Work. Folkwang Museum. Essen.Feb-April 2006
Clare Strand produced the body of work ‘The Betterment Room - Devices For Measuring Acheivement' during a commission hosted by Museum Folkwang Essen in 2004.
The Betterment Room - Devices for Measuring Achievement is a study examining the visual identity and behavior of the post industrial worker, taking as starting point the photographic time and motion studies of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth (1912).
In this new study, the Blithe, the willing and the compliant are equipped with appropriate mechanism and attachments, set against grids and clocks to help the study of their productive capacity.
The images however, have a uneasy stasis, signaling that the modern activities we now call work have become more mysterious and less quantifiable.
The Cyclegraph series becomes an attempt to analyse and determine the trajectories of Strands own activity throughout the making of the work an exercise in absurdism that never the less has its pre-determined function - no matter how pointless.