performance week
Performance week 3 and 4, July 29 - August 10, 2025
Cristiana Cott Negoescu
Roulette
Roulette is a performative installation that materializes the tension between labor, chance, and systemic control. Set within an industrialized workspace, the performer engages in a repetitive cycle of production, dictated by the arbitrary logic of a lotto machine. The work highlights the alienation of labor, the erosion of workers' rights, and the illusion of choice within capitalist structures. The installation features a work station equipped with a pill press machine, sugar powder, and packaging materials, contrasting with a minimal break space furnished with a chair, instant noodles, and an iPad playing Joseph Beuys' Monologue. Cristiana operates in a looped sequence, caught between mechanized work and fleeting moments of relief determined by a system of chance. Roulette draws from historical and contemporary labor models, referencing Joseph Beuys' Wirtschaftswertprinzip (economic value principle) and Monologue, both of which address commodification, labor value, and economic structures. The lotto machine, a direct nod to Beuys' Honey Pump at the Workplace, functions as an absurd mechanism of control, simulating the unpredictable yet structured nature of labor cycles. Cristiana's actions, pressing sugar into pills, packaging, and deconstructing them, reflect cycles of production and destruction, critiquing the notion of value creation within industrial and digital economies. In its references to Joseph Beuys and contemporary labor conditions, Roulette becomes a mirror to a society where work is both necessary and absurd, where workers exist within systems they cannot control, and where the promise of freedom remains just beyond reach.
about the artist(s)
Cristiana Cott Negoescu is a Romanian-born artist based in Düsseldorf. Her work critically examines how political, economic, religious, and technological systems shape belief, control, and emotional investment. She creates spaces of ritual and disruption, using symbolic materials to interrogate transactional politics, emotional economies, and the illusion of choice. Cristiana draws on feminist and intersectional ideas in her work. She explores themes such as labor, migration, and manipulation, focusing on how systems shape meaning, influence participation, and create complicity in quiet but intrusive ways.
Back to project page