The Office Shaman

The Office Shaman - Video and performance, 2001-05.

Please Click Here to view a 5.2 mb QuickTime excerpt from The Office Shaman video. You can watch the whole 9 minute video on youtube.com. The Office Shaman was originally created in 2000 as an exhibition of paraphernalia for a pseudo-business venture. It was later turned into a performance piece for the PBS series, Art:21, with the help of my friend and occasional musical collaborator, Paul Amiel. After receiving a lot of interest, I decided to create a mock info-mercial for the piece in 2005 with Paul and the artist Tim Marsden starring as the tardy employee. I originally intended to send the DVD and promotional materials to various corporate human resource departments, but I am currently rethinking the piece.  The Office Shaman is currently exhibited with the letter of introduction (text below), business cards and "shamanic" paraphernalia accompanying the video.

 

Letter of Introduction: Dear Mr./Ms. Corporate Visionary, You’ve seen it before, an employee straggles in late, perhaps a little disheveled, unshaven, …or worse. Maybe your company has previously reprimanded this employee about his tardiness and lack of motivation. Will this behavior spread to your other employees like a medieval plague? Or perhaps you have an employee who is a habitual gossiper. Is she the team player your company needs and deserves? Chances are the problem isn’t that you hired bad employees, but that there is some other malevolent influence at work. Sure, you could terminate them, but your costly investment would go up in smoke and there is certainly no guarantee the next employee will turn out any better. The Office Shaman® has a better solution. More than half the globe, including many of your clients and customers, believes in evil spirits! I’m not talking about the ghouls and goblins that ring your doorbell on Halloween and yell “trick or treat!” No, this is a much more serious threat. Just as spirits dwell within forests, caves and mountaintops, ghastly forces are lurking within your company’s walls, cubicles and break rooms. An employee may become an unwilling host to demonic forces, putting your company’s profits at instant risk. Outsourcing only adds to the problem since even more strange and damaging spirits are known to dwell within countries such as India, China and Mexico. These spirits must be eliminated! That’s where the Office Shaman® comes in! For a modest fee, The Office Shaman® will perform a magical and efficient shamanistic ritual that will harmonize your employee’s life goals with those of your corporation, all in just a few minutes! As you know, managing the future requires innovation and strategic planning. Contact The Office Shaman® today to guarantee a workplace free from malevolent spirit forces intent on seeing your business fail!             Cordially,             The Office Shaman®

Copyright 2007 Ambiguous Art