Soon and Very Soon is a multi-sensory installation that incorporates audio and video interview recordings from current and past members of UNITE HERE Local 75, a union which supports hotel and hospitality workers. This site specific work, set in a Toronto hotel room, pulls together soundbites from multiple hotel workers (room attendants, shop stewards, organizers, housemen) into an oral history grafted onto a representation of the ‘back of house’—an area in the service industry which connotes and supports specific class disparities. The title refers to a song which the UNITE HERE Local 75 choir recorded and that reflects a shared community of people who gather in order to advocate for better labour rights for themselves and for future generations.

The site ceremoniously brings invisible narratives back to their location of inception and celebrates the successes of how far this industry has come in terms of workers rights. It relives the narratives which we would rather forget in a field deemed “unskilled” and sings the songs that lifts us up as a community that cares for one another. It shows us that no matter where we stand, the fictitious boundaries erected between environments do not matter—there is no ‘back of house’.

Guests needed to make an appointment to see the installation. They were then met in the lobby of the hotel and escorted up to the 25th floor hotel room for the viewing.

Here is a link to full audio of the installation. It is best to listen from earphones where you can remove one earphone to listen to the right or left audio isolated

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TUCK IN

Collaborator: Daisy Virgo
Collaborator: Linette Brown
Editing and Sound: James Rollo
Run time: 04:53:41

This performance-to-camera embedded in the Soon and Very Soon installation is inspired by the room turnover quota that was placed on hotel room attendants before they unionized. Housekeepers needed to turnover 18 rooms during an 8 hour shift, essentially needing to clean the room in 30 minutes—which doesn’t account for lunch nor a break. Workers often had to stay late unpaid in order to meet the quota.

In TUCK IN David Yu is instructed by two room attendants on how to make a perfect hotel bed to the standards of the Hilton Hotel. Within a seven hour day the artist proceeds to pay homage to the history of room attendants by making 18 king size beds, striving for the perfect standards and skills necessary in order to complete this essential element in turning over a hotel room. This durational performance shows the backbreaking labour and physical demand that bed making involves. It reveals the class disparity between creating a notion of “perfection” and luxury for the guests in comparison to the servitude of the room attendants. It shows the actual struggle and toll of this type of work as the artist attempts to keep up and keep on, repeatedly stripping away the sheets and rearranging them into the tightest and smoothest bound bed they could possibly make. Through this performance the artist honors the role of the room attendant by trying to earn their respect by “skilling up” to their level while challenging this fictitious idea that these positions are “low skill”. To quote Andria Babbington: “it is on the backs of these people that the empire was built on”.

Special thanks to Andria Babbington, Daisy Virgo, Linette Brown, Zeleda Davis

Installed at the Hilton Hotel a part of Mayworks Festival 2022