The Value of Absence, 2009-2011
Adrian Melis
Video-instalación, 10:20 min

What motivates us to go to work each day, and what motivates us to invent excuses to get out of work? Adrian Melis recorded workers in Cuba calling in sick, documenting the full array of their concocted pretenses. Many of them take full advantage of a socialist system, which pays their wages in spite of their absence. In instances of a salary deduction, the artist paid the difference in exchange for the right to use the audio recording.