There she provided “touching services”, greeting and gently stroking coworkers in the hallways. But not the kind of nothing that most people do when avoiding work in offices: instead of scrolling social media, Takala openly and performatively made it clear to her colleagues that she wasn’t accomplishing anything, riding the lifts for hours at a time, or just sitting, staring into space.įor a more recent work, The Stroker (2018), she posed as a “wellness consultant” at an East London co-working space. In The Trainee, 2008, Takala took a month-long internship at the accounting firm Deloitte, where she proceeded to do… absolutely nothing.
She frequently pokes a humorous stick at the way workplaces function. The Finnish artist’s performance works (mostly exhibited as videos) often document social experiments: uncomfortable moments in which the seemingly intangible rules of interacting in public spaces are suddenly revealed to be rock-solid.
If there was a prize for enduring social awkwardness, Pilvi Takala would surely be in the running for it. Pilvi Takala photographed by Diana Pfammatter in Venice for Elephant
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