Elaboración de cuarenta piezas rectangulares para la construcción de un piso, 2008
Video, 5’20’’
In Cuba, by dint of the lack of materials for public works, the employees of a state body devote the eight hours of their daily routine sitting around waiting for their working day to end. Adrian Melis decided to make the most of this downtime by promoting a “working choir” of sorts and thus inject some life into the factory, that is, to generate a new kind of virtual and fictitious movement: each worker imitated the sound of a machine and thus created, jointly with the rest of the workforce, the impression that the factory is up and running. Throughout the whole of the working day—from eight to five—the factory’s specialised workers imitate with guttural sounds the noise of the working machinery.
Courtesy: the artist