April 25 to May 23

Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz

normal work

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2007 | 16mm/DVD | 13min
13 photographs, 1855–1902

The film “normal work” restages four historical photographs of the Victorian house maid Hannah Cullwick in which she takes on poses, crossing various social positions of class, “race,” and gender. The Victorian house maid Hannah Cullwick not only cleaned from early in the morning to late in the evening in various households, where she earned her tiny wages, lodging, and “beer money” in the mid nineteenth century, she also produced a series of remarkable staged photographs, numerous diaries, and letters, which was not at all common for a house maid of the time. These materials present her strength, her muscles, and her big, dirty, red hands – embodiments of her “masculinity” which she was very proud of and that were obviously directly connected with her working practices, which are usually coded “female.” Hannah Cullwick’s portraits and self-portraits, which show her not only as a domestic servant, but also in “class drag” or “ethnic drag,” were part of a sadomasochistic relationship that she had with Arthur Munby, a man from the bourgeois class. Interestingly, it was the elements of her hard work in the households that provided the material for their shared SM scenes. The work that Cullwick carried out as a domestic servant was later restaged together with Munby in their meetings in his home: she cleaned for him, washed his feet, brushed his shoes or licked them clean.
Cullwick described herself as Munby’s slave, she wore a “slave band” on her wrist which she never removed and a chain around her neck, for which Munby had the key. She called him “massa,” an indication that, like “slave,” referred to the reality of England as a colonial power.
In the photographs, a black band is often clearly visible on her right wrist, obviously the “slave band.” It is centrally located, almost in the center of the image, but it is not capable of disturbing the thoroughly convincing representations of a “maid of all work” or of a bourgeois woman.
In the film we watch the performer Werner Hirsch attempt to imitate Hannah Cullwick’s poses as precisely as possible. Werner Hirsch/Hannah Cullwick orients him/herself to his/her memory, to a mirror, or to a “model” that is not in the image, or to instructions that are called out to him/her, also from outside the space of the frame. Since two different historical moments (Victorian times and the present day) and two places of expression meet each other in the film, contradictory references arise. The historical photographs are placed in the context of contemporary drag performances and reworkings through gender binarity. Taken in the other direction, contemporary drag performances are placed next to a historical predecessor, in which the relations between sexuality and labor were negotiated. This doubled contextualization is supported by two different “decors,” used as a background like in a photo studio: one recalls a nineteenth-century painting, the other is a contemporary photography by the artist Del LaGrace Volcano (Daddy Boy Dykes).
In the historic photographs Hannah Cullwick staged crossings of social positions – they show her not only as a domestic servant, but also as a bourgeois woman, as a young bourgeois man, or as a “slave” in blackface. The photographs can be understood as a technology to control these crossings, or to reflect on the great efforts and constant deliberation that were connected to them.
What is staged in the film is the gaze that directs the domestic servant’s classification into social positions – the lady, the gentleman, or the slave – or rather, that allows for a productive reworking of these positions. This process that makes individuals into subjects is shown by repeatedly copying culturally available images, accompanied by the gaze, either approving or threatening, of an authority. If the performer/Hannah Cullwick reports on various works that he/she has done or would like to do, it becomes clear that crossing social positions is not only an empowering fantasy, but – especially in contemporary discussions on labor – entails an expense that is inseparable from the threat of not being able (any longer) to afford this crossing. The controlling gaze is here at any rate multiplied; the performer/Hannah Cullwick gazes back into the camera, signifying an equal position with that of the camerawoman/spectator; he/she indicates that he/she also “sees”.
The film installation “normal work” asks whether the crossings of social hierarchies of class, gender, and “race” that Hannah Cullwick staged and that she so obviously desired have today become generalized into a paradoxical requirement in the field of labor.

Film Material: 16mm transfered on DVD | Length: 13min, loop | Actor: Werner
Hirsch | Camera: Bernadette Paasen | Sound mastering: Rashad Becker

Renate Lorenz has been working since the beginning of the 1990s at the interface of culture, theory and politics; she teaches art, gender theory and queer theory. She has published a seminal text on art and politics in 1993: “Copyshop – Kunstpraxis und politische Öffentlichkeit.” In the mid-1990s she curated a program at the Shedhalle in Zurich on the development of themebased feminist exhibition models (together with Sylvia Kafehsy) and in 2000 organized a conference on exhibition & sexual politics. Renate Lorenz has been working since 1998 on a research project that defines “work” as a queer policy field and comprises not only theoretical papers but also films and exhibitions (with B. Kuster, P. Boudry). Last year she curated “normal love. precarious work, precarious sex“ at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin and published a catalogue of the same name (2007, www.normallove.de). She also published in 2007 “Sexuell arbeiten – eine queere Perspektive auf Arbeit & prekäres Leben.”

Pauline Boudry is an artist and musician. In her films, installations and video works she explores the relationship between work and sexuality in the postcolonial context. Her video works include the docu-fiction “Copy Me, I Want to Travel” about German-Bulgarian working relations in the days of the Cold War, produced in 2003 with Brigitta Kuster and Renate Lorenz. Her 2004 video “Sometimes You Fight for the World, Sometimes You Fight for Yourself” refers to a film by Jack Smith and deals with the appropriation of the exotic from a queer perspective. In 2006 Pauline Boudry produced the film “A Street Angel with a Cowboy Mouth,” a diary of a tour by her band, “Rhythm King and Her Friends.” In 2007 she organized with Renate Lorenz the project “Normal Love” at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. The installation “normal work” was part of this exhibition. Pauline Boudry’s work has been exhibited at venues including the Shedhalle in Zurich, the Kunstverein in Munich, the Generali Foundation in Vienna and the Musée des Beaux-arts in Lausanne.
Her band “Rhythm King and Her Friends” has released several albums.