Hans Richter’s Every Day, created in 1929, constructs a narrative of daily working experience from highly selective visual fragments, featuring pioneering Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein as one of a limited number of identifiable performers. The sound of a gradually speeding train underpins a striking opening sequence, as a disembodied arm reaches beneath a pillow to retrieve an alarm clock, subsequently thrown to the floor. A series of lower legs and feet - in long johns, reaching for slippers or knocking over a wine bottle, in one sock and outdoor shoe - make the transition from bed to floor. Repeated knee bends and bicep flexes, with the gradual addition of trousers, hats and coats, are interspersed with footage of a razor and a shaving-foam covered chin. Footage of strap-hanging rush hour commuters is intercut with the varying angles of a traffic policemen’s distinctively white sleeved-arm. Workers remove hats while streaming into a vertically bar-lined office, with protective black sleeve covers subsequently added. Over a radio commentary on share values, footage of a ledger, envelopes stacked in vertical post-room pigeon holes, and written columns of figures are followed by clock hands reaching midday. Hands wipe down table surfaces, the camera travels along a row of empty china cups and two sausages, a salt cellar and a jar of mustard move around a table top in a stop-motion animated interlude. In the boss’ office, a window-directed gaze is followed by footage of aeroplane and clouds; a wheat field, cows and hens. Disembodied hands operate an upright telephone, circular typewriter keys and draw ruler-straightened lines in ledgers. Hats are replaced and umbrellas gathered, followed by images of shop windows and illuminated theatre frontage. A seated audience watches bare-chested African dancers; a leg-raising chorus line and a succession of kissing couples. An audience member appears to doze, dreaming of bare feet operating typewriter keys; a chorus line and a kiss. A truncated version of the work’s opening sequence begins again with thrown alarm clock; descending feet; knee bends; bus passengers; white-sleeved arm, a policeman and spectacle-wearing boss, whose wire-rimmed glasses appear as refracted multiple image. The rocking of a statuette and a fist banged on to a desk initiates a faster-than-humanly-possible progression through the removal of post-room envelopes; figure-writing in ledgers and account stamping. A meshed pattern of crossing wires is revealed as a telephone exchange, operated by bobbed-haired women, and footage of sparks from a foundry furnace initiates several truncated rounds of alarm clock-throwing; feet descending; shaving and knee bends; bus; train and white-sleeved arm; figure columns; clock hands; wire-rimmed glasses; rocking statuette; typing; telephone wires; furnace sparks; the packing of cigarettes; industrial brick chimneys; the mopping of a brow. Each repetition of this visual shorthand differs in content and emphasis, at one point extending the sequence of feet descending floorwards, and increasing the industrially-themed imagery as footage of crumbling ash waste is intercut with repeated brow-mopping. A single face comes to rest against white bed-linen, and a book closes over the ornately hand-written word ‘finis’.