03-08-2019, 01:40 PM
This job in Sweden has just two requirements: Clock in and clock out. The rest is up to the employeeTitled "Eternal Employment," the project is both a social experiment and a serious political statement.
![[Image: ows_154732947737774.jpg?auto=compress&cr...pr=2&w=525]](https://stmedia.stimg.co/ows_154732947737774.jpg?auto=compress&crop=faces&dpr=2&w=525)
Imagine: For the rest of your life, you are assigned no tasks at work. You can watch movies, read books, work on creative projects or just sleep. In fact, the only thing that you have to do is clock in and out every day. Since the position is permanent, you’ll never need to worry about getting another job again.
Starting in 2026, this will be one lucky (or extremely bored) worker’s everyday reality, thanks to a government-funded conceptual art project in Gothenburg, Sweden. The employee in question will report to Korsvägen, a train station under construction in the city, and will receive a salary of about $2,320 a month in U.S. dollars, plus annual wage increases, vacation time off and a pension for retirement. While the artists behind the project won’t be taking applications until 2025, when the station will be closer to opening, a draft of the help-wanted ad is already available online.
The job’s requirements couldn’t be more simple: An employee shows up to the train station each morning and punches the time clock. That, in turn, illuminates an extra bank of fluorescent lights over the platform, letting travelers know that the otherwise functionless employee is on the job. At the end of the day, the worker clocks out. In between, they can do whatever they want, aside from work at another paying job.
“The position holds no duties or responsibilities, other than that it should be carried out at Korsvägen,” the job description states. “Whatever the employee chooses to do constitutes the work.”
Titled “Eternal Employment,” the project is both a social experiment and a serious political statement. In early 2017, Public Art Agency Sweden and the Swedish Transport Administration announced an international competition for artists interested in contributing to the new station’s design. The winner would get 7 million Swedish krona, the equivalent of around $750,000. Swedish artists Simon Goldin and Jakob Senneby entered and suggested eschewing the typical murals and sculptures that adorn most transit hubs.
Instead, they wrote, they would use the prize money to pay one worker’s salary and give them absolutely nothing to do all day.
“In the face of mass automation and artificial intelligence, the impending threat/promise is that we will all become productively superfluous,” their proposal said. “We will all be ‘employed at Korsvägen,’ as it were.”
Goldin and Senneby predicted that by creating a foundation to prevent the prize money from being taxed, then investing it in the market, they would be able to keep paying that employee’s salary for “eternity” — which they defined as 120 years.
Deeming the idea to be humorous, innovative and “an artistic expression of great quality,” the jury that had been convened to judge the competition decided to award them the prize. There was an “uproar” in Sweden in October when officials announced that Goldin and Senneby’s proposal had won, wrote Brian Kuan Wood, a board member for the Eternal Employment foundation.
In their own writing, Goldin and Senneby acknowledge that paying someone to show up at a train station twice a day and punch a time clock is unproductive and thoroughly worthless. That’s the idea. Many people believe that art is supposed to be useless, they point out.
By Antonia Noori Farzan Washington PostMarch 7, 2019 — 4:04pm
Imagine: For the rest of your life, you are assigned no tasks at work. You can watch movies, read books, work on creative projects or just sleep. In fact, the only thing that you have to do is clock in and out every day. Since the position is permanent, you’ll never need to worry about getting another job again.Starting in 2026, this will be one lucky (or extremely bored) worker’s everyday reality, thanks to a government-funded conceptual art project in Gothenburg, Sweden. The employee in question will report to Korsvägen, a train station under construction in the city, and will receive a salary of about $2,320 a month in U.S. dollars, plus annual wage increases, vacation time off and a pension for retirement. While the artists behind the project won’t be taking applications until 2025, when the station will be closer to opening, a draft of the help-wanted ad is already available online.
The job’s requirements couldn’t be more simple: An employee shows up to the train station each morning and punches the time clock. That, in turn, illuminates an extra bank of fluorescent lights over the platform, letting travelers know that the otherwise functionless employee is on the job. At the end of the day, the worker clocks out. In between, they can do whatever they want, aside from work at another paying job.
“The position holds no duties or responsibilities, other than that it should be carried out at Korsvägen,” the job description states. “Whatever the employee chooses to do constitutes the work.”
Titled “Eternal Employment,” the project is both a social experiment and a serious political statement. In early 2017, Public Art Agency Sweden and the Swedish Transport Administration announced an international competition for artists interested in contributing to the new station’s design. The winner would get 7 million Swedish krona, the equivalent of around $750,000. Swedish artists Simon Goldin and Jakob Senneby entered and suggested eschewing the typical murals and sculptures that adorn most transit hubs.
Instead, they wrote, they would use the prize money to pay one worker’s salary and give them absolutely nothing to do all day.
“In the face of mass automation and artificial intelligence, the impending threat/promise is that we will all become productively superfluous,” their proposal said. “We will all be ‘employed at Korsvägen,’ as it were.”
Goldin and Senneby predicted that by creating a foundation to prevent the prize money from being taxed, then investing it in the market, they would be able to keep paying that employee’s salary for “eternity” — which they defined as 120 years.
Deeming the idea to be humorous, innovative and “an artistic expression of great quality,” the jury that had been convened to judge the competition decided to award them the prize. There was an “uproar” in Sweden in October when officials announced that Goldin and Senneby’s proposal had won, wrote Brian Kuan Wood, a board member for the Eternal Employment foundation.
In their own writing, Goldin and Senneby acknowledge that paying someone to show up at a train station twice a day and punch a time clock is unproductive and thoroughly worthless. That’s the idea. Many people believe that art is supposed to be useless, they point out.
