Cleaning Up the Studio

Concept

-2010-

Shortly before Nam June Paik died, the artist sold his messy Broome Street studio as an installation. It was painstakingly documented and archived then shipped from New York to Seoul, where it was faithfully reconstructed in the Nam June Paik Art Center. In 2010, Jankowski was commissioned to produce a work for the institution. He hired a professional cleaning company to transform the disorganized studio into a clean, functional workplace. Over the course of five hours, a team of four cleaning professionals rearranged and polished the furniture, untangled cables, and sorted the various catalogues and documents. In doing so, Jankowski created an installation of his own from the assorted materials that had already been designated as a work by Paik. He recorded the process in the form of a video, in which the head of the cleaning company, Beautiful Cleaning, gives an official mission statement, like in a promotional film. In addition, Jankowski produced a series of »before« and »after« photos documenting the transformation. After the temporary artistic intervention, the studio – consisting of 30 pieces of furniture and 622 catalogued groups of over 10,000 items – was then returned to its previous state over a period of three weeks, this time by museum conservators.

Video