Article Lead Image

The Morning GIF: Endless chores

Erdal Inci mops while his cat mopes.

 

Lorraine Murphy

Streaming

Posted on Feb 8, 2013   Updated on Jun 2, 2021, 1:42 am CDT

Here at the Daily Dot, we swap GIF images with each other every morning. Now we’re looping you in. In the Morning GIF, we feature a popular—or just plain cool—GIF we found on Reddit, Canvas, or elsewhere on the Internet.

“I hate housework,” said Joan Rivers once, long before you were born. “You make the beds, you wash the dishes, and six months later you have to do it all again.” Turkish video artist Erdal Inci knows just how she feels.

His Tumblr is filled with GIFs of him in multiple exposure, playing with light, climbing stairs, circling and do-si-doing with himself, a living Escher figure in Istanbul’s urbanscape. This, called “Cleaner and the Cat” is one of his more seemingly sedate works, a self-portrait of the artist as a young domestic.

Beneath the simplicity of mundane mopping, however, lies unexpected tension. By stacking the figures so close together, minimizing arm motions, and moving so slowly, the artist gives an impression of relentless drudgery, the white cleaner’s smock reminiscent of a straightjacket, a prison of domesticity, never to be escaped.

As in real life, the cat looks on, unimpressed.

Share this article
*First Published: Feb 8, 2013, 10:33 am CST