Art & Work

Art has been integral to recent debates and critical strategies contesting the social imaginary of work. The modernist vision of artistic labour as the paradigm of nonalienated labour has been replaced by the alignment of art with the micropolitics of work and the withdrawal from work. Artists have been regarded as exemplars of both new forms of 24/7 labour and the humane workplace.

This PARSE research strand will explore the intersection of art and work not only by applying theories of work to art but also testing theories of work through art.

The editors welcome contributions from all disciplines and in practice as well as theory. Among the questions that contributors may wish to consider are:

• Is artistic activity a form of work and if so, what kind of conception of work does this presuppose?
• What is the future of art within a vision of full automation?
• Does the campaign for artists to be paid for their work constitute an extension of workers’ struggle to a new sector or is it a coded form of privilege and entitlement?
• How do artists represent the work of others?
• How does art relate to the contradictory demands of liberation through work and liberation from work?
• What are the conditions under which artistic labour could be conceived of as a paradigm of nonalienated labour or alternatively as a mode of privilege?
• Is artistic labour the model for 24/7 work patterns? Is the artist the blueprint for the over-identification of the individual with their work?
• Does artistic labour resemble post-Fordist wage labour or is it closer to the non-waged labour of domestic workers?