Much like how social media turns everyday behind-the-scenes moments into curated content, Commission Free Intervention turns mundane, procrastinated computer tasks into co-present productivity strolls, centered around a laptop strapped to a bicycle trailer.
The task is a concrete to-do, offering a glimpse into the fabric of someone’s everyday life. The presence of others walking alongside and the staged setting in which the task becomes the content, reflects the importance the task has taken on in the mind of the person procrastinating it.
Hello, my name is Oskar Petzet. My work often mimics the structure of commercial transactions, with myself usually taking the role of the service provider. In Commission Free Intervention, the person bringing their task might be seen as the “customer.” One could imagine someone else recruiting them, and another person coordinating the group, in the role of a casual human resources. But on the other hand, everyone involved is just a friend who agreed to join the walk. And this structure is more for my self to get out of my own struggle with the desk based situation.
It’s debatable whether the chattering input of accompanying walkers, the jolting alternative to a proper desk, or the scenic distractions of the path really are helpful. But procrastination is an invisible wall that is rarely about practicality. As a shared momentum, the caravan’s leverage helps break through the mental barrier, carrying me past the moment that kept me from starting and then forever solving the task.
The whole performative action is publicly situated and self-motivated. Its second stage unfolds online, feeding back into new computer tasks.
The same bicycle trailer is used in the project: Aktivunterhaltung.
Here it is the stage of a standup comedian that entertains joggers.
Some works consist of multiple situations and gradually form a kind of storytelling. By using a circular structure without a clear beginning or end, the video work also needs to be figured out by viewers as they orient themselves within it, entering from their own starting point.
Interactions enable the exploration of ideas, with the camera turning the situation into a shared fiction. Together with the participants, I figure out what kind of video we’re in. Small video works emerge from this process.
It is costlier, but also a more direct pursuit of ideas, when I write a screenplay and work with a film crew and actors.