Nine Hour Delay (2012–58): Borosana Shoe Issue

The presence of Yugoexport in Performing Conditions: Artistic Labor and Dependency as Form proceeds from the ground up in the form of an issue event, with the distribution of ergonomic footwear, handbags, and currency wrapped with care in plastic baggies. 

The shoe is the Borosana, an ergonomic pump developed between 1960 and 1969 at Borovo Rubber Industry in Vukovar, Yugoslavia. Designed with orthopedic surgeons and tested by the female factory workforce, it was engineered for nine hours of standing without spinal strain and mandated for women across Yugoslavia’s public sector. Production ceased when Vukovar became a war zone in 1991. Revived by Yugoexport for Nine Hour Delay (2012–58), several hundred pairs are available for free at MIT to anyone, regardless of gender, who is drawn to the prospect of ergonomic women’s footwear, on the contractual condition that they be worn only while working. 

A related project centers on an artist-designed note referencing Yugoslavia’s hyperinflation in the 1990s (Nula Bill ([2026]). These trillion-dinar notes are wrapped in plastic bags and rubber bands, a gesture developed in collaboration with artist Cally Spooner, which honors a mode of safekeeping by Spooner’s Italian grandmother, who wrapped and hid her valuables. Currency is issued together with a handbag, produced by Yugoexport, originally designed by Aleksandar Joksimović (Mon Mon Bag (2016–ongoing]). Bags are available while supplies last, on the condition that they be worn—with wrapped currency inside—for the duration of the exhibition. As with the shoes, to receive is to enter into a contract, redirecting attention from display toward use and from acquisition toward relation.

These works are brought to you by Yugoexport, a blind and nonaligned “oral corporation,” whose founding logic is equivalence, loyalty, and familial solidarity between people and things.

Initiated by the artist Irena Haiduk as a copy of the former Yugoslav apparel and weapons manufacturer Jugoeksport, Yugoexport is formally incorporated in the United States (where corporations are people), launched in Paris, and headquartered in New York. Their maxim, How to Surround Your Self with Things in the Right Way, powers the production of images, books, apparel, orations, films, scenographies, and variable spaces, all designed to nourish the organ of imagination.

Those wishing to enter into a contract will be accommodated on a first-come, first-served basis, as supplies last. Shoes are available in European sizes 36–42.