Welcome to The Employee email archive.
The Employee (2020-2021) was a year-long artwork by Joshua Schwebel that took place at Forest City Gallery (FCG) in London, Ontario. One of Canada's first artist-run centres, FCG has been publicly funded for almost 50 years, yet is staffed by a single, part-time employee whose disproportionate workload is not uncommon in the sector. To realize The Employee, Schwebel obtained a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to hire a performer, âthe employee,â performed by artist Camille-ZoĂŠ Valcourt-Synnott, who he delegated to write funding applications on behalf of FCG. With this protocol, Schwebel intended to reinforce FCGâs capacity, while the gallery provided a framework through which administrative activities would be signified as art. Ultimately, none of the employeeâs grant applications were successful.
This archive is published in parallel with a printed publication of the same name, edited by Schwebel and Lauren Wetmore with contributions by the editors, Mariane Bourcheix-Laporte, Teresa Carlesimo, Bopha Chhay, Dana Kopel, Michelle Lacombe, Denise Ryner, Camille-ZoeĚ Valcourt-Synnott, and Marina Vishmidt. The Employee is co-published by Art Metropole and FCG. The artist gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, without which this project would not have occurred.
The archive constitutes a trace of the artwork and the publication, documenting the continuous administrative labour of communication involved in cultural work. It contains every email sent and received in connection to the project and throughout its duration. Redactions were made to respect peoplesâ privacy, or to indicate correspondence with those who declined permission to include their emails in the archive.
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