art | ephemera

Images of anonymity

Art workers want to know

The call for the Politics of Workers' Inquiry conference asked specifically for methodological contributions. I told a kind of ghost story about a tribe of phantoms who occasionally reappear. It concerned an organization called the Art Workers Coalition (AWC), formed in early 1969 after a spectacular protest in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Through its regular open meetings akin to the peoples' assemblies of recent times, the AWC aired grievances against museums and markets of art. A bill of particulars was drafted called the Ten Points.

Labour, religion and game: Or, why is art relevant for social science?

If one would like to trace back to the beginnings of social sciences he or she should search for the objects or phenomena which first allowed these disciplines to anchor their initial concepts and guide their empirical research. For such phenomena serve both as objects of inquiry in their own right and as openings to investigations reaching far beyond the initial domain. Such phenomena were (which is quite uncontroversial) the division of labour and religion.

The diagrammatic spectator

Introduction

FUL’s free work

Introduction

Locating work in Santiago Sierra’s artistic practice

Introduction

‘And if I don’t want to work like an artist...?’ How the study of artistic resistance enriches organizational studies

Introduction

And if I don’t try to live like an artist, if I don’t want to work in such a way, being a PREY, AND IN SELF-EXPLOITATION! And if I don’t even think of self-actualizing myself constantly WHAT WILL HAPPEN THEN?! (theatre play by René Pollesch)

Free work

The relationship between freedom and work is a complex one. For some, they are considered opposites: ‘true’ freedom is possible only once the necessity of work is removed, and a life of luxury attained. For others, work itself provides an opportunity to achieve a sense of freedom and authenticity. In recent years for example, advances in human resource management have promoted hard work, a deep sense of commitment to one’s job, and the acceptance of working conditions that are ostensibly exploitative, as offering the promise of freedom.

Is it written in the stars? Global finance, precarious destinies

Introduction

Web of capturing the moving mind

We mark this web – this publication, this project – with crossing lines, a chiasma. The Greek letter chi (χ) marks a decussation, a crossing of tracts. With it we wish to point to the nature of this project as a diagonal arrangement, a connection and crossing of heterogeneous domains and their codings.