Performance:
Waltraud P. Indrist, Rina Treml
Video: 12′ 09′′
Paliano/Italy, July 2024

Architecture: Gym, Massimiliano Fuksas, Paliano, 1979

Part of the artist-in-residence programme at Domus Artium, Paliano/Italy, granted by the Culture Department of Land Tirol/Austria.

Two female labourers are meticulously unlayering the remnants of an unfinished ruin.
– Unfinished since 1979. Conceptually revised since 2014. A gym, once designed by
architect Massimiliano Fuksas for the medieval town Paliano. –

In ever-same trotting movements, regimented robot-like actions, the labourers are removing left-behinds, as-found items such as buckets, bricks, building rubble from one side of the site to the other, only to carry them back to the other side again. Their operations are carried out in calm slowness, with the attentive sense of an everyday-like routine.

Seemingly unimpressed by the actions of the other labourer in the same found time-spatial continuum, both carry out their own labour.
Removing objects from one side of the site to the other one, only to carry them back to the other side again. To the point where their labour is starting to cancel itself out.
Whether their actions produce anything, is of no interest; only the action, whose purpose is to keep the cycle alive, is the assurance of permanent reproduction, of permanent achievement. Fuksas’ design of the unaligned (façade of the) gym in the background of the site was criticizing the failure of the efforts of the ‘68 generation. The female labourers ensure that the design’s heritage is carefully maintained.

Displayed at the exhibition COME, COME, COME INTO MY WORLD by Rina Treml at ‘Lokal,’ Vienna in 2025. Video: Waltraud P. Indrist, Vienna/Austria, 2025.

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