Gender & Space// Sanne Scheepmaker: ART WORK // MAINTENANCE LIST

Maintenance List is a self-published zine and ongoing participatory research project that examines invisible maintenance work within artistic, architectural, and institutional contexts. The zine consists primarily of a continuous list of maintenance tasks—bureaucratic, administrative, emotional, and logistical work that sustains creative practice but is rarely acknowledged as labour. Inspired by Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Maintenance Art Manifesto, the project treats maintenance not as background activity, but as central material. The final pages of the zine are intentionally left blank.

Readers are invited to continue the list by recording their own maintenance work: repetitive tasks, administrative obligations, emotional adjustments, and forms of care that often go unnoticed within institutional spaces. The zine thus functions simultaneously as artwork, archive, and research tool. Participants are invited, but not required, to photograph or scan their completed pages and share them anonymously. Contributions will be collected as raw, unedited data and used to produce a subsequent performed academic research paper. This paper will retain participants’ voices while applying basic categorical and statistical analysis, deliberately blurring the boundary between artistic practice and academic research.

Situated within the context of Gender and Space, the project approaches maintenance work as spatially distributed and socially assigned. Rather than focusing solely on self-identified gender, the research pays particular attention to perceived gender—how individuals are read by others within institutional and professional spaces—and how this perception may influence the allocation of invisible labour. In doing so, the project examines how space, power, and gendered assumptions shape who is expected to maintain, organize, smooth, and care. The project is grounded in feminist and practice-based research ethics.

All participation is voluntary, contextual questions are optional, and contributors retain control over what they choose to share. The act of writing, documenting, and sending maintenance lists is understood not as extraction, but as part of the maintenance work itself. Maintenance List remains deliberately unfinished. It is designed to be used, written into, circulated, and extended—reflecting the ongoing, repetitive, and collective nature of maintenance labour.

Accessibility Statement

Maintenance List is designed to be inclusive and accessible to a wide range of readers. We recognize that some participants may benefit from alternative formats or digital access.

• Digital Version: A fully accessible digital version of the zine is available, optimized for screen readers, keyboard navigation, and high-contrast viewing. It includes all lists, blank pages for contribution, and instructions for participation.

• QR Code Access: A QR code is provided in the print zine to quickly access the digital version.

• Participation Options: Contributors may complete maintenance lists in the print zine, in the digital version, or via audio recordings. Submission is voluntary and anonymous.

 • Inclusive Design: Efforts will be made to use legible fonts, high-contrast text, spacious layouts, and tactile or interactive cues where possible.