Ten Workers
The inception of the Ten Workers project was the product of the joining of two diaspora artists exploring the ideas of migration and its effects on cultural representations, stereotypes, and conceptions of gender and identity. Through their own migration and travels, the artists’ living situations are characterized by a distinct and persistent instability, thus creating a working space synchronized with the subject matter. An analysis of ourselves, through plumbing the correlations between our own identities and those of participants, is ostensibly the starting point for our investigations.
Through globalization the world at large was introduced to what can be described as an interstitial culture formed by the expatriate community. Those living in this community, often ill understood and marginalized, are chiefly portrayed as one-dimensional characters either in terms of otherness or the potential threat that they represent. We sought to explore these communities in a way that extends beyond the traditional tropes of anthropology, sociology, or activism to touch upon the subtleties of imaginative space, in particular the performance of the masculine imagination as manifestation of the patriarchal superstructure.
The first iteration of the Ten Workers Project (Hong Kong) resulted in a staged “self-portrait” of the contemporary Asian male psyche. In the series of filmed vignettes and public performances/happenings, male actors and participants were placed into situations suggestive of the workplaces of migrant sex workers (hostess clubs, brothels, etc.). Through multiple apparatuses, we sought to explore the social and cultural influences of male behavior: namely thoughts, dreams, preferences, fears, and desires. As an additional constraint to our process, it was our aim to extend the dialogue beyond the conventional imagery of human sexuality, targeting instead (the functions of its power dynamic on) the space of the banal and everyday. How does a man make a sandwich when given the opportunity to do so in the world of fantasy? When engaged in the perfect after-dinner conversation, what does he speak about? What does he pray for? What do men do behind closed doors, and what are the hidden functions of these private spaces?
Within the defined boundaries of our site, the male actor is freed from the constraints of identity, style, political correctness, and adopted morality. Given complete control of his surroundings, the result ranges from the depraved to the uplifting to the absurd. In an upheaval of convention, the subject of the migrant workers was inverted to focus not only on the workers themselves but also on the population that they serve.