HUSTLE / IDLE (2024) HD video, 16:45 min, color, sound, no spoken dialog, text inserts in two versions: English only or English and German alternating

A performative, analog loop revolves around the opposing verbs “to hustle” (to be industrious, to hurry, to attain something illegally, to do sex work) and “to idle” (to laze around, to be unproductive). In a denim one-piece with a blonde wig, I slip into all the characters of a 90s sitcom opening credits, right down to the dog, for each rotation with just a few props. Various collective visual memories, film language conventions and personal, idiosyncratic longings and attributions overlap in the process.

Kathi Weeks writes in “The Problem with Work” that instead of automatically emphasizing the social benefits or possible productivity of not working (for example: the 4-day week increases efficiency and profitability in companies), an exciting question could be why there is such a great fear of unproductivity. She speculates that undisciplined “laziness” has great disruptive potential and, above all, is fundamentally open-ended and thus also attacks our conventional constructions of identity.

After several loops, the video switches to a slow-motion shot of my friend Lia lying on a huge artificial turf waterbed and being gently rocked as unknown children tumble around her, outside of the frame. She was four months pregnant at the time, had hardly slept the night before and had severe back pain. This image condenses different assumptions and attributions with regard to the female body, gendered work, love, the nuclear family, reproductive work, the private and the public.

credits:
concept / performance /editing: Ale Bachlechner
camera / music: Jonathan Kastl
idle: Lia Sudermann

funded by Kunststiftung NRW, 2024

Hustle / Idle is also available as an Expanded Cinema work with live soundtrack.