YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT

Installation with videos

Part of the Stille Post - die Antwort group art exhibition
Vienna Art Week 2023

Organised by Julia Dorninger, Max Mustermann and Selena Saranova
November 10-17th, 2023

And

We Can't Afford (not) to be Artists group art exhibition
February 29 - March 2, 2024

Materials: Two videos on monitors, desk, office chair, filing cabinets, flip chart paper, cutting board, wafer paper, markers
2023

In the pursuit of productivity, we are bombarded with messages urging us to optimize our time, maximize our output, and measure our worth by our economic contributions. In “YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT”, Ziegi Boss explores the implications of evaluating human life through the narrow lens of productive output and efficiency. The installation forms a deconstructed office, with various office equipment, a desk and chair, and two monitor screens each playing contrasting videos. In one video Ziegi Boss presents information on topics around productivity, where every word, written or spoken, is quoted directly from ChatGPT. As ChatGPT sources its information from text published to the internet, it begs the question: does ChatGPT serve as a more “honest” reflection of society’s distilled average opinions, which perhaps normally wouldn’t be expressed so directly? The viewer is left to decide whether it results in an accurate or distorted reflection of implicit cultural attitudes.

While one of the videos embodies the societal stigma and pressure around productivity, the other presents a role switch - Boss goes from the enforcer of productivity culture to the one living under it, confessing and internalising traits considered “unproductive”. In this way, Boss seeks to highlight the impact of a person’s value being reduced to an assessment of their productivity, and the effects on one’s sense of identity and worth when one internalises these messages. Viewers are invited to interact with this installation, as instructions are provided on a flip chart to sit at the desk and publicly write down and show their “unproductive traits”, and finally eat the (edible) paper.