A small waiting room with a screen high on the back wall. On the screen: a full museum hour sequence of surveillance images of the same small waiting room. In the morning, it slowy fills with business people. They come in, sit down and wait. They do nothing. Nothing, that could make their waiting in any way productive. No cellphones, no magazines, no distraction. They sit and wait until the end of the day.
„Betterment room“ was the name given by the industrial consultants Frank and Lilian Gilbreth to the investigation room they built inside factories to optimize the workers movements and teach them the „one best way to work“.A room dedicated to efficiency, inside the factory.
The installation „Betterment Room“ is a search for an inversion of this room, hundred years later . A room dedicated to inefficiency, inside a museum. A waiting room, full of today‘s white collar workers, paid to wait, without doing anything that could be productive in any way.

Realized with the kind support of the Arts Foundation of North Rhine-Westphalia and Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld
Production director: Hans-Günter Brünker;
Assistance: Lea Hartlaub, Richard Bade, Thomas Larisch, Jürgen Schmitz, Stefan Hoffmann;
Performers: Heide - Rose Schmitz, Monika Noltensmeier, Bärbel Giermann, Bernd Holzhüter, Christian Jacob, Christine Heinrichs, Christoph Troche, Franz Steinfort, Iris Wittkowski, Jochen Horch, Klaas Pekala, Olaf Dennhoven, Rainer Thress, Stefan Preis, Thomas Jung.

Filmed with the support of company Concept-Secure, Heimbach, DE