Something to Thank the Workers is a performance. that acknowledges the armies of medical researchers who have dedicated their lives to the advancement of medical treatments without ever having the chance to meet the people they have helped. While patients have opportunities to thank doctors, nurses, and hospital staff, they rarely have the chance to thank the team that started the research 50 years before it was available for pickup at the local pharmacy. This performance intends to visualize the uncountable hours of labor that precede a medical breakthrough, and honor the fact that researchers often spend decades crossing off what doesn’t work with the hope that, one day, a future team will figure out what does by process of elimination.
Something to Thank the Workers, Hartnett Gallery, University of Rochester, 2023
Performed by John Maqui, Yuwen (Loki) Su, Grace Julien, Robert Marcinauskas, Bo Wu, Dustin Paden, Lan Zhang, Gwen Tabb, Yaxuan (Mofei) Wang, Hana Genana, Phi Kasem-Beg, Yutong (Jenny) Ban, and Angelica Aranda.
Videography: Dustin Paden, who embedded the camera within the performance.