Performance Under Working Conditions

Directed by Allan Sekula

A rarely shown early video performance, originally produced as a companion piece to a photo novel about working in a pizza restaurant. The structure is that of live television, an empty studio with two cameras and a switcher, no editing after the fact. Two cooks try to reproduce the gestures and banter of their work minus the ingredients and utensils of the kitchen. This is labor performed as madcap talky pantomime, without capital. One of their lines goes back to the anarcho-syndicalism of Laurel and Hardy.