From a post by Franco Bifo Berardi on FB
This one-hour performance utilises a fictional nail-polish salon as its setting. For this performance, Béna assumes the role of a manicurist who carries out a monologue for the client getting a manicure. Through contact with the client’s body via a series of codified gestures supposedly intrinsic to the nail salon, the artist discloses fragments of her character’s (the manicurist’s) story, in a performance that includes talking, reading and singing. The textual basis of the works exploits the fictionalised plight of the manicurist as protagonist to relate a larger message of social disparity through an intimate interaction.
Julie Béna
Nail Tang, 2015
Courtesy the artist and Galerie Joseph Tang, Paris
Julie Béna
Miss None and Mister Peanut, third episode
The Real Job
A map of artist’s and curator’s jobs
The Real Job is a newborn platform based in Torino which maps, among other info, the jobs that artists and curators have to do to support their artistic and curatorial practices.
Our Goods
A New York based barter network for the creative community.
OurGoods is a community of artists, designers, and cultural producers who want to barter skills, spaces, and objects. OurGoods supports the production of new work through barter, because resource sharing is the paradigm of the 21st century. OurGoods is a scaleable, local initiative and part of the growing landscape of alternative models of exchange in art, design, and culture. OurGoods is specifically dedicated to the barter of creative skills, spaces, and objects. It is a community of cultural producers matching “needs” to offered “haves.” OurGoods helps independent projects get done.
Seth Siegelaub
The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer And Sale Agreement, 1971
Developed through conversations with members of the art world and written with the help of lawyer Robert Projansky in 1971, Seth Siegelaub’s Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer And Sale Agreement was designed to safeguard the economic interests of artists, particularly in the case of an artwork’s resale, reproduction, or rental. Intended to serve as an accessible document for all artists, the contract was written in an easily comprehensible style and was widely distributed through art journals and magazines—characteristics shared by much of the artwork Siegelaub was currently representing. Since its publication in English, French, German, and Italian, the document has been used by a diverse range of artists.
full text in
English
French
German
Italian
Tiziana Terranova, Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy, 2000
full text in pdf
Working in the digital media industry is not as much fun as it is made out to be. The “NetSlaves” of the eponymous Webzine are becoming increasingly vociferous about the shamelessly exploitative nature of the job, its punishing work rhythms, and its ruthless casualization (www.dis-obey.com/netslaves). They talk about “24-7 electronic sweatshops” and complain about the ninety-hour weeks and the “moronic management of new media companies.” In early 1999, seven of the fifteen thousand “volunteers” of America Online (AOL) rocked the info-loveboat by asking the Department of Labor to investigate whether AOL owes them back wages for the years of playing chathosts for free. They used to work long hours and love it; now they are starting to feel the pain of being burned by digital media.
Working Artists and the Greater Economy
(W.A.G.E.) MANIFESTO
W.A.G.E. (WORKING ARTISTS AND THE GREATER ECONOMY) WORKS TO DRAW ATTENTION TO ECONOMIC INEQUALITIES THAT EXIST IN THE ARTS, AND TO RESOLVE THEM.
W.A.G.E. HAS BEEN FORMED BECAUSE WE, AS VISUAL + PERFORMANCE ARTISTS AND INDEPENDENT CURATORS, PROVIDE A WORK FORCE.
W.A.G.E. RECOGNIZES THE ORGANIZED IRRESPONSIBILITY OF THE ART MARKET AND ITS SUPPORTING INSTITUTIONS, AND DEMANDS AN END OF THE REFUSAL TO PAY FEES FOR THE WORK WE’RE ASKED TO PROVIDE: PREPARATION, INSTALLATION, PRESENTATION, CONSULTATION, EXHIBITION AND REPRODUCTION.
W.A.G.E. REFUTES THE POSITIONING OF THE ARTIST AS A SPECULATOR AND CALLS FOR THE REMUNERATION OF CULTURAL VALUE IN CAPITAL VALUE.
W.A.G.E. BELIEVES THAT THE PROMISE OF EXPOSURE IS A LIABILITY IN A SYSTEM THAT DENIES THE VALUE OF OUR LABOR.
AS AN UNPAID LABOR FORCE WITHIN A ROBUST ART MARKET FROM WHICH OTHERS PROFIT GREATLY, W.A.G.E. RECOGNIZES AN INHERENT EXPLOITATION AND DEMANDS COMPENSATION.
W.A.G.E. CALLS FOR AN ADDRESS OF THE ECONOMIC INEQUALITIES THAT ARE PREVALENT, AND PROACTIVELY PREVENTING THE ART WORKER’S ABILITY TO SURVIVE WITHIN THE GREATER ECONOMY.
W.A.G.E. ADVOCATES FOR DEVELOPING AN ENVIRONMENT OF MUTUAL RESPECT BETWEEN ARTIST AND INSTITUTION.
W.A.G.E. DEMANDS PAYMENT FOR MAKING THE WORLD MORE INTERESTING.
Founded in 2008, Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.) is a New York-based activist organization focused on regulating the payment of artist fees by nonprofit art institutions and establishing a sustainable labor relation between artists and the institutions that contract their labor.
Art Workers – Material Conditions and Labour Struggles in Contemporary Art Practice. 2015 – full text in pdf
This website is the outcome of a networking process initiated by art workers from Helsinki, Stockholm and Tallinn. The network was established in 2012, in order to share experiences between local initiatives that are problematising the issue of precarious working conditions in the contemporary art field.
In 2015, the network published the book Art Workers – Material Conditions and Labour Struggles in Contemporary Art Practice. The book presents case studies from the local art contexts of Estonia, Finland and Sweden, collects artist-testimonies, discusses activist practices and reflects on contemporary and historical forms of art workers’ organising within the international art contexts.
The book is edited and co-written by Minna Henriksson, Erik Krikortz and Airi Triisberg, and includes further contributions by Corina L. Apostol, Michael Baers, Fokus Grupa, Minna Heikinaho, Vladan Jeremić, Elina Juopperi, Jussi Kivi, Barbora Kleinhamplová, Jussi Koitela, Raakel Kuukka, Marge Monko, Zoran Popović, Precarious Workers Brigade, Taaniel Raudsepp & Sigrid Viir, Krisdy Shindler, Tereza Stejskalová, and Lotta Tenhunen.
Ted Purves, What We Want Is Free: Generosity And Exchange In Recent Art, 2005
google book
Through a variety of lenses, this book examines contemporary artists’ use of the “gift”—the distribution of goods and services—as a medium for artistic production. Featuring a detailed survey of over fifty artists’ projects from fifteen countries, What We Want Is Free explores how these artists use their projects to connect participants to tangible goods and services that they might need, enjoy, and benefit from. Samples of these various projects include the creation of free commuter bus lines and medicinal plant gardens; the distribution of such services as free housework and computer programming; and the production of community media projects such as free commuter newspapers and democratic low-wattage radio stations.
