Aileen Burns, Tara McDowell & Johan Lundh - The Artist As

Does the way artists work today impact the ecology of art? Has the pluralism of art given way to a pluralism of roles that artists may occupy? What are the contemporary conditions of labor producing this new state of affairs, and what re-skilling does it ask of artists? These are some of the questions addressed in The Artist As, which comprises a number of contributions that seek to understand or explain the ways artists move through the world, and how that movement might necessitate other roles to pursue a project, a position, a politics, or a practice. For any given project, the artist may act as producer, quarry, thread, director, writer, orchestrator, ethnographer, choreographer, poet, archivist, forger, curator, and many other things first. Rather than self-identify solely as painters or sculptors, artists are now free to occupy specific roles temporarily, in what could be described as a kind of “occupational drag”, which is taken from Elizabeth Freeman’s term “temporal drag.” Co-published with the Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane), Curatorial Practice at Monash University (Melbourne) and Sternberg Press (Berlin).

328 pages, 12.5 x 20 cm, softcover, Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane), Curatorial Practice at Monash University (Melbourne) and Sternberg Press (Berlin).