way, the new volume of Ivorypress’s LiberArs series aligns with the spirit that pervades the performance.
This action is coherent with the whole artistic production of Santiago Sierra, who in the last decade has carried out a great number of politically critical performances where participants are, in some way, victims of the very situation that is denounced. Thus in 2012 he made war veterans from different conflicts— Afghanistan, Colombia, Vietnam, Iraq, Northern Ireland—stand for hours facing the wall as part of several performances held in Nuremberg, Germany; Adelaide, Australia; Manchester, UK; and Bogota, Colombia, among other cities. In the same vein, in 2010 Sierra hired a group of workers who were to stay inside closed boxes in the Castello del Roccolo, in Busca, Italy. That year he also completely buried ten workers in the sand beach of Calambrone, Italy.
In parallel with the performance carried out at Ivorypress Space, the public will also be able to visit Santiago Sierra and Jorge Galindo’s exhibition Los Encargados (The Ones in Charge) at Helga de Alvear gallery.
Public performance: 22-30 January from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and from 4:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Venue: Ivorypress C/ Comandante Zorita 48 (Madrid)
