Three Hours a Day, Five Days a Week

Single-channel video, 5:16 mins
2020

Three Hours a Day, Five Days a Week is a video collage that pieces together the views and sounds from the artist’s daily commute on the highway in Silicon Valley from 2017 to 2019, between San Francisco and the South Bay suburbs. At a time during the COVID-19 pandemic, commute as a typical modern life experience has suddenly become distant and foreign. The artist found short footages shot on her phone when she was bored on the shuttle and attempted to portray the physical and mental states during these long and introspective hours. The background sounds from various sources form a collage as well, reflecting the dynamics of the environment as well as the evolution of the artist’s attitudes.

The technology companies in Silicon Valley represent some of the most advanced and successful forms of capitalism and the most cutting-edge innovation in technology today. The piece poses the questions of how we have advanced and what has remained the same. The employees are given incredible benefits, autonomy and even grand vision and purpose, but has the nature of the work changed compared to the factory workers in the classic critique of capitalism? The tech companies constantly preach about a utopian future that they are building towards while the political and social changes unfolding around the world tell a very different story. What caused the dissonance there? As an immigrant worker in one of the major tech companies, the artist struggled through these questions on an individual level, trying to develop her own values and positions on these issues.

Still images