9to5, a performance by Marilisa Cosello

9to5 is an intervention by artist Marilisa Cosello (Salerno, 1978). The project features Francesca Ciaffoni (Teramo, 1991), dancer and performer.

The title references the famous 1980 American comedy starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton. For many years, the film overshadowed the very phenomenon that inspired it: the political organization 9to5, founded in Boston in the early 1970s by a group of secretaries who combined labor union demands with feminist struggles, achieving significant results against structural misogyny in the workplace and gradually expanding to a national scale.

9to5 continues Cosello’s research into the cultural and economic colonization of the American model in the West from the postwar period onward. The action, conceived for the laundromat’s spaces, is a performative allegory of white-collar productive labor: “a system of rules that the body executes until it forgets they exist.” Enclosed in a tailored suit-uniform, the performer executes a rhythmic, repeated choreography until emptied out. Work loses its purpose and finally acquires a visible form.

“Line dance and the tailored suit are the very form in which Western desire has organized itself, the rhythm under which the body has learned to be productive. Mark Fisher calls hauntology the way the past continues to structure the present without being recognized as such. Line dance and the tailored suit are exactly this: ghosts dancing in work clothes.”

Tumble out of bed and I stumble to the kitchen
Pour myself a cup of ambition
And yawn and stretch and try to come to life
Jump in the shower and the blood starts pumpin’
Out on the street, the traffic starts jumpin’
With folks like me on the job from 9 to 5

Workin’ 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin’
Barely gettin’ by, it’s all takin’ and no givin’
They just use your mind and they never give you credit
It’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it
9 to 5, for service and devotion
You would think that I would deserve a fair promotion
Want to move ahead, but the boss won’t seem to let me
I swear sometimes that man is out to get me, mm

They let you dream just to watch ’em shatter
You’re just a step on the bossman’s ladder
But you’ve got dreams he’ll never take away
In the same boat with a lot of your friends
Waitin’ for the day your ship’ll come in
And the tide’s gonna turn an’ it’s all gonna roll your way

Workin’ 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin’
Barely gettin’ by, it’s all takin’ and no givin’
They just use your mind and you never get the credit
It’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it
9 to 5, yeah, they got you where they want you
There’s a better life and you think about it, don’t you?
It’s a rich man’s game no matter what they call it
And you spend your life puttin’ money in his wallet
9 to 5, what a way to make a livin’
Barely gettin’ by, it’s all takin’ and no givin’
They just use your mind and they never give you credit
It’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it
9 to 5, yeah, they got you where they want you
There’s a better life and you think about it, don’t you?
It’s a rich man’s game no matter what they call it
And you spend your life puttin’ money in his wallet
9 to 5—