Savannah Bustillo
Minneapolis, MN
www.savannahbustillo.com

Artist Statement

This is a book about the history of work.
About the history of LEVERs.
WHEELs AND AXLEs.
INCLINED PLANEs,
WEDGEs, PULLEYs, and SCREWs.

These are the six simple machines.
They are the simplest mechanisms that use mechanical advantage or leverage, to help minimize the force needed to do work. This book tells the story of the six simple machines: First defined in classical
Greek texts on mathematics by philosophers like Archimedes, they were then further elaborated on by Renaissance darlings like Galileo and Leonardo da Vinci during the neoclassical revival in Western
Europe. They are linear, unidirectional, ideal – without friction or elasticity getting in the way. While understood as limited in their applications in modern machine theory, their usefulness remains in their easy identification and casual everyday usage by people trying to do work.

This book is a compound machine.
It is formed from the combination of simple machines contained in its pages, screen printed in layers of red and black ink on vellum, overlapping images of the simple machines with the words that tell their story. These vellum inserts fan out throughout the pages of the book like notches in a gear, turning their way slowly and methodically around the central axis of the book for viewers to read. The main body is constructed from a slice of a recycled American popular science and technology magazine called Popular Mechanics. Founded at the turn of the 20th century, this magazine was meant to engage the typical American man in diy repairs, hacks, and gadgetry to properly maintain his home, car, and property while selling and showcasing tools and parts.

However, neither the six simple machines with their idealized leveraging of force, nor Daddy’s practical tips and good old common sense, are enough. There is more work to be done. What we know collectively of the history of work is assembled from simple components. Compromised and idealized. It ignores the friction from marginal bodies, their softer and quieter contributions. It ignores the buildup of stress and wear these excluded bodies face. I am intimately familiar with my own buildup of calluses, my own rubbed raw and then thickened skin – a necessity to protect a queer brown body like mine.

To aid this unacknowledged work and combat disproportionate strain, this book contains some hidden parts. There are four galvanized steel fender washers lightly taped onto pieces of the printed vellum inserts with instructions. Fender washers are designed to be load-bearing: to absorb shock and trauma from their environments. They are humble parts. Unassuming. Hidden under larger nuts and bolts. Viewers are given the following instructions: Peel off the washers. Hold them purposefully. Concentrate. Pass something you want to let go of to the washer, which can be left in a secret place. It will hold what you ask it to hold, as long as you need it.

This is a book about work. About failure. About the failure of work as we have previously acknowledged it and the need to make work work better. Work can be taught, passed down, practiced, and found. It exists as a link in a chain of simple machines that define work and by extension labor, power, and agency through specific operators and actors. But there exist spaces and ways to appropriate these simple machines, these Popular Mechanics, these
fender washers, the very concept of work. There are ways to make them our own. To work for us.