Subversive Office Supplies
With funding from Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity (Banff New Media Institute), I created Subversive Office Supplies, a project exploring the idea that office workers perform the role of “double agents”, concealing their private lives in the face of business politics. Sterile office environs are frequently host to sly and subversive hacks of office supplies in undercover expressions of creativity or rebellion. It’s important to note that this type of subversive manipulation of office supplies differs from office-sanctioned “play”, such as ping pong tables or “corporate outings”, in that it is clandestine and technically illegal (though almost never punished).
Subversive Office Supplies was a series of workshops encouraging workers to play with and manipulate their own office supplies. The participants were given a subversive mission: “manipulate an office supply so that it prevents you from doing your work” (the subtext being, if you can’t do your work, you can just blame your office supplies). The mission was presented to them while in context of an intimate “secret club”: the participants absconded together to a remote area of the building with a bottle of wine. The resulting creations were rich and humorous. Putting the manipulation of office supplies into the context of productivity and secrecy made it easy to see them as metaphors. In this context we assign a narrative to the resulting sculpture and imagine the personal struggle behind their invention.
The project was presented in an artist talk at Banff Interactive Screens: Beautiful Lives conference and documented in a paper and website.
One participant eliminated half a weeks worth of work by simply removing those days from her calendar.
One participant eliminated her ability to concentrate by manipulating her stamp to remind herself of distracting thoughts (changing “purchasing department” to “chasing men”)
One participant eliminated her need to word things better by rendering her pen unusable.
One participant eliminated his need to keep things under wraps by putting holes in his “confidential” folder.
Fiona Carswell. Subversive Office Supplies, 2010. In-person art-making workshops using office supplies.