Manual Labor (2009)
video

Manual Labor
video excerpt below >

My work tends to be documentary in nature. I am an observer and an archiver.  In general, the things I create seem to involve a kind of obsessive tendency either to collect, document, or explore. This piece, “Manual Labor”, can be seen as an example of a compulsive act, a kind of process art, that begun as a simple (but physically intensive) “gesture of labor”, and then it became something else entirely.

I had been warned by the pallet-driver operator. As he unloaded two full pallets of sod from his tractor, he looked at me sideways, through slanted eyes, as if I was crazy. I figured this was just because I was going to install grass inside a gallery, and not because I was going to do it all myself. He offered to come back after his shift and help me. I just smiled and thanked him.