Unofficial systems to keep the world running utilises performance, installation and video to illuminate the idea of emotional labour as it exists within daily processes of caring. Lifted from my own modes of ‘life-living’, this thesis project has developed a series of gestures that are intended to be responsive and accumulative in nature. The practice proposes that embedded minor gestures have the capacity to challenge everyday systems embedded in privilege and argues for more active and responsive modes of caring. A responsive approach to practice is formed through a porous and durational threshold between art-making and the idea of ‘life-living’ interventions. Highlighting the ongoing caring gestures that sit beneath the surface, and which I believe are embedded in daily life, this project aims to set up a consciousness and criticality regarding modes of maintenance, responsibility and privilege within daily interactions and ways of ‘life-living’.