From the Workroom

From the Workroom is the ongoing collaborative project by Dana Bell
and Tasha Lutek, two artists working in a Photography Department at a
major Museum in New York City. The project is a study of
the daily life of the art worker/laborer who is constantly challenged and inspired
by another's collection, while maintaining their own distinct
practices.

At the Museum, their daily work responsibilities are to support and
maintain a large photographic collection. Contrary to the expected
role of collection stewards, part of this work on occasion involves
destroying rejected proof prints, at the direction of the artist, so
that they may be replaced. A requirement of this process is to provide
proof of destruction to the artist to ensure inadequate copies no
longer exist. Bell and Lutek utilize play as a tool in the process of destroying a
print with a variety of methods, sometimes distasteful, humorous,
sophisticated and hopefully all of the aforementioned. In addition to the task of destroying rejected works, the artists are constantly confronted by volumes of discarded
accessories, as photographs and their counterparts are parsed from
delivery to storage to exhibition. Bell and Lutek's work aims to rescue and
recycle these unwanted scraps and introduce new meaning to them.