It all starts with the idea of employing herself as a household help. Anja Dietmann applies for a grant and, a short time later, the artist is her own employer and her own employee, all in one person.

She pays herself a fee for household tasks, according to the minimum wage for unskilled cleaners in the tariff group 1 of the German pay scale. Anja Dietmann records her daily activities through daily bank transfers. 365 transfers, credit notes, booking texts: “ANJA DIETMANN, 30.12: 10 min washing up, 10 min tidying, 20 min cleaning bathroom”. Her repetitive notes are evidence of the artistic, performative penetration of everyday life, of the subtle observance of the bizarre in the familiar context. The money earned was used to finance the production of “Umsatzübersicht”. The result is a conceptual artist’s book that is an intelligent reflection on care work. With “Umsatzübersicht”, Anja Dietmann not only questions normative understandings of roles, but also describes socio-economic conditions and shows that not only the political is personal, but also the personal is highly political.

—Nadine Droste