DOLE
Argyle House, formerly an old social security office incorporating a job centre,
with bullet proof customer booths still in place, alongside ticket dispenser
and, a still working, queue allocation number-machine.
5
6
Toilets (ang.)
An old till roll, with receipts of purchases from the staff canteen.
Transactional economy of the work place, where meagre benefit
transactions are processed. Toilets is an anagram of TS Eliot.
7
8
Communication
Hand written replication of the graffiti in the social security customer toilets, still in situ after
many years.
9
10
11
12
13
GRASS
DSS toilet graffiti
CAL –S
COW
FUCKED AGAIN
The left over slags
DOSE NOT EVEN LIKE HER
YOU ARE A
GILMERTON SLAG BITCH
POLICE
INFORMER
TUFF SHIT HEʼS
MINE YA SILLY
WEE BOOT
GRASS
Us women put men
on this earth
and what thanks do
we get
FUCK ALL
Us women put men
on this earth
and what thanks do
we get
FUCK ALL
FUCK YOU
YA COW
FAE PAULINE
IS A FAT SMELLY
JUNKIE BASTERD
ALWAYS
&
FOREVER
Jordin
is
a big
pote
onwards
4 EVER
4 YEARS
2 COME
Fae
1997
and
14
FUCK YOU
YA COW
FAE PAULINE
forever
IDT
still
going
strong
Hi doll
Howʼs u?
luv
Lynne
Fuck humanity
It fucked its self
Aids will kill
all
DeATH!
an eND TO ALL
NO MATTER
WHO U R
or what
youve
Achieved
ALWAYS
+
forever
ALWAYS
+
forever
IDT
FUCK YOU
YIR FUCKEN
FANNYS ROTTEN
YA WEE
STEEMER
Clarty fanny
suck foastie
LIPS
FOR
A
BOTTLE
OF
CIDER
SLUT
was ere
in style
110%
strong
SLAG
SLAG
IS AT AT DIRTY
SLAG
You are dead boot
FUCK YOU
YIR FUCKEN
15
16
17
Reception / Interview room 1–4
This glass case is a record of the instruments of repression. The objects it contains – mostly pens and
pencils – are innocuous at first glance, yet they represent the implicit power that those institutions can wield
over people. The swab found among all the other detritus in my digging around is an anomaly. What was its
purpose? To test claimants for disease, record their DNA?
18
19
20
21
Rubbish
A flap from a rubbish bin in the old canteen. Its function and what it signifies is disrupted, but still
present, as layers of meaning are added. It suggests the remnants that I found in Argyle House, the
ephemeral nature of the exhibition, but also the dismissive nature of the benefits system, where
claimants are increasingly treated as rubbish. Underneath is a bag full of real claimant file print outs,
which I shredded (see also ‘Scott print outs’ nos. 17-19).
22
23
24
25
Annual leave
The term ‘annual leave’ has always annoyed me. What’s wrong with ‘holiday’? Annual leave implies permission
has been given, you have been allowed leave of absence, thus reinforcing the power-dynamics of the employee
hierarchy. ‘Holiday’ sounds like way too much fun.
26
27
28
29
Occupied
Metal sliding door signs removed from the doors and
grouped together, with black pen erasures of the
words ‘vacant’ and ‘engaged.’ The title is deliberately
polysemic, meaning to take, seize; take possession of,
held in possession; dwell in; filled up, taken up; engaged,
employed; under military occupation.
30
31
32
33
34
35
Label
A label already in the space that became
the gallery, Interview Room 11.
36
Staff forms
Staff forms as noun – the forms
that staff can take.
The 11th check
* Please bring
3 months wage slips.
3 months bank statements.
Open new bank account.
Up-to-date creditor information.
37
Destroy
An instruction to destroy between Oct 09 – July 2010. Surrounding this is a Tipp-Ex
erasure poem – ‘The Law says you need to live on’ – created from the destruction
of one of my JSA letters, received in the months prior to the exhibition.
38
Changing room
Where staff forms go to change.
39
40
Interview room 5 & 6
This glass case is a logical extension of the
previous one. Instead of instruments of repression
this contains found objects that could be employed
in a more sinister type of interview scenario.
41
42
43
Memorandoms
Three internal memo forms in various states.
44
45
46
Business
Like the label, this was already in place.
47
48
Scott print outs 1–63 (heavily amended) with Anne Laure Coxam
49
50
51
Scott print outs 100–125 (hardly amended)
I found 225 pages of computer print outs relating to one claim. These were arranged in blocks and
also shredded. Some were heavily amended through Tipp-Ex erasures, some were left as found.
52
Xmas party (Scott print outs 160–225 shredded) with Anne Laure Coxam
Some of the shredded print outs, arranged to suggest a xmas office party.
53
Poppy
A print of Monet’s 1873 painting Poppy Field found somewhere in Argyle House. This
type of faux-cultural print – ubiquitous in offices in recent decades – sought to indicate
a corporate appreciation of art and brighten the place up. In relation to social security it
signifies heroin and drug abuse, associated rightly or wrongly with benefit claimants, it
is also slang for money. The poppy references the Haig Fund and the commemoration
of WW1, and by extension wars in general, with many soldiers ending up in the benefit
system, or worse, once the army is done with them. The frame is deliberately askew.
54
55
Interview room 12
The inside of an interview booth where staff forms would interview
claimants. The room was left as is. On the other side of the glass a
recording played on a loop, iterating the options available from the Job
Centre Plus phone line.
56
57
58
Exit
An erasure with green acrylic paint.
59
Folders
Unused folders for storing all information and correspondence for claimants,
finally put to good use.
60
61
Letter
(pages 62/67)
A letter written to Iain Duncan Smith MP, then Secretary of State for Work and
Pensions, which was copied to my local MP, Sheila Gilmore, and Kenny MacAskill,
MSP, then Cabinet Secretary for Justice. The letter was an attempt to prove
the impossibility of getting by on £71.70, the weekly amount of Job Seekers’
Allowance.
Replies
(pages 68/69; 70)
My letter was sent to allow 21 days for a response – the time indicated by Duncan
Smith’s office for a reply – which coincided with the opening of the exhibition. I
received timeous replies from MacAskill (note hilarious typo in the third sentence
of his reply) and Gilmore. A very standard reply from the office of the MP for
Chingford, addressing none of my questions, did not arrive until the very end of the
exhibition, two weeks after it should have.
62
63
T3.02
The Scottish Parliament
Edinburgh
EH99 1SP
37 Lismore Crescent
Edinburgh
EH8 7DL
15/10/2013
Dear Mr MacAskill,
I am writing to you to ask if you could consider some issues I have raised with Mr
Smith at the Department of Work and Pensions regarding Job Seekers’ Allowance –
the letter is appended below in its entirety. Many issues have been raised, so please
don’t feel obliged to answer them all, however, as my MSP I will be pleased to know
what you think about these issues in general and any response to specific points will
be greatly received.
‘Dear Mr Smith,
I am writing to you to pose some questions about Job Seekers’ Allowance, which I
have been claiming for a year. I work part-time, so generally receive no JSA, because I
have as much as or more money coming in than the law says I need to live on.
The last clause of the preceding sentence is pertinent to my main questions, as the
clause contains a paraphrase of a puzzling sentence from my JSA letters. Here is the
sentence:
64
‘We cannot pay you because you have as much as or more money coming in than the
law says you need to live on.’
This is the statement I receive when I earn more than £71.70 per week (all bar two
weeks this year). My first question is this: what is the law to which this refers?
According to the OED (the) law is defined as ‘the system of rules which a particular
country or community recognises as regulating the actions of its members and which
it may enforce by the imposition of penalties.’ This definition led me to the formulation
of the following: how can there be a law which regulates how much money one has
coming in? How can one break such a law?
These questions have been bothering me for some time. I also thought I’d take this
opportunity to question the assumption that it is possible to live on £71.70 a week by
breaking down a week’s spending, before further exploration surrounding this sum.
Prior to this I would like to ask: how was this figure calculated? Did it take in to account
government recommendations about one’s 5-a-day for instance? I shall return to
other questions about what it may or may not have considered.
Here are my rough calculations of spending for one week:
Essentials
Cost
Electricity (coin meter) £7.00
Bus fares (five days at £3.50) £17.50
Internet (monthly breakdown) £9.00
Mobile phone ( “ ) £7.00
Soup (two or three lunches) £2.00
Breakfast (seven days, only toast) £2.20
5 a day (conservative estimate) £13.00
Eggs (ad hoc meals) £1.70
Meat (two meals) £4.00
Chicken (one meal) £3.00
Cheese (lunches) £2.00
Milk £1.50
Bread (mostly covered by toast) £0.50
Butter £1.00
Coffee/Tea £2.20
Total £73.60
65
I would like to explain my rationale for the contents of the above table, which, as you
can see, amounts to more than £71.70 and then consider things not covered
Electricity is self-explanatory: luckily I don’t have to pay for my GCH, covered in my rent;
bus fares: I generally have to travel somewhere most days and need more than two
buses, five days is a generous average; internet and mobile phones are prerequisites,
I would say, for contemporary living, not least for job searches and being contactable
at any time; soup is a cheap healthy meal that can last for a few meals; I like toast,
so am happy to have it every day, others may not and may spend more, especially
on something healthier; we are told by Government that we can exist on the above
weekly amount, at the same time, separately, we are recommended to have five
portions of fruit and veg per day – fresh items such as these are expensive, especially
when living alone – does this recommendation apply to those on JSA?; eggs, a good
source of protein and versatile; other sources of protein are meat and chicken, which I
have pencilled in for three meals in total; cheese, also good as part of a balanced diet;
milk and bread are pretty much staples of most diets; finally, coffee and tea could be
seen as luxuries, especially at the estimated cost above, but real coffee is one of my
few treats. Overall, I think there is enough food, healthy and fresh, to cover a week’s
consumption – just.
It is also generally assumed that a lot of benefit claimants and poor families lack the
‘skillset’ to use fresh ingredients to make healthy meals every day: ‘Poor families
more likely to eat junk Food’ (Daily Mail, Aug 2012) – see also anything Jamie Oliver
says on this issue. Without even considering health implications, junk food and
processed food is typically less economical than fresh ingredients that can be made
to last a week, especially if consumed three times a day. A government report from
2008 (Food: an analysis of the issue, Jan 2008) stated that poor families spend more
on food, proportionately, than wealthier families. I would hazard a guess that those
food bills would be more than the one I outlined for myself.
66
These, then, are the staples. What about other things? According to government
information on JSA, the weekly allowance is enough to cover replacing clothing due
to general wear and tear. If new clothes are needed a larger sum of money is required
at one time, say £20 for a new pair of jeans (not a very realistic price) – this would
create a significant dent in one week’s benefit. Say, for example, in six months there
would be a need to replace footwear, jeans, and a few tops, amounting to £80 at
a low estimate, convert this into a weekly sum and it pushes my breakdown up by
£3.33. I would suggest it’s nigh on impossible to save up for these things week by
week. Sometimes unexpected things happen, a funeral for instance, which will not be
covered by a typical week’s budget.
Then there could be other travel expenses to see family or friends outside of your local
area. What are we meant to do about birthdays? I have three children and two have
birthdays in the same week: am I not meant to buy them presents? How do I plan for
birthdays so close together? Do I disappoint my children? In my essential list above I
didn’t include other household goods that don’t need bought every week, but which
are still essential: cleaning products, toothpaste, washing powder, washing up liquid,
shower gel, toilet roll and so on. These costs, broken down into weekly amounts will
push my weekly estimate a few pounds higher. I have a laser jet printer, for which I
needed a toner this year – this cost £25 in one go; again, how does this factor into
my weekly benefit budget? Obviously I need my printer to apply for jobs: printing
applications, letters and CVs. To post away correspondence I need stamps. The cost
of stamps has risen dramatically – a rise of around 30% at one point – since the
credit crunch and privatisation by stealth, now for real. That’s the other thing about
recession: all price rises, and there are many, seem to increase far more than inflation
and even more than wage rises. (Even the price of a bacon roll in 2010 increased by
30% in one particular bakery chain.) This is a ridiculous economic bias and imbalance.
I have a rough idea why this happens, but can you explain it formally? These points
are very rough, but I think the idea is clear that there are many many things to cover
with the weekly amount the law says I need to live on, and which outstrip that weekly
amount.
67
68
I should also point out that I have lost four jobs since the economic crisis began, due
to funding cuts in my work sector: community education. It is now extremely difficult
to find sustainable work within this area, as there are fewer jobs and more people out
of work looking for employment in that field. Not to mention the rise of precarious
working conditions: contract work and zero-hour contracts. Struggling by with parttime
work, while receiving housing benefit, is the only way I can keep my hand in this
area. In other words, if I changed sectors, just to get off JSA, I might preclude myself
from ever working in the area I have worked in for the last eight years. For the record
it is an area in which I love working.
My last issue concerns what happens when you are working and suddenly have to
start signing on, with the massive drop in income that this incurs? Affordable things
such as mobile phones, cars, internet and so on, will suddenly seem financially out
of reach and once one has these things they cannot easily be given up. The claim
made by yourself that you would be able to live on weekly JSA is wholly disingenuous,
especially given the massive gap between your salary per week and JSA. It is a
preposterous claim. Surely a fairer system should be introduced whereby one’s
contribution to working and paying tax, in the period preceding signing on, would be
reflected in the amount of benefit received when first claiming JSA? This in itself, I feel,
would be more of an incentive to working, than the draconian ‘incentives’ currently on
offer. Insurance – a cushion – should one lose one’s job.
In France, for instance, if you are under 50 years old and have been working full time
for over four months, you are entitled to 57.4% of your last salary, after tax, through the
L’allocation d’aide au retour scheme (JSA equivalent). Couple this with other benefits,
housing benefit, and you could receive 70% of your last salary. This percentage
decreases gradually over time, but it’s a much fairer way to introduce people, who
have been working, to a severe change in income, than the significant income drop
which occurs in the UK. Similar schemes are in place in Denmark and other European
countries – I had the benefit of a French friend to find this information, but lacked a
Danish friend, or other European, to locate similar information.
I would like to know what you think about this particular way of dealing with
unemployment benefit and why, if it exists in other EU partner countries, it is not
adopted here, considered, or even discussed?
I realise there are many questions and issues raised in this letter, but they are
necessary questions to ask. Living on benefits during this interminable period of
austerity is very serious and I would appreciate a serious, considered response.
I look forward to hearing from you.’
I look forward to hearing from you too.
Yours sincerely,
Nicholas Melville
Cc: Sheila Gimlore, MP.
69
70
71
72
73
DOLE
Exhibition view
74
75
76
DOLE
Exhibition view
77
78
DOLE
Exhibition view
79
80
81
82
83
SOCIAL SECURITY
I am eighteen years old.
I am unemployed
and have no means of income.
first time claim
and I have no official proof
of identity
until I secure other
accommodation
or employment
I was in Jail UNTIL
THEN ON Income support Until
After serving 2 years 14 months
of a 4 year sentence
The law gives a list
of special reasons
that allows
claims to be
backdated
My previous claim was closed
As I was moving house
84
I forgot all about it
as I moved house
on that day
My previous claim was closed
As I was moving house
I forgot all about it
as I moved house
on that day
so everything got a bit messed up,
I call every few days
awaiting
next appointment date
DECISION MAKER
There was no more work –
They were subcontractors
I was ill on both days
I have been ILL and
In and Out
of hospital
but am well now
STOMACH PROBLEMS
Dialogue IS091 has terminated abnormally
TEMP work only
The guy@ payroll confirmed
JSA/ALSO IN JAIL
85
STOMACH PROBLEMS
Dialogue IS091 has terminated abnormally
TEMP work only
The guy@ payroll confirmed
JSA/ALSO IN JAIL
TEMP work only
DATE STENCIL FAXED
READY TO BE PROCESSED
Claims & Payments Regulations 1987
Only Temp work
Son is in hospital
as he has to have an operation
*STILL LIVE
I lived on my partners
child tax credit and child benefit
money
86
To whom it may concern
I Hereby write an honesty statement
that I am due no holiday
pay or PAY IN LUE of
Notice I AM DUE NO MONEY
FROM ANY EMPLOYER
I Hereby write an honesty statement
that I am due no holiday
pay or PAY IN LUE of
Notice I AM DUE NO MONEY
FROM ANY EMPLOYER
NOT ENOUGH WORK
Destruction Date Notification
Passported Reason Drug Abuse Nervous Debility
+ 2 nd Last Payslip
Unsure if customer is living at …
until I secure accommodation of my own
Domestic Emergency
I have asthma
and I was having difficulty breathing
LEFT AS PUT IN KITCHEN
WHICH WAS AGGRAVATING
MY ASTHMA
Mother and Father
My mother managed to help me
for a short while
I was at school and lived with my mother
Secretary of Stateʼs Direction on Severe Hardship
(Jobseekerʼs act 95)
87
My mother managed to help me
for a short while
I was at school and lived with my mother
Secretary of Stateʼs Direction on Severe Hardship
(Jobseekerʼs act 95)
My mum is going to throw me out
if I donʼt give her money towards my keep
Need to know
when and what payment was for
Asthma / Depression / Stomach Problems
I have no money and cannot get
a crisis loan
as I am at the £1000 limit
there has been a miscommunication
somewhere
along the line
Final payment made
only worked for one day
the lady confirmed
I was in hospital having a operation
to correct ACID REFLUX
I AM FINE NOW
88
I Have a cold/flu
Type of illness
the lady confirmed
I was in hospital having a operation
to correct ACID REFLUX
I AM FINE NOW
I Have a cold/flu
Type of illness
I reckon
it should only last a few days
I need to buy safety boots
for this job
I Moved House to this address
I am due no money
from them or anyone else
89
All objects, or groups of objects, were for
If one earned below the average salary th
If one earned above the average salary th
The average male salary at 6th Novembe
The average female salary at 6th Novemb
P60s were required at point of sale.
90
sale.
ey retailed at £71.70 (weekly JSA).
ey retailed at £350 (my housing benefit).
r 2013 was £31,500.
er 2013 was £24,475.
91
The artist would like to thank:
Mirja Koponen and everyone at Interviewroom11, Anne Laure Coxam and
Alessandro di Massimo.
This catalogue accompanies:
“DOLE” an exhibition by nick-e melville
6 – 16 November 2013
Interviewroom11, Edinburgh.
© the artist 2017, all the rights reserved
Texts © nick-e melville
First published by IR11 publications, 2017
www.ir11.org.uk
Photo credits © Anne Laure Coxam, Mirja Koponen.
Catalogue designed and coordinated by Alessandro Di Massimo
Typeset in Titillium, designed by Campivisivi, Urbino (IT)
SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1
Founded in 2013, Interview Room 11 is an artist run gallery and project space
located in Leith, Edinburgh. Previously located in Argyle House as a part of the FC+
Studios, we have now moved to occupy space in Ocean Terminal, taking on a very
different context in a large retail complex.
Gallery Committee & Co-Directors:
Mirja Koponen
Ana González Chouciño
Jurgita Žvinklytė
The exhibition “DOLE” was coordinated by Mirja Koponen.
Thanks to all the volunteers who helped us to make this exhibition possible.
nick-e melville
DOLE
IR11 publications, 2017.
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