Darlings’; Indirect Labour & Idle Time

“Darlings - Indirect Labour and Idle Time”, is a series of performances created site-responsively to the Darling Brothers Foundry in Montreal.  Given the history of the foundry, an exclusively male domain further extenuated by the Darling Brothers fraternal bond, is an enterprise and context where work is associated with traditional values.  It is also said that in the same place, there once existed a women's prison where the prisoners were condemned to hard labour. There are even tales of a prostitute being murdered there, with her ghost haunting the premises ever since. By referring to various historical events, the artist proposes an alternative and converging narrative between the worlds of prostitution and labor, in which women are omnipresent.

Performance Synopsis

Throughout the performance, a dozen women wearing orange work coveralls (embroidered with the Darling logo) occupy the space: leaning on walls, pacing, smoking, filing nails, etc. Their profound silence echoes their seemingly idle gestures and boredom allows their thoughts to wander. At the end of each performance, the Darlings reveal their fantasies in writing under the "Remarks" column on the timecard, clocked in and out by the Darlings’ and accumulate throughout the installation as collective desires.