Jobz

(I wrote a couple of pieces months ago and forgot to post them, here's one from July)

I didn't get hired at any of the 19 art galleries I applied to when I got out of school and after two months of searching I broke down and applied for a restaurant job. I was hired as the head pastry chef at a raw vegan restaurant. At the same time I was picked up by the contemporary art museum Site Santa Fe. Though both jobs were nice enough for minimum wage, I was working seven days of double shifts and it totally sucked.

My boss at the vegan restaurant is a French conspiracy theorist who greets me every day with: "How the fuck are you?" We make fun of the customers. My boss plays simpering "meditative" flute music when they’re around - just what you'd expect from a gluten, soy, sugar and yeast free, vegan, raw and living food restaurant. When the customers leave my boss comments on how much he hates that music and I say: “Excuse me, does that flute have single-source origin? Is it organic? I prefer to listen to fair-trade bamboo flute.”

The wall color choice is an appetizing orange that took my boss a month to chose. There are lots of plants and after I complimented them he suggested that I take ayahuaska. He asks about nightlife in Santa Fe and tells me that for my next shift he’ll bring some mushrooms or a joint to share out by the dumpsters. 

Drinking the fresh coconut water inhabiting buckets in the fridge gives me a persistent buzz and taking a shot of e3 live (some sort of green sludge) is what I expect cocaine is like except that it's good for you. On top of that, the food is gourmet and delicious and I'm learning to make all of it. Ironically I can't afford to buy many of the ingredients that I'm paid to assemble daily.

After a few weeks of covering shifts left and right because my boss fired everyone but me, I finally said I had to cut my hours in half to be sane. A few weeks later (after payroll) my boss realized he couldn’t afford any employees and laid me off. Now I have more time for adventures with my poor imported house-wife.

A big part of my day takes place within an internal art-world as I stand around the job that stuck at the museum, waiting to answer the questions of visitors. I've planned out large-scale installations that I'd like to have created within the next ten years, designed an androgynous fashion line, and thought about how to orchestrate my artist identity. I've also reflected about the art that surrounds me, one or two of the pieces bring an inescapable weight when you're with them, a couple of them piss me off, and some of them are nice to gaze at. When it gets really slow and I'm out-thunk I either read the book I keep in my back-pocket or stand there and space out.

The best part of working at Site's current exhibition is manning the Mark Dion piece: "Waiting for the Extraordinary." This piece is a series of two rooms, the first is a waiting room with corporate carpet, downtrodden furniture, magazines without dates and a fake plants. I sit at a heavy fiberboard and metal desk, keeping imaginary people on hold on a fifties’ phone, loudly eating apples, taking sips from my flask, and coldly instructing participants to take a number. After manipulating the numbers to go backwards, or to get stuck in a time loop, I'll call the correct number, which means the participant can enter the next room, who's door reads: "Office of the Didactor of Enoeica Catholepistemiad of Michigania." You'll have to come by and see what's in the second room.

I also enjoy lying to guests and saying the emergency exits and air conditioning units are conceptual art pieces. I’ve replicated the style of wall-text from the rest of the show and made descriptions for these things.