The Broom of the System is a piece that involves sweeping pennies in public. I’m not sure I can really get behind the word ‘performance’ in this context – I come from a musical background, & performance means something quite different to me – but it’s an action to kick start conversations about money & the nature of work, about capital & value.
Most of us spend vast amounts of energy at work, on our careers, without much chance to step back and examine it. As someone who has been disabled and forced to live on benefits, unpacking my own attitudes towards work & money & self-worth has been a strange adventure. Students sweeping 9000 pennies to the Dept of Education performs differently from an unemployed person sweeping £1 to the Jobcentre, or sweeping pennies past Selfridge’s window at Christmas.
So in terms of capital, what have we earned vs what have we stolen? Is our worth manifest in our stuff? Is it made legit via numbers on a screen? What is the value of our actions? Does work + stuff = meaning?