Hire Me Out (1999-2000)
ANYWHERE - Valencia, Los Angeles
ARTISTS: Anne Preston, Beate Schlingelhoff, Cara Baldwin, Cary Kim, Nicole Antebi, Vaginal Davis, Ismael De Ande, Christina Ulke, Cyril Khun, Ron Athey, Karen Lofgren, Dwayne Moser, Elizabeth Hesik, and Gloria Marti.
Hire Me Out took place throughout Los Angeles and on campus at the California Institute of the Arts from 1999 till the end of 2000. The project sought to expand my ideas on authorship and the role of the Artist by using a collaborative model which at the time also provided me with a supplemented income. The paid work carried out in the project helped me to support myself financially through my final year at college.
above: Hire Me Out, 1999-2000. Promotional Video. CALARTS. Los Angeles.
There was considerable discussion in critique sessions about the exploitative and alienating labour conditions implied by my decision to offer my services at the minimum wage rate of $5.25 per hour. Much of this debate focused on how this rate referenced forms of illegal work, underground economies, and the pay structures of artist assistants in Los Angeles. Questions were also raised about whether my intentions toward others were genuinely altruistic, and whether the work risked fetishising labour in a way that ultimately undermined its critical potential.
These discussions about exploitation also addressed my position within the exchange, with some arguing that I functioned as the primary exploiter. From this perspective, I was being paid to construct my own work from the labour of others, effectively transforming their work into the material of my practice. Others suggested that by documenting my actions on camera, I turned real instances of alienated labour into a performance, thereby making them appear less real. From my perspective, however, these critiques overlooked the fact that both parties willingly agreed to the rate of pay. The terms of the exchange often shifted according to the financial situation of the person hiring me and the specific tasks expected of me. Importantly, once I entered into the agreement, I did not attempt to alter or renegotiate its boundaries.
above: Hire Me Out – Vaginal Davis (Tighty Whities), 2000. Video Still.
I do not believe that performance art transforms something real into fiction simply because it is framed aesthetically. If anything, such framing intensifies its reality. In my experience, it is the jobs I have held outside of aesthetic practice that feel fictional. They function as a kind of necessary fabrication—time that must be endured in order to reach the more authentic time of making art.
above: Hire Me Out – Solo Exhibition, Gallery 1, Calarts 2000. Courtesy of the Artist.
Not everyone who hired me—artists included—understood the arrangement as a form of collaboration. In many cases the work was framed simply as labour: design tasks, or more remedial activities such as cleaning, driving, or cutting wood. In other words, it was often treated as inexpensive labour rather than artistic exchange.
One of the central questions I posed to both myself and the viewer was: what is the author’s job, and where is authorship located? By discursively adopting multiple roles and submitting myself to the demands of others, I sought to demonstrate that the documentation produced through these encounters—once assembled and reframed—could still constitute my own artistic work.
Although the project raised numerous issues and tensions that were not always fully articulated at the time, it later became an important framework to return to. In particular, it prompted deeper reflection on the responsibilities artists hold toward others, and the moral and ethical dimensions that emerge when artistic production intersects with labour and human relations.
The archive still exists, with a reduced number of about fifty VHS tapes which are still in my possession. These have now been digitized.
