The performance begins at 11am and audiences are welcome to drop by and watch until 7pm

Lorem ipsum 9-to-5 is a durational performance spanning a standard 9-to-5 workday. Through ritualised, repetitive gestures, the artist plasters then peels off text from a wall. Drawn from an absurdist patchwork of sources, the writing in question includes curatorial statements from past and current exhibitions (including the Youth Takeover) as well as interviews with academics working with themes of migration and labour.

This dual engagement with embodied labour and artistic writing functions as both a discursive and material reflection. Inspired by Francis Alÿs’ Paradox of Praxis and his ethos of “sometimes making something leads to nothing”, this performance foregrounds the absurdity embedded in daily actions by centering the process rather than the outcome. Through mundane, mechanical movements staged in an unsuspecting setting in the Jameel Arts Centre, the performance centres the hidden labour behind acts of consumption and invites audiences to confront the limits of artistic ambitions through the prism of exhibition writing.  

This programme happens in conjunction with the performance tour And the Tools Begin to Speak: Poets in Response to Spoon Spade Shovel by poets Ahmed Gihad Hamad, Dania Dawn, Jared Maxilom, Malavika Suresh, Pankaj Kanchandani, Sarah Afaneh, Shania Laude and Syed Haider. Participants are highly encouraged to attend this tour to learn more about the Youth Takeover 2025 themes and exhibited works through spoken word poetry. Reserve your spot through the above link.

This programme is organised by the Assembly 2024-2025 member Manal Nadeem as part of the 2025 Youth Takeover.

Andrés Ugartechea is a multidisciplinary artist based in the UAE. The dissection of his identity through political descriptors introduces him as a Mexican-American, first-generation individual. Each of these aspects plays a pivotal role in shaping the subject matter of his practice, which aims to question and reframe academic understandings of labour, migration and knowledge. By combining his academic focus with personal experiences, Andrés employs a range of digital and traditional media to explore the intersectionality of his identities.

Manal Nadeem is a member of the 2024-2025 cohort of the Assembly. She majored in International Studies at the American University of Sharjah. Through her prismatic approach–an ethnographer’s eye, an academic’s mind, and a writer’s heart–Manal marries the microscopic and macroscopic, politicising the personal and interrogating everyday experiences, ranging from migration to environmentalism, through an intersectional lens.