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Artist at Work, Proximity of Art and Capitalism
The main affirmation of artistic practice must today happen through thinking about the conditions and the status of the artist's work. Only then can it be revealed that what is a part of the speculations of capital is not art itself, but mostly artistic life. Artist at Work examines the recent changes in the labour of an artist and addresses them from the perspective of performance.
- GenresArtNonfictionPolitics
243 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 3, 2017
For many of us, our working lives no longer resemble those we had at the beginning of adulthood, let alone those of our parents. The sheer extent and in some sectors ubiquity of this change has become increasingly apparent in the debates since mid-2016 (although the issues have been rumbling around for 15-20 years) over the meaning of the ‘gig’ economy. This change becomes clearer when we look at the working conditions of those of us who work in areas such as the creative ‘industries’, education and a whole bunch of service-providing occupations where the tools of trade are primarily ourselves – our labour and our intellect.
Some analysts have argued compellingly that artists have, for a very long time, provided a model of this ‘gig’ economy (one of the most compelling developments in this line of reasoning has been in a series of pieces written or edited by the sociologist of art Pascal Gielen), and this lie of analysis has then lead more to consider the labour process and political economy of art as a way to begin to explore or make sense of developments both in those ‘creative industries’ and more widely. Kunst’s work may be seen in this tradition, but she also picks up on a line of analysis hinted at in some of these sociological analyses of work-in-art but not well developed when she draws on Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello’s outstanding The New Spirit of Capitalism to extend their analysis of project work.
The argument she makes extends this work on the labour and production process in art, which in the ‘gig’/project economy has power and relevance well beyond the performing arts areas on which she focuses, but also explores issues of consumption – of the way engagements with art; of how, what and where, produces by subjectivity and sociality. This has profound and challenging ontological and epistemological implications in terms of how we see ourselves and our world, which in a neo-liberal world highlighting and accentuating the individual/individuality suggests that we see and understand ‘political’ art in restricted but significant ways – and it should come as no surprise that she’s sceptical about ‘political’ art.
The book is a challenge: it is theoretically and philosophically demanding. I am much more comfortable in the issues of production than consumption (even though I work and teach within aspects of the sociology of consumption, the language of subjectivity, when woven through with notions of the sacred and the profane as she deploys, takes me to theoretical approaches with which I am less comfortable, and always have been) and found myself stopping with the occasional head scratching moment leading to some re-reading, especially when she got into some of the issue of duration and temporality. I suspect that, given the breadth of the case being made, these moments of perplexity might be common – but revisit re-read and stick with it: it pays off in the long run.
The conclusion – a tight argument in favour of ‘laziness’ and doing less – ties all these strands together to become a case in favour of the liberation of work from the narrow confines of the project and continuous production on multiple fronts. It makes this case by arguing that we need to be disobedient:
1) to stop seeing art as something that may be measured in economically instrumental terms or that may exist for its own sake in favour of an assessment of art’s contribution and relation to the common, and
2) to stop treating art (and by inference all creative production) as if it fits comfortably in the usual conventions of work and to embrace (long) periods of inactivity: at this point I went back to Bertrand Russell’s ‘In Praise of Idleness’, although Kunst cites Kazimir Malevich’s paeans to laziness
all with a goal of resisting art’s imbrication with productivity, and thereby dominant capitalist models of economic life and practice.
As such, then, this is as informative and useful to those of us interested in the contemporary relations of work as it is specifically to those whose work might focus on art in general or the performing arts specifically (there is some really interesting stuff about dance, 20th century political economy and movement culture). Challenging, but rewarding as a consequence.
Some analysts have argued compellingly that artists have, for a very long time, provided a model of this ‘gig’ economy (one of the most compelling developments in this line of reasoning has been in a series of pieces written or edited by the sociologist of art Pascal Gielen), and this lie of analysis has then lead more to consider the labour process and political economy of art as a way to begin to explore or make sense of developments both in those ‘creative industries’ and more widely. Kunst’s work may be seen in this tradition, but she also picks up on a line of analysis hinted at in some of these sociological analyses of work-in-art but not well developed when she draws on Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello’s outstanding The New Spirit of Capitalism to extend their analysis of project work.
The argument she makes extends this work on the labour and production process in art, which in the ‘gig’/project economy has power and relevance well beyond the performing arts areas on which she focuses, but also explores issues of consumption – of the way engagements with art; of how, what and where, produces by subjectivity and sociality. This has profound and challenging ontological and epistemological implications in terms of how we see ourselves and our world, which in a neo-liberal world highlighting and accentuating the individual/individuality suggests that we see and understand ‘political’ art in restricted but significant ways – and it should come as no surprise that she’s sceptical about ‘political’ art.
The book is a challenge: it is theoretically and philosophically demanding. I am much more comfortable in the issues of production than consumption (even though I work and teach within aspects of the sociology of consumption, the language of subjectivity, when woven through with notions of the sacred and the profane as she deploys, takes me to theoretical approaches with which I am less comfortable, and always have been) and found myself stopping with the occasional head scratching moment leading to some re-reading, especially when she got into some of the issue of duration and temporality. I suspect that, given the breadth of the case being made, these moments of perplexity might be common – but revisit re-read and stick with it: it pays off in the long run.
The conclusion – a tight argument in favour of ‘laziness’ and doing less – ties all these strands together to become a case in favour of the liberation of work from the narrow confines of the project and continuous production on multiple fronts. It makes this case by arguing that we need to be disobedient:
1) to stop seeing art as something that may be measured in economically instrumental terms or that may exist for its own sake in favour of an assessment of art’s contribution and relation to the common, and
2) to stop treating art (and by inference all creative production) as if it fits comfortably in the usual conventions of work and to embrace (long) periods of inactivity: at this point I went back to Bertrand Russell’s ‘In Praise of Idleness’, although Kunst cites Kazimir Malevich’s paeans to laziness
all with a goal of resisting art’s imbrication with productivity, and thereby dominant capitalist models of economic life and practice.
As such, then, this is as informative and useful to those of us interested in the contemporary relations of work as it is specifically to those whose work might focus on art in general or the performing arts specifically (there is some really interesting stuff about dance, 20th century political economy and movement culture). Challenging, but rewarding as a consequence.
November 13, 2020
correct!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews