Introduction

In his project Werktische, Parreno returns to dealing with the elements of (free) time, work and production. In the context of labor market policy developments, general rationalization and an increasing tendency towards an information and leisure society, the project will experiment with the possibility of a shift. The field of art seems to be predetermined as a free or undefined space, to visualize such phenomena. 

Parreno, together with various ‘hobbyists’, i.e. hobby workers working IN the gallery on Monday the first of May, also known as ‘Labour Day’, puts ideas of handcrafting into practice in this exhibition. The ‘division of labour’ production was thus prepared on a public holiday assigned to leisure time and will be on display for the leisure and culture of society during the week. The presentation will take place during the ‘working days’ of the gallery. 

The objects, which were produced on the Monday before the actual opening, are thus only a kind of reference to the more process-oriented work on the "day of work". The objects are essentially teddy bears which have been implanted with chips (mini sound samplers). Coincidentally, these chips contain the Korean test voices of the workers from the chip factory. The teddy bears wear T-shirts with the slogan "my first secret" and can be connected to a stereo system. 

Based on a Super-8 quality film, the entire production process will be projected from May 1st over the course of the exhibition. The Werktische exhibition overlaps with its exhibition at the Kunstverein in Hamburg, where 12 people took part in a workshop entitled Die Fabrik der Wolken (The Factory of Clouds) over the course of one week, thus preparing the Hamburg exhibition. It consists of the various forms of exchange that took place there and addresses these different relationships during the preparation period. 

The productions are very different: Dagmar Berghoff presents a television program, a radio show is presented by Ditmar Mues, a popular voice actor. A page in the daily newspaper "taz", written together with a journalist, will be printed in the Hamburg "taz" unchanged for an entire week. In the exhibition there are also huge T-shirts on which the difficulty of living together is expressed in printed form, as well as Super-8 films by members of the Kunstverein. These were viewed during the preparatory week and edited with the aim of being reassembled. Each of these productions is an attempt to capture different relationships and references. These productions can be seen throughout the exhibition, which is a matter of course for an art exhibition, but not for a television show. The stability of an art exhibition is therefore counteracted by the constant change of program familiar to television culture and the print media. 

The shifting and experimenting with areas of meaning and concepts of time from the most diverse visual fields is thus addressed in both overarching exhibitions, insofar as the exhibitions also address each other.