Working Title unfolded as an eight-hour durational performance in an abandoned 1980s function hall, where the building’s segmented architecture enabled a spatial dramaturgy in which labor was distributed, repeated, and made visible across multiple rooms, creating an environment structured less as a stage and more as a system.

The piece is a multidisciplinary performance project exploring labor conditions, class structures, and the physical and psychological impact of work on the individual. Developed by Anastina Eyjolfsdottir in collaboration with an international team of artists across Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland, the work interrogates how labor shapes our bodies, identities, and social realities, while challenging the boundaries between art and work itself.

Structured as an eight-hour durational performance, the piece mirrors the format of a standard workday, including breaks. Through a series of staged scenarios, the performance examines questions such as: What is the true cost of selling one’s time? What forms of value are produced beyond the monetary? And how does labor continue to affect us after we have clocked out? Central themes include repetition and monotony, workplace power dynamics, the body’s needs in relation to labor, and the connection between economic stability and mental health.

The project unfolds through a collaborative and site-responsive process. Co-creation and collective organization are central to the methodology, reflecting the project’s critical engagement with hierarchy and power.

Spanning visual arts, dance, music, theatre, and media, Working Title contributes to an interdisciplinary field. By combining durational performance with a socially engaged framework, the project seeks to open new ways of understanding labor—not only as an economic necessity but as a lived, embodied condition. It also aims to stimulate dialogue around the shifting foundations of the Nordic welfare model, where rising living costs and changing labor markets challenge long-standing assumptions about work as a pathway to stability.

Ultimately, the project aspires to create a space for reflection, dialogue, and collective imagination—inviting audiences to reconsider how we value work, how we organize ourselves, and what kind of futures we want to build together. Working Title seeks to reposition discussions of labor and personal economy as shared societal concerns rather than private matters.