Kika Thorne: Work/Labor/Action

I am on the road this week so in place of a normal post, I am presenting an ongoing Arendt-related work by the artist Kika Thorne, titled Work Labor Action. I plan to post about what contemporary art can learn from Arendt’s definitions and distinctions between Work and Action later this Fall. Kika is a friend of mine, and it was only after telling her about this blog that I discovered she has made work about Hannah Arendt since 1999. If you know of artists who have made work about Arendt, or dealing with her scholarship, please share some links in the comments.

The captions below are by the artist.

Work Labour Action
Photographs document the project on the streets of Toronto (1999), Vancouver (2001), New York (2007). Each poster approx. 30" x 36" Blueprint (black).
The title(s) of the book(s) she was writing at the time the photograph was taken is written in 9pt Times New Roman font at the bottom of each poster. eg. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (1958)

Work Labour Action was also wheat pasted onto the walls of Murray Guy, NY for a show that Lee Plested curated in 2007 called Street. For this exhibition I had the opportunity to put the posters all over New York, including near the New School, which houses part of her archive.

-Amy Zion