Shovelling Piles
by Marlene Jess

Thesis Paper
submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for

Master of Fine Arts
Emily Carr University of Art & Design
2018

© Marlene Jess 2018

Thank you Michael for giving me the space to pursue this endeavor
and for your time, care and insight in helping me through it.
Thank you Justin Langlois for your guidance, honesty, and vested interest in the project through generative feedback.
Also, for consistently urging me to clarify my intentions.
Your knowledge and optimism contributed substantially to my experience and I appreciate your commitment
to keeping up the momentum to the end.
In gratitude to the territory of the Lekwungen, Coast Salish, WSÁNEĆ and Saanich East
for allowing me to walk and work freely in this area.
Thank you to Simon Levin, Sadira Rodrigues, Randy Lee Cutler, Aaron Peck, Zoe Kreye and Jesse Birch
for drawing attention to areas of potential and introducing me to new authors and artists that will keep me engaged
long after my studies here.
I appreciate my experience with this amiable cohort. Being part of this diverse group is a pleasure.
There is plenty of time to realize the human pyramid.

Contents
Introduction

1

Walking

7

The Pile

9

Agency

11

Embodied Knowledge

12

Video Installation

14

Conclusion

15

Appendix A

16

Works Consulted

17

*works cited are sourced as footnotes and figures on each page

Introduction
I am a 5th generation French Canadian settler, currently living on the unceded and
occupied First Nations territory of the Lekwungen, Coast Salish and WSÁNEĆ
peoples called Saanich. It is located on what is called southern Vancouver Island in
the Pacific Northwest. My partner and I rent a home here and my project has taken
shape within 3km of this location. I continually immerse myself in the natural
environment and complete projects in or about this neighborhood. This is how I
have come to learn this place.

I explore experiences that have the potential to stretch the limitations I set on
myself as a disciplined participant of advanced capitalism. Throughout my everyday
life, I participate in an accountable and calculated system that supports this
structure. This participation occupies many of my waking hours, often mediated
through my labour, consumption, and the banal activities that lie in between
them.1 I seek to uncover and maintain my sense of agency within the construct of
advanced capitalism through self-initiated manual labour.

Philosopher Rosi Braidotti refers to advanced capitalism as being “a time-stealing
machine that makes sure you never coincide with the present because you are
always a commodity behind where its temporality keeps you coming back for
more.”2 Everything a human expends whether it be time, effort or money, must be
directed towards and contribute to a system of consumption that functions adjacent
to the present. This ultimately leaves little room for experiences that fall outside of
the enclosures of advanced capitalism.

1

Discussed by Rosi Braidotti in “ Thinking as a Nomadic Subject.” Video Lecture. ici-berlin.org. Ici Berlin, Oct. 2014.
Web. 18 Oct. 2016. I propose that these banal activities, these grey areas which keep us physically or
psychologically mobile are ultimately in service to advanced capitalism and can include commuting, scrolling social
media and/or running errands.
2
Ibid.

Pg 1

Braidotti's understanding of agency, then, is particularly useful to this present
moment: “To be empowered to act on affirmative, joyful passions; positive levels of
ontological energy. To confront the vulgarity of the times and have the ability to act
within it.”3 My own confrontation with the vulgarity of now is firmly grounded in
my nature to want to act freely, but I see the need to continually exercise this nature,
in hopes of ensuring this freedom is indefinitely maintained. My artistic practice
revolves around this exercise and hosts a commitment to be more present in my
body.

Through my working-class upbringing, I have come to understand my body through
physical labour. My mother was a full-time domestic worker in our household: a
pre-determined role for her labouring female body. My father was the breadwinner,
a manual labourer who held a mostly stable job as a woodworker in addition to
other short-term jobs, some of which I distinctly remember due to his apparent
difficulties in getting up from a chair when working them. These jobs included
pulling ties from decommissioned railroads, building stone fences, and pouring
foundations. Tensions around money (and the lack of it) were frequently vocalized
in our house, and I grew up understanding that value was attributed to a labouring
body that earned money. I was expected to become financially self-sufficient by the
age of 18. Labour in this way was a rite of passage and also a financial imperative.
This formative experience has framed my sense of self, and in turn, informs my
thesis project, which hinges on a form of manual labour that has, throughout
history, been predominately undertaken by the male body.

Today, I hold an administrative post in the workforce. Most of my workday is spent
sitting at a desk and working at a computer. This mental labour in conjunction with
my academic pursuits as a graduate student has focused my point of inquiry into
what labour means to me and how else it could be activated.

3

Braidotti, Rosi. “Thinking as a Nomadic Subject.” Video Lecture. ici-berlin.org. Ici Berlin, Oct. 2014. Web. 18 Oct.
2016.

Pg 2

Learning how my body responds to and engages with shovelling piles of organic
matter empowers me to act again. It has few parameters and permits me to hold
onto the present. I see this sustained engagement as a core part of the work. In this
way, my commitment to complete a task for a predetermined duration is, in effect,
the machine that propels the work forward.4 The planning is minimal. The work
develops in response to my own observations of how I feel at a given moment. I
labour under a simple equation: show up, work hard for a set duration, and be
conscious with my body.5 Aside from consciously producing artwork, this work
contributes to something other than productivity. My interest in exploring this form

Fig 1 Marlene Jess, Shovelling Piles: Parking Lot Annex, 2018.
Video still a.

of labour arose from an earlier gesture that ostensibly aimed to activate
unrequested labour.

In Pressure Wash, July 2017, I committed to pressure washing the walkway outside
the entrance to the Emily Carr University campus on Granville Island for
approximately 30 minutes at an exhibition opening. The main discussion in this
paper focuses on the project following Pressure Wash which encompasses
shovelling six piles on six separate occasions for about one hour each time. I find a
pile through my walking practice, where I aim to tune-in to my surroundings. Once I
happen upon a pile, I commit to shovelling it “soon” where “soon” is the time that
feels right as opposed to scheduling a time. Shovelling Piles allows me to in some
ways physically interrogate the pile and what it signifies to me, to consider whether
notions of agency can be achieved through this work and to translate the physicality
of shovelling into embodied knowledge. Movement, physicality, and bodily
presence are human qualities that I see as sites of agency and momentary
emancipation.

4

O’Rourke, Karen. "A Map, No Directions." Walking and Mapping: Artists as Cartographers. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2013, p 48. Print.
5
Working hard is a subjective endeavor. In the shovelling actions, I expect to exert myself every time but this is felt
rather than measured.

Pg 3

Fig 2 Marlene Jess, Pressure Wash, 2017.
Video still a.

However, if I only consider the end result of moving a pile, it might be tempting to
assume nothing is accomplished, but I would argue this is missing the point. Being
present with your own body, whatever the gesture, and accessing a sense of agency
is not always observable. Planning 1969, by N.E. Thing Co. depicts Ingrid Baxter
sitting in a chair. It is a detail from a series of portraits that parody images of
corporate executives that aims to debunk hierarchical codes.6 This image can also
be examined from the perspective of productivity. The corporate executive is sitting
in a chair and does not appear to be productive yet the caption reads "planning"
which is typically a mental, productive activity. But how is the viewer certain? Does
this executive have agency? It is possible that there is a deliberate intention to rebel
against executive duties by appearing to do nothing in a productive context.

The environment in which I choose to experiment with notions other than
productivity does not require anything from me. One might think it absurd to
deliberately work at this but how might absurdity relate to obsessive meditation
that is mapped onto the disciplinary space of advanced capitalism? Guy Debord
discusses that constant exposure to representations of need are what mediate the
human into pining away for the next best thing. An obsessive meditation that
threatens quality of life. “The phase of total occupation of social life by the
accumulated results of the economy leads to a generalized sliding of having into
appearing.” 7 Life in the present, in nature is alienated beyond commodity
acquisition in efforts to strive for a calculated, commodified social status.8 My own
critical position draws from this theory. I aim to draw upon the need for agency in a
capitalist system that attempts to teach me what my goals and desires are and sell
them to me—it sets the tone and has been the basis of my thinking as an artist for
some time.

6

Knight, Derek. “N.E. Thing Co.: the ubiquitous concept.” Ontario: Oakville Galleries 1995, p 45. Print.
Debord, Guy. “Society of the Spectacle.” Detroit: Black & Red, 1983, thesis 17. Print.
8
The mechanisms of advanced capitalism can take shape in any location through the private space of the
individual. For example, seemingly innocuous platforms such as Instagram have become part of everyday life, and
align with Guy Debord’s writings from decades ago: “The commodity is explicitly presented as the moment of real
life […] even in those very moments reserved for living.” Scrolling a consumer driven platform such as Instagram—a
tool for constructing the self as a commodity in a social realm which is continuously punctuated with options to buy
anywhere, anytime—keeps one occupying a construct that treats the present as an anticipation.
7

Pg 4

Fig 3 N.E. Thing Co. Ltd., Inactive Verbs, 1969.
detail entitled Planning. Collection of the Canada Council Art Bank.

Debord urges that construction of authentic situations can help us be conscious of
our positions within society and make changes to our rote functionality, to
appropriate events abruptly removed from a life defined and mediated by images.
In turn, I see the ability to make an unmediated decision to act in the world in
instances across my present physical reality. Debord’s intent is to incite an overturn
of the system, but I believe this to be impossible at this time. My understanding of
the contemporary situation is more closely aligned to the continuing arc of critical
inquiry into the impacts and manifestations of capitalism found in Rosi Braidotti’s
work. Braidotti’s critical theory works from a point of knowing that this system is
here to stay. “Advanced capitalism will not break, it bends, adapts and mutates in
non-linear and contradictory ways. These mutations are pernicious, opportunistic
and lethal to us. They capture our desires and make us function.”9 One example of
this functioning is through the body’s completion of errands. Errands can be
described as grey areas between production and consumption. Braidotti describes
them as actions directly linked to consumption. “They are compulsory patterns of
repetition which keep us mobile within the beastly system of advanced
capitalism.”10 The patterns that errands represent can provide examples of
disembodiment in a life under this system.

I am interested in counteracting the activity of mobile disembodiment with the
embodiment of a task outside of the grey areas discussed above. I want this activity
to afford me the space to improve my self-awareness and foster my ability to know
the difference between, for example, an algorithm that suggests to me via an online
platform what book to read next and what book I feel I should read next based on
my own intrinsic process of decision-making.11 For me, this algorithm is constructed
in and continues to grow—with my help—in the grey area of disembodiment I am
attempting to act outside of.

9

Braidotti, Rosi. “Thinking as a Nomadic Subject.” Video Lecture. ici-berlin.org. Ici Berlin, Oct. 2014. Web. 18 Oct.
2016.
10
Ibid.
11
Harari, Yuval Noah. "Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs: Homo Deus: A Brief History of
Tomorrow." Video Lecture. Youtube.com. 28 Feb. 2017. Web. 12 Jun. 2018. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=ldTV4qowNms>

Pg 5

Braidotti stresses the importance of cultivating a sense of possibility. But what is the
cultivation of a sense of possibility? How can I resist the despair that results from
the reminder that I am an intrinsic component of this overwhelming structure? The
proposal to speak, act and write from where one is in an effort to continue
generating criticality here and now is a way for me to maintain and enact a sense of
agency.12 It drives my work. I start from my geographic location, vocation,
occupation, and ability to access the land I walk on daily. Now must be grasped, as
time is a fleeting presence in the highly technological world I live in. There are
potential opportunities to act in the present and I respond to my desire in activating
them. These are the possibilities.

Pressure Wash and Shovelling Piles were initiated by the need to spend time
outside my head and service my artistic pursuits with my body. Initially, shovelling
was the enactment of an expression “we’re just shovelling gravel here” that I
periodically exclaim to co-workers at my occupation to encourage stress reduction. It
is intended to balance out the perceived weight of a task in comparison to all other
tasks, and to incite laughter! Putting these words into action was not something I
did to relieve stress, but instead solidify my decision to contribute to a sense of
something other than productivity where I can escape the demands to be
productive in my daily life. My actions have been recorded and disseminated
through video as a strategy for both record keeping and audience engagement. This

Fig 4 Marlene Jess, Shovelling Piles: Neighbourhood House, 2018.
Video still a.

reproduction operates in a separate realm beyond the direct, intimate experience I
have as I labour, but it aims to create an entry point for the viewer.

In this way, I see a parallel to a work like Plot, 2007 by Derek Brunen. In this work,
which activates an expression through physical exertion, Brunen declares to have
asked himself what would happen if he realized the cliché of "digging your own
grave" to affirm the presence of death in our daily existence.13 He takes on the
formidable task of digging for several hours to reach the depth of the plot and

12

Braidotti, Rosi. "Emotional Geographies Conference." Video Lecture. Youtube.com. 15 Jul. 2013. Web. 2 Dec.
2017. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjQkdkle8rY>
13
Egan, Danielle. "Visual Arts Digging Your Own Grave." The Globe and Mail. Feb. 23, 2007, p 7 R5. PDF. 7 Apr.
2018.

Pg 6

Fig 5 Derek Brunen, Plot, 2007. Video still.
© Derek Brunen 2018.

through this labour, explores the subject of death, a topic of discussion typically
considered a social indiscretion.

Shovelling Piles can be considered a resistance to the homogenous system I find
myself operating in. I need to be busy doing something, yet recognize an impulse
to resist making endless contributions to a system that requires me to produce and
consume wherever and whenever possible. The action is a metaphor for my
enthusiasm to gain control over this seemingly uncontrollable situation, to learn
who I am to the core, if only for an hour at a time.

The remainder of this paper is presented in a glossary of terms and discusses the
similarities and differences between projects undertaken by other artists who have
also investigated manual labour. As an alternative to presenting complete or exact
definitions, the glossary format acts as a set of beacons that help clarify my path in
no specific order. Comparing and contrasting my project with the work of other
artists in the context of this paper has allowed me to draw productive links between
a set of practices that position manual labour within an artistic context.

Mapping these sites of experience provides context about the project and creates a
space to dedicate this work to the land that was used for it. A diagrammatic map
denoting where the piles were moved can be found in Appendix A. Moving found
organic piles on the landscape without permission reflects a physical response to
navigation and free will, an exploration of the body among nature and gives me a
unique space to consider the context in which I live and work.

Walking
My walking habit is integral to my working method. This space of research is where I
engage in body movement that produces thoughts, experiences, arrivals.14 It is
where I am most grounded, where my thoughts become clear, quiet and at times
non-existent. Silence in walking is “the dissipation of our language. Everything in
this world of work, leisure, activity, reproductions and consumption of things,
14

Solnit, Rebecca. “Wanderlust.” A History of Walking. New York: Penguin Books, 2001, p 5. Print.

Pg 7

everything has its function, its place, its utility, and a specific word that corresponds
to it”. 15 Once there is silence, there is clarity. Language is set aside, breath is
prominent, the weight of my head is balanced, there is space to "intuit the bones",
"the variation of movement between the skull and the atlas are vague, non-specific
so imagination supplies the exact site of action.”16 Sensations around the bones
while walking can be felt beyond sensing compression and weight transferred from
the heal to the landscape.

I am intuitively aware of my female body as it relates to history as a walker. In the
19th century, a woman walking alone in public was a body-at-risk. It was considered
disgraceful and dangerous. Women began to enjoy public spaces at the turn of the
19th and throughout the 20th century but there was always a clear distinction
between genders. "It's crucial for the flâneur to be functionally invisible but the stir
a woman alone in public creates prevents this from happening [for her]."17 I don't
consider myself a practicing flâneuse but have on multiple occasions, while on a
walk, had my sense of peace erased because I am female. On a base level, walking
for me is an opportunity to exercise my freedom to perambulate in public. It is a
right and it aligns with a creative potential that helps me piece myself together as I
piece a terrain together and somehow merges the two one step at a time.

While walking out of doors, on land, my body engages with the natural
environment. I identify with the notion of attempting to integrate oneself into
nature. The physical involvement of walking creates receptiveness to the landscape.
Hamish Fulton claims to walk on land to be woven into nature. The character of a
walk, then, is practical.18 He is likely referring to an ecological merger: the material
structure of the body intermingling with the natural environment through a series
of breaths. The experience of being out-of-doors, outside of a closed receptacle or a
series of interiors is of critical importance to my well-being. It initiates a sense of
15

Gros, Frédéric & John Howe. "A Philosophy of Walking." New York: Verso, 2014, p 62. Print.
“Steve Paxton’s Small Dance Guidance: Notes added by Steve Paxton, April 2008.” myriadcity.net. https://
myriadicity.net/contact-improvisation/contact-improv-as-a-way-of-moving/steve-paxton-s-1977-small-danceguidance. np. Web. 17 Jun. 2018.
17
Elkin, Lauren. Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London. London: Chatto &
Windus, 2016, p 13. Print.
18
Kastner, Jeffrey, and Brian Wallis. “Land and Environmental Art.” London: Phaidon Press, 1998, p 243. Print.
16

Pg 8

freedom and openness. Walking is a way for me to occupy my entire body and
engage with the terrain outside in the world all at once, an indulging privilege
which is easily accessible from my geographic location.

The Pile
"pile, n. 1. A heap; a mass of anything thrown or laid together to form a regular or irregular
elevation of which some parts are supported by others.”19

Each pile is made up of one or a combination of gravel, sand, soil, compost, clay
that have been previously assembled on the landscape. It belongs to the location it
has been deposited on. By walking towards one I begin to get a sense of its
substantial weight. Shovelling changes its original shape, frees it from the confines
of its previous frame, refreshes it.

For me, a pile is a pyramid that symbolizes labour, an accumulation of perpetual
responsibility. Perhaps this stems from my longtime habit of associating
administrative duties with gravel or from understanding the world through my
working-class upbringing. The pile as mental labour fluctuates in size and if it is
cleared away, there is another close by. Mental labour is an activity that spans an
ongoing agenda which functions according to an inextricably linked pattern.
“Labour has a schedule, it is constantly doing groundwork for itself and does not
engage in activities that prevent it from progressing.”20 It presses towards a future
end goal that consistently resets itself. I am committed to a version of this pattern
by meeting administrative deadlines and getting remunerated.21 Labour consists of
the continuous execution of a defined routine that requires maintenance and often
extends into free time. My body moves in service to labour and its productivity.

19

"pile." Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary: Unabridged. New York: The Publishers Guild, 1943. Print.
Hyde, Lewis. The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World. New York: Vintage Books, 2009, p 87. Print.
21
It could be argued that meeting academic deadlines and paying for tuition is also linked to labour’s schedule.
20

Pg 9

Fig 6 Marlene Jess, Shovelling Piles: Community Centre, 2018.
Video still a.

In Paradox of Praxis 1, 1997, Francis Alÿs pushes a block of ice through the streets of
Mexico city for hours until it is melted. The outcome of this effort is something other
than productivity. “Sometimes, to make something is really to make nothing; and
paradoxically, sometimes to make nothing is to make something.”22 One element
of the action addresses the effects of capitalism on the working individual—a
disproportionate relationship between effort and remuneration. This durational
piece influences my project. I believe the pile and the ice can each stand-in as a
symbol for labour. One is moved and newly assembled, the other melts down while
moving. Each is being tended to yet nothing is “produced”.

Fig 7 Francis Alÿs, Paradox of Praxis 1 (Sometimes Doing Something
Leads to Nothing). Mexico City 1997. Video documentation of an action
5 minutes.
© Francis Alÿs, Courtesy David Zwirner Gallery, New York/London/Hong
Kong.

My actions rely on physical exertion for completion where I become more efficient
with each new pile. The commitment I have set out for myself is important to me,
regardless of the consequences or second thoughts. It is part of my ethic and
focuses my psychological direction to one single task. It also resonates with Honest
Labor, 1979 by Chris Burden in which the artist digs as an alternative to delivering
an artist talk. The task ends when the scheduled time ends. The trench is not
intended to be put to use. Burden describes it matter-of-factly:

“I was invited to Vancouver for a week to be a visiting artist by the Emily Carr College of
Art and Simon Fraser University. Rather than meet with students to present and discuss
my past work in a teaching context, I requested that I be provided with a wheel barrel, a
shovel, and a pick ax. On the first day of my visit, I immediately began, in a vacant lot that
had been provided for me, to dig a straight ditch about 2½ feet wide and 3 feet deep.
Each following day students could find me digging from 9am, until 5pm. I did not have a
specific length or goal, except that I would be digging during the times of day that I had
designated. Occasionally, someone would offer to dig for me, but after trying for a few
minutes they would return the job to me.”23

This action is also about physicality and commitment. Much of Burden’s practice
addresses duration and the physical and psychological limits and capacities of the
body. The body has developed its own language.
22

Sigler, Friederike. “Work.” London Cambridge, Massachusetts: Whitechapel Gallery and The MIT Press, 2017. p
220. Print.
23
Burden, Chris, et al. "Chris Burden." Extreme Measures. New York, NY: Skira Rizzoli in association with New
Museum, 2013, p 231. Print.

Pg 10

Fig 8 Chris Burden, Honest Labor, 1979.
© 2018 Chris Burden /
licensed by The Chris Burden Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS),
New York.

Agency
Consider water as it flows down a riverbed. If agency is ignited at the water’s initial
point of action, when it has broken through the construct of its containment, then
its force as a river is a continuance of this agency. The river is water’s preservation or
maintenance.

After completing Pressure Wash, a few individuals approached me claiming they
had believed I was a maintenance worker. Around this time I was introduced to the
work of Mierle Laderman Ukeles whose projects can be considered a unique form of
endurance art where repetition and duration are used to represent the complexities
of invisible and unrecognized labour in society. Performing maintenance work in an
artistic context shapes a space of creative uncertainty and theoretical ambiguity and
questions the line between what is real and artificial.24 Laderman Ukeles' actions
succeed at burning an image in the public eye which alters public perceptions
about specific types of labour through repetition. For example, scrubbing concrete
stairs, or shaking the hand of sanitation workers over and again.

In hindsight, the most gratifying moment while pressure washing a walkway was
directing the vigorous stream of water at a melted candy bar for what felt like an
indulgent length of time. This focused stillness, its questionable productivity and
the notion of physical labour as art undertaken in the work of Mierle Laderman
Ukeles stimulated the need for a closer investigation of the types of labour I take
part in daily and whether I could consider them more critically.

Agency might also describe the tension between my body and its operation in
advanced capitalism and my body and the pile being shovelled. The former is urged
to follow an external mechanical, pre-determined functionality, the latter functions
outside of that command. I have an “epistemic understanding of the conditions of
my bondage”.25 I feel motivated to carve out a place of agency within a system that
seeks to direct my every action toward consumption.
24

Phillips, Patricia C., et al. Mierle Laderman Ukeles: Maintenance Art. New York: Prestel, 2016, p 28. Print.
Braidotti, Rosi. “Thinking as a Nomadic Subject.” Video Lecture. ici-berlin.org. Ici Berlin, Oct. 2014. Web. 18 Oct.
2016.
25

Pg 11

Fig 9 Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Hartford Wash: Washing, Tracks,
Maintenance (Outside), 1973. Part of Maintenance Art Performance
series, 1973-1974. Performance at Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT.
(11) 20"x16" photos. Courtesy of the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery,
New York.

Embodied Knowledge
Do we live in the age of disembodiment? How much time does my mind spend
outside my body? I acknowledge that rational conceptual processes are dominant
over bodily knowing. This is how I have learned to maintain control over my life. Yet
“knowledge not only exists in our minds but is also enfolded in peoples’ muscles
and skeletons and the existence of this knowledge calls into question the privileged
place given to conceptual knowledge.”26 Shovelling Piles is a heuristic experience
where I am learning with mostly physical rather than predominant cognitive
involvement. Given how the ‘built-in function’ of breathing impacts and constrains

Fig 10 Marlene Jess, Shovelling Piles: Maintenance Yard, 2018.
Video still a.

what and how we think, I am curious about how bodily knowledge has potential to
form the mind.27 By revisiting and developing a type of pattern, I seek to anchor the
mind—keep it present.

With each new pile, I experience a process of transformation which involves sweat,
deep breathing, muscle ache and growth, overall increased body awareness. I have
felt moments of feeling trapped, of aggression. I have also felt moments of elation
and strength. The weather, nearby sounds, my mental state are some of the factors
that affect the experience. A putrid odour leads to a deep feeling of entrenchment.
Shovelling at a traffic intersection invigorated my strokes, shovelling among birds
and pedestrians felt steadier. I have imposed daily stresses into the transfer of
energy by thrusting the pile's matter.

I have reflected on the postural and psychological differences and similarities
between for example, free-walking28 and running an errand. These processes and
my body define the materiality of the work as they help formulate new knowledge.
An audience is not needed to complete the action. A viewer of the work may
associate its futility with their own position in society rather than an enthusiasm for
physicality but this is in-line with an intention for the project: to initiate criticality

26

Peile, Colin. “Emotional and Embodied Knowledge.” Implications for Critical Practice. The Journal of Sociology &
Social Welfare. Dec 1998, p 45. PDF.
27
Ibid. p 47.
28
This type of walk is enjoyed with my dog, it has no errand in mind. Walking my dog is not an errand, it is a shared
perambulation. Although about half of these fit into a window of time, they are guided by natural rhythms.

Pg 12

Fig 11 Marlene Jess, Shovelling Piles: Vacant Lot, 2018.
Video still a.

about the workings of an economic and political system that humans contribute to
and maintain.

Recently while shovelling, I conducted an internal scan. Starting with the toes, up to
the knees, the lungs, the chest where I adjusted my foot and straightened my back
to become more conducive to the task. The scan continued to my nape, the back of
my eyes, temples, jaw, ears where I realized my head was straining my neck
considerably and so I adjusted it. I experienced an influx of energy by making these
small calibrations and took to deeper breathing. “If one is successful in dropping
the conviction that one's mind is anything other than the body itself, one may
abruptly experience oneself in an entirely new manner—not as an immaterial
intelligence inhabiting an alien, mechanical body, but as a magic self-sensing form
—a body that is itself awake and aware.”29 Through being attentive while shovelling,
my body first builds on its capacity to make small adjustments internally which then
translate to external adjustments that can foster agency in the contemporary
moment.

This project is concerned with cultivating "calm, and stillness somewhere outside
the cascades of contemporary speed culture [in addition to investigating] what it
means to experience a world of speed, acceleration, and cotemporality through
experience."30 It provides me with new ways of considering how my body comports
itself in and responds to everyday mediated experiences and unconscious
influences, and makes use of this awareness by helping me improve my corporeal
existence. The work here was also self-initiated. A brief moment of fear is
experienced before piercing the pile. This is caused by not having asked for
permission.31 Once shovelling begins, I am experiencing the freedom of my actions
which is what grounds my work in general.

29

qtd. in Epp, Ellie. Embodiment Studies Web Worksite. http://www.ellieepp.com/mbo/bodies/index.html. np.
Web. Nov. 2016.
30
Koepnick, Lutz P. "On Slowness." Toward an Aesthetic of the Contemporary. New York: Columbia University Press,
2014, p 10. PDF.
31
I was questioned by a municipal employee on one occasion and responded: "I am putting my body through
something.." It was as if I had stepped outside my body to speak for it while it continued to do the work—on behalf
of human physicality to a member of the public sector through a brief, cordial, awkward interaction.

Pg 13

Fig 12 Marlene Jess, Pressure Wash, 2017.
Video still b.

Video Installation
Shovelling Piles is a series of actions completed in public without announcement
and documented for an art viewer. A cell phone is mounted to a tripod in the
distance. The relatively unplanned nature of this work is a key motivating factor. The
process of making includes honouring intuition with timing, walking to the site,
and travelling light. I have come to understand that this work is best disseminated
as a record where its makeshift documentation is a core part of its aesthetic.

For the graduate exhibition I experimented with projecting the six video records as
three silent diptychs. The diptychs were assembled with attention to the visual
points and counterpoints between the different videos. The videos were silent to
anchor the depiction of the moving body. The videos themselves are my primary
concern, rather than the format of presentation. Whether as screen-based or
projection-based installations, my interest is in the videos providing a multiplicity of
perspectives and actions, unable to ever be seen all at once or all at the same time.
The room in which the diptychs were presented for my defence, however, created a
number of unexpected complications. The technical limitations of the space and
equipment challenged me to compromise on the scale and location of the
projections: they were too high and ultimately less visually effective due to their
smaller than intended size.

Regardless of the challenges of this presentation, the encounter with the action
itself is what really matters to me. I understand the audience may need or want
more than the records to fully get a sense of what I experienced in action, so I see
an opportunity to explore other installation strategies. In my upcoming
presentation of this work, I will decouple the videos, separating them and
projecting them larger, while also experimenting with supplying the sound that
accompanies the actions with a hope that it will translate the methodic, physically
challenging task being depicted. In future installations, I may also supply an
olfactory element to the work by bringing in a pile of dirt and offering a map of the
sites of action. Because walking is fundamental to my research, I believe that

Pg 14

Fig 13 Marlene Jess, Shovelling Piles, 2018.
Installation detail for 2 of 3 diptychs.

sharing a walk with a viewer can add a beneficial element to the work. A scheduled,
silent walk will provide an active alternative to viewing.

Conclusion
Shovelling Piles is straightforward and recognizable among most adult individuals
and the feedback has been rich and varied. My role here is not just to complete a
project but to establish and maintain an attitude, a way of feeling. I want to foster
an ethic that is concerned with agency among a heavily mediated environment
which promotes a life that is in service to advanced capitalism. I believe such a life
has the potential to erase the sense of freedom that underwrites the human
experience. In writing about the site of the treadmill as a form of physic terror for
inmates in Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit provides a highly
useful description of life under advanced capitalism more generally: “It is its
monotonous steadiness and not its severity which constitutes its terror, and
frequently breaks down the obstinate spirit.”32 This is the site of my contestation. My
endeavours celebrate the capacity of the human body and the freedom to act
authentically in the world. My body knows that this is best for my spirit.

Embodied knowledge translates to knowing as something I am, not something I
have. Knowledge as such is not storable outside the body. Knowledge as an
effective cognitive structure can only be constituted and reconstituted in individual
bodies.33 My unique knowledge of shovelling empowers me to seek, maintain and
extend this transformation to more aspects of my life.

I continue exploring opportunities for action in my neighborhood and community.
To speak, act, and write from my position in the world offers a wide range to work
from. My projects have taken root in movement and physicality. They respond to the
current moment. I have learned to honour my intuition in activating new ideas if
they stick, if they become clear to me while I am walking.

32

Solnit, Rebecca. “Wanderlust.” A History of Walking. New York: Penguin Books, 2001, p 260. Print.
Epp, Ellie. Embodiment Studies Web Worksite. http://www.ellieepp.com/mbo/bodies/index.html. np. Web. Nov.
2016.
33

Pg 15

Fig 14 Marlene Jess, Shovelling Piles: Trail Head, 2018.
Video still b.

Appendix A

home

6 moved piles
January-April 2018

Pg 16

Works Consulted
Aikens, Nick, et al. "What's the use?" Constellations of Art, History, and Knowledge:
A Critical Reader. Amsterdam: Valiz, 2016. Print.
Arendt, Hannah, and Margaret Canovan. "The Human Condition." Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1998. p 175-206. Print.
Balskus, Elizabeth. “Examining Potentiality in the Philosophy of Giorgio Agamben.”
Macalester Journal of Philosophy, Spring 2010 Iss. 1. Vol.19. PDF. Web. 20 Oct.
2017.
Baxter, et al. "You are now in the middle of a N.E. Thing Co. Landscape. 1965-1971."
Vancouver: UBC Fine Arts Gallery, 1993. Print.
Black, Bob. “The Abolition of Work.” Primitivism.com. Dec. 2014. p 1-11. PDF.
Braidotti, Rosi. "Nomadic Theory." The Portable Rosi Braidotti. New York: Columbia
University Press, 2011. Print.
Buckberrough, Sherry and Andrea Miller-Keller. “Mierle Laderman Ukeles.” Matrix
137. Hartford, Connecticut: Wadsworth Atheneum, 1998. Web. 21 Oct. 2017.
Crary, Jonathan. “24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep.” London: Verso,
2014. p 1-29. PDF.
Crawford, Matthew B. "Shop Class as Soulcraft." An Inquiry Into the Value of Work.
New York: Penguin Press, 2009. Print.
Kwon, Miwon. "One Place After Another." Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity.
Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2002. p 1-9, 156-167. Print.
Molesworth, Helen A., M D. Alexander, and Julia Wilson. "work ethic." Baltimore,
Md. University Park, Pa: Baltimore Museum of Art Pennsylvania State University
Press, 2003. Print.
Negri, Antonio and Michael Hardt. “Value and Affect.” boundary 2, Duke University
Press, Summer 1999. p 77-88. Vol. 26, No. 2. PDF.
Solnit, Rebecca. "A Field Guide to Getting Lost." New York: Viking, 2005. Print.
Solti, Gabriella. “From ‘Means to Ends’: Labour As Art Practice.” Western University
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. Jun. 2014. Web. 25 Oct. 2017.

Pg 17