The value of work has always been subject to huge disparities. For a period in the mid twentieth century leftist parties and labour unions tried - and partially succeeded, at least in Western countries - to reduce these disparities. But during the last three decades, with globalization, the information revolution and the emergence of the post-fordist model of work, have become greater and greater again. Legal and illegal immigration from poorer countries provided cheap labour for agriculture and industries; while the competition from developing countries brought companies to produce cheaper commodities, and to reduce the wages of the workers, hire occasional workers, outsource production to developing countries. Youth unemployment is rising, and if the eight-hour day still survives in certain fields and for certain generations of workers, it has become a mirage for many young people. As it was stated in the concept of the exhibition Time & Motion: Redefining Working Life (FACT, Liverpool, December 2013 - March 2014), “amid the new realities of a globalised experience economy and a working environment that is increasingly distributed, virtualised and digital, our definitions of production and consumption, work and recreation are becoming increasingly blurred.”

Featured in this pertinent exhibition, One Euro by Oliver Walker is a six channel video installation, with each channel depicting one person working. Each video lasts as long as it takes the person depicted to earn one euro. The films vary in length from well over an hour for low paid agricultural workers; to their slightly higher paid counterparts in industry; via those on middle income wages; down to one minute, and with one film little over a second long.
The films do not offer a narrative, but rather quite detached observations of people at work. It is not intended as a didactic essay on wage inequality. While it offers reflection on these staggering inequalities, and this political position is ultimately not left ambiguous, the relationship between labour and money is transformed into a more subjective medium – time. Periods of time are not as easily compared with one another as pieces of graphical information, for instance. With video, the timescale is embedded into the medium (unlike photography, or even text). Ultimately the people on the screens are simply taking part in their everyday lives, and we see six bodies on six screens, side by side.