The Hidden Shift is a two-channel video installation commissioned by the Mattress Factory Museum. Inspired by the history of organized labor in Pittsburgh, it draws from the 1892 Homestead Strike—a violent confrontation between steelworkers and Henry Clay Frick’s Pinkerton agents—and the power imbalances the event laid bare.

Responding to this history, as well as to the Mattress Factory’s own layered past of industrial and cultural production, the artist collaborated with local filmmakers Alex Abrahams and Benny Shaffer to weave these threads into a single narrative. The resulting work is a film noir–inspired murder mystery set in a fictional macaroni factory, where the factory owner is found dead and each character carries their own motives and suspicions. Originally conceived as a three-act stage play, the work is presented here alongside a documentary-style “making-of” film. It is both a film and a film about the making of that film. This dual structure creates a constant slippage between fiction and reality, narrative and process.

The device is further complicated by the casting of museum staff as the film’s actors. What emerges is not only a behind-the-scenes view of the creative process, but also an intimate portrait of everyday museum labor. Alongside rehearsals and set construction, we see staff using the copy machine, greeting visitors, and joking during morning meetings. The result is a layered metanarrative that dissolves the boundaries between art and labor, performance and production. Through its structure and story, The Hidden Shift invites viewers to confront questions surrounding capitalism, the meaning of work, and the precarity of the so-called “creative class.” This blending of reality and fiction extends beyond the screen into the exhibition space itself. Visitors encounter remnants of the film set—hand-painted backdrops, leftover props, and dramatic lighting—situating them within the physical traces of the production. By placing the audience inside these material remains, Chang creates a bodily experience that unsettles the boundary between what is real and what is constructed. We find ourselves unwittingly stepping onto a stage that slowly reveals itself.

At the climax of the film, the two narrative layers begin to collapse into one another. Museum staff appear in costume moving through the galleries. Fictional characters break the fourth wall. A boom microphone slips into frame. This self-awareness and subtle humor are characteristic of Chang’s practice, where drama and satire merge—offering a way to reflect on a complex past while confronting an uncertain future.

Text by Danny Bracken Photo by Mattress Factory and photographer Tom Little

Made with additional support from the National Culture and Arts Foundation of Taiwan, Taipei City Government, Contemporary Craft, and the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University. Costumes and props provided by Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama and City Theatre Company, Pittsburgh.

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