Touch Sanitation
Building on her work with maintenance workers, Ukeles met with over 8500 employees of the New York Sanitation Department for Touch Sanitation. She shook the hand of each employee, saying, "Thank you for keeping New York City alive". She documented these encounters on a map and meticulously recorded her conversations with the workers. In exhibitions of the project, she also presented documentation of some of the workers' private stories, in the hope of altering public perception and negative attitudes toward sanitation workers. In order to assist the artist, the sanitation department provided her with a driver and a guide for the entire year.
Ukeles referred to the (at that stage all male) sanitation workers as "the housekeepers of the city" and expressed a desire to shatter misconceptions about the importance, and intelligence of sanitation workers, through making their labor and their stories visible.
This artwork successfully challenged ideas about who is important enough to make art about; what art can be (performance, conversation, stories, transport); and also made possible a new kind of social art practice, which continues in contemporary art today.
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