Punchcard Economy - 8 Hours Labour is a machine knitting performance taking place over 8 hours (plus a lunch break) that recenters the value of the work on the labour of the artist rather than the object. To this end, the work is presented with a contract that details the context of the performance and the associated materials and costs. The contract also serves to make explicit that the artists time and labour has an agreed value, whereas the resulting knitted object has no value.
Here is the description from Kunsthaus Graz's presentation of the work, which I really like:
For a day's work, Sam Meech knits a banner at Kunsthaus Graz. The exhibition doesn't primarily feature the object but rather Meech's working time, transparently displaying all costs, including a fair artist fee according to Fair Pay guidelines. The punchcards used by Meech for the machine-knitted banner symbolize the digital evolution and control of labor and time systems.
I would perhaps disagree with the reference of the knitted textile as a 'banner', though that's perhaps a legacy of the origins of the project. The final textile is not really a 'thing', it is simply a proof of work, a receipt.
I often refere to this piece as a 'performance', but it's not really - it's me just doing work. I'm not really a performer, and the action itself has little intention or arc other than simply trying to knit. Essentially the project is trying to boil it all down to a simple formula: pay me for my time and labour as an artist based on an agreed fair framework. Which sounds simple, until you try and make it happen.
Whilst the details of the presentation of the work are defined by the agreed contract, the piece implicity asks us to consider what is missing, the hidden work. The artist's labour and time involved in setting up the work - emails, travel, promotional material and artist bios, grant applications - often utterly outweighs the core 'performance'. To that extent I attempt to track all time and costs, and make them transparent to audiences and curators. This then holds the potential to open up a secondary conversation (nor negotionation) about how this work might be reimbursed.
