Of Mice and Maintenance

I recently found myself dealing with a very New York issue. Without going into detail, I’ve spent every free moment in the last week cleaning and disinfecting my Brooklyn apartment from some unwanted visitors: mice.

My studio time, my reading time, my “free” time have all been taken up by cleaning and disinfecting my home. (On top of this, my car and my internet also broke, which was even more time spent on errands.)

I’ve spent the last week wishing I were spending time doing what I wanted to do, and not what I was actually doing. 

I’ve been thinking about how much of our lives are filled with the minutiae of the everyday: washing dishes, taking out the trash, calling the cable company, folding laundry, wiping up spills. (For those with children it might be more like: bathing children, getting them dressed, picking up toys, wiping bottoms.)

I’m reminded of the artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles, who made a career out of calling attention to “Maintenance Work.” This invisible work—done by caregivers, domestic workers and maintenance workers—is what keeps society running. In her Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969!, she names “two basic systems: Development and Maintenance.” Development is concerned with change and progress, and Maintenance with preserving and supporting said progress.

Ukeles wrote “Maintenance is a drag; it takes all the fucking time.”

I find her work inspiring, as she chose to reframe her invisible labor as art. She placed value on domestic work and unseen labor. Ukeles’ work is important in pointing out issues of class, labor, invisibility, and value in our culture. (She also had the privilege to call her maintenance work art, something that many don’t have.)

I’m not interested in declaring that cleaning my kitchen is Art, but I aminterested in how her notions of progress and maintenance can play out on a personal scale.

What I mean is that: to make and do interesting work, or to feel empowered to progress, we must maintain and support the parts of our lives that enable us to think creatively, envision, and generate ideas. Every artist knows the importance of cleaning the studio.

Maintenance supports Development.

Using Ukeles as inspiration, I’d like to place more value on all the labor I do, rather than dismiss maintenance work as less important, or downplay what it takes to create a successful life or a successful work of art.

Here’s to maintaining!