What I Did/Do, Now/Then/Forever… (detail 2)

“What I Did/Do, On the Clock, Now/Then/Forever In the Eternal Return of Work”

What I Did/Do, Now/Then/Forever… (detail 1)

“What I Did/Do, On the Clock, Now/Then/Forever In the Eternal Return of Work”

What I Did/Do, Now/Then/Forever…

“What I Did/Do, On the Clock, Now/Then/Forever In the Eternal Return of Work”

What I Did/Do…pages

What I Did/Do…pages

What I Did/Do…pages

What I Did/Do… cover

Fake Damien Hirst Spot Painting

Consultant Dan Nelson offers a reasonably-priced copy of a Damien Hirst "spot" painting.

Clock in my head / Clock on the wall / And the two of them / Don’t agree at all / Friday is heaven, Friday is heaven

I.S. Consultant Dan Nelson

Consultant Dan Nelson (above, on assignment in Italy) has been with Imperial Services since 1998, when he founded the western Connecticut presence of the group. He brings two decades of experience in art and thirty years of service-based work. He offers services in the categories of Strategizing & Guidance, Self-Improvement, Oral Servicing, Love Life, Content Generation, and Heavy Lifting, among others.

Eilshemius

Louis Michel Eilshemius was an artist and Renaissance man in the first half of the 20th century. Known primarily as a painter who was promoted by Marcel Duchamp, he was not shy about promoting his panoply of skills, which were presumably some combination of real and imagined. As an antidotal attitude to the specialist mentality of the 21st century, and as one who envisioned the self as containing multitudes, he is one of the spiritual forefathers of Imperial Services.

Imperial Services Office

An Imperial Services office displaying a print of a Rorschach inkblot. Hermann Rorschach (1884 – 1922) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst whose education in art helped to spur the development of a set of inkblots that were used experimentally to measure various unconscious parts of the subject's personality. His method has come to be referred to as the Rorschach test, iterations of which have continued to be used over the years to help identify personality, psychotic, and neurological disorders. Rorschach continued to refine the test until his premature death at age 37.

Founder Eugene Guarnieri

Imperial Services was founded in 1956 in Chicago by Eugene Guarnieri (shown at right with an unidentified client), a semi-retired professor of psychology, amateur sculptor, and violist. As the child of a wealthy diplomat he traveled the world throughout his youth, living in Persia, Italy, Ethiopia, and Norway, eventually becoming fluent in five languages. After serving in in a secretive psy-ops division of the U.S. Army in World War II, Guarnieri taught at the University of Chicago, where he came into contact with an aesthetically rarefied world created by the educated and wealthy of the city. His social ties and savvy way with people eventually translated into informal consulting sessions held in upscale hotel bars, private clubs, museums, and homes.

Elysium

Read a Poem to a Client Over the Phone

This is an example of one of the many services we can provide to clients of Imperial Services.

Menu of Services

Selected Menu of Services. Custom services are also available.

Imperial Services Logo and Tagline

Imperial Services logo and tagline, designed ca. 1977, designer uncredited

Factory

Summary 3

Produced for the "Imagining Post-Capitalism" exhibition and event series at ProArts Gallery, Oakland, Calif., May 2018.

Summary 2

Produced for the "Imagining Post-Capitalism" exhibition and event series at ProArts Gallery, Oakland, Calif., April 2018.

Summary 1

Produced for the "Imagining Post-Capitalism" exhibition and event series at ProArts Gallery, Oakland, Calif., April 2018.

Company Culture

A dreamcatcher for data capture

Please Hold

“Work Produce Consume Pollute” t-shirt by Custom Flotilla

Make An Artist A Millionaire: 400 to 1: Sanford Weill

Phase 4 of "Make an Artist a Millionaire" is called "400 to 1." It entails writing a letter to each of the people on the Forbes 400 list to solicit a donation. The project is more about sussing out human nature and understanding how to get through to the kind of person who, on the surface, couldn't be more different from the average artist: the business person. The same challenge of asking for something in return for nothing that exists on the lower end of the scale of quantity--$1--is amplified many times in approaching millionaires and billionaires.

Make An Artist A Millionaire: 400 to 1: John Glen Sperling

Phase 4 of "Make an Artist a Millionaire" is called "400 to 1." It entails writing a letter to each of the people on the Forbes 400 list to solicit a donation. Rather than sending a form letter to each member of the Forbes 400, the intent is to research each person and craft a personalized plea.

Make An Artist A Millionaire: 400 to 1: Anne Cox Chambers

Phase 4 of "Make an Artist a Millionaire" is called "400 to 1." It entails writing a letter to each of the people on the Forbes 400 list to solicit a donation. What at first seemed simply like a euphemism for "your project will never succeed" grew into, if not a more effective approach to getting the million, at least a challenge. More interesting than asking people over and over for a dollar, which in the end possibly just reinforced the idea of the artist as an undeserving beggar, someone who steps out of line when they expect a reward for their gifts.

“The Corporation” Announcement

This Clock Will Never…

The Latin inscription translates as "This Clock Will Never Be Stolen Because the Employees Are Always Watching It."

Superstar CEO

This tee was made in women's style only.

Hard-Working Team Player

Dedicated Self-Starter

Detail-Oriented

Goldman Sachs

Marketing Guru

Social Media Rockstar 1

Content Creator

Adds Value

“The Corporation” installation view

Works shown (left to right): "Monument", "Getting to Yes" and "Take This Job".

“The Corporation” installation view

Works shown: "Please Hold" and "Planter".

Moving on to New Opportunities

For Bill Callahan.

Here to Help

Meeting 2

Collection of Pablo Manga

Head Start

Handmade by Shari Robertson

Materials Mockup for an Analog Stress Self-Reduction Chamber (Screaming Booth)

“The Corporation” book

Based on my experience working at a successful start-up from 2009-2015, this 64-page book includes photographs taken in offices and warehouses, corporate haiku written during long meetings, spam email promotions, digital collages, office humor, and more. The book and "The Corporation" exhibition highlight a number of current themes in American life: corporatism, neo-liberalism, greed, boredom, chaos, futility, plastic, cardboard, dysfunctional hierarchies, and the color beige. Limited, numbered edition of 100 includes free download of hold music made by the artist.

Fossil

for Nina Katchadourian

Assets

Body Double

Drawers Out

Form Factor

Getting to Yes

edition of 3

Monument

edition of 3

Early Imperial Services Business Card

Business card. ca. 1957 showing the original logo that bears the Latin saying "Audentes Fortuna Iuvat", i.e. "Fortune favors the bold." Designer uncredited.

Clearinghouse Publishers: “Official”

Throughout the making of “Official”, the image stuck in the editorial mind was of artist as office worker, for better or worse. As individual toiling in obscurity on small works of no consequence which are brought to the public with great effort and to small effect. Clocking in and out, only without the paycheck. I asked contributors to work backwards from the [tele-]visual presentation of ideas to the ideas themselves.

Clearinghouse Publishers: “Official” cover

The artist book "Official" presented the notion of artist as bureaucrat, as ad-man, as consultant, as worker and professional. This issue marked the first public emergence since the late '90s of my project "Imperial Services," a private consulting firm, members of which contributed to the issue.