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"Clocking in for Unpaid Labor" Public Participation Art Project - make art on a time card

Type: Exhibition Opportunities [View all]
Posted by: Independent Artist
Deadline: Sat, December 31st, 2022

How to Participate
Clocking in for Unpaid Labor is a new public participation art project where people are invited to collage, sew, quilt, paint, whatever, a time card in order to express something about the unpaid labor that they do.

Whether that work is emotional labor, housework, childcare, unpaid aspects of freelance work, those new parking meter machines*, whatever unpaid labor you do, make a timecard about it.

Be sure to put your name and email address/some contact information, and social media handle (mostly IG) on the back of the time card. This project is open to all genders and all forms of unpaid labor.

There are no restrictions on type of media. Ideally, art will not extend more than two inches beyond the time card itself, and some portion of the time card should remain visible.

Get a free time card by mailing a business sized self addressed envelope to:

Elaine Luther
PO Box 5292
River Forest, IL. 60305

Free card, just pay postage.

What will be done with the cards? I’ll share them in blog posts, on social media, and attempt to get shows of them in the future in public spaces such as libraries and art galleries.

Make art on your time card and mail it back, that’s it! Rolling deadline, but artists need a deadline, so let’s say mail back your card within 30 days.

Time cards are copyrighted, that’s why I can’t just scan it and make it a pdf for you to download it. (I wonder if it would fall under fair use if someone shrank a time card and made a miniature version for a show in a micro gallery?)

*How are those Pay to Park machines different from an old fashioned parking meter and how is that shadow work? In the past, you’d get out of your car and put some quarters in the meter that was right there and move on with your day. Now, you have to walk some distance (discriminatory against anyone with a mobility issue, pregnant women, people with small children) and stand in line in order to use an annoying, badly designed machine. It takes longer.

It’s shadow work because you’re doing work that someone else used to get paid for. Shadow work is a term coined in 1981 and later was the title of an essay and then a book by Craig Lambert. The Subtitle is “the unpaid, unseen jobs that fill your days.”