special request

I hope you have been well. I can surmise from instagram that you moved and are running a beautiful new space, and am very curious to know how that happened and how it is going.

I would love to zoom to hear all the updates!

I am writing now with an update and special request.

As you likely remember, part of The Employee project involved producing a publication of the project. This has been something slowly ongoing since the conclusion of the project last October. It has been slow because I have been trying to figure out how to organize and present all the documentation produced by the project, and also to communicate the general affect of burnout and overwork that the work tries to make visible.

The publication has gathered momentum though. In its current form it will include a printed book of essays commenting on the project and a website archiving the process and context of the work with FCG and art met a co-publishers. 

I will definitely keep you in the loop about when this will come out.

I am writing to you now about the narrative retelling of the project that will take place on the website. I have decided to communicate this part of the work through a complete email archive that traces the work from its first seeds (your invitation) to the current publication (including all the writers, applicants, and even my own funding application). It is a monster archive containing over 1500 individual messages. I do think it is important to communicate the project in this way because it expresses the overlap of work, art, and personal life, and how that has caused burnout, which also has impacted the lives of most of the project contributors, and several people who initially intended to contribute but couldn't continue as a result.

I am writing to you now to ask for your consent to reproduce our email correspondence. I have attached the exact messages below for you to read over. If there is anything that you want redacted, either complete emails, or specific content in specific emails, please let me know. I will remove your email address regardless, to protect your privacy, but if there is anything else you are uncomfortable with people seeing, I would be happy to comply. I am also in contact with Teresa and we are working together on how to deal with our commentary behind the scenes of the interview process that might be sensitive. If you have any thoughts or ideas here, please send them along. 

Overall, however, I do think our communication is quite important to the retelling of the project, however, and would be quite relieved if you would be ok with this being reproduced online. There are in total over 1500 individual emails, so it would be particularly noticeable, but is also important for communicating the work and the context out of which it emerged.

all my warmest wishes, and hope to hear from you soon,

Josh