FIRST LOVE LETTER: THE ANARTIST BOOK CLUB

1.

'Our rendition [of 'Anartist'] still embraces the intrinsic traits of an artist, yet champions a freer, more unbound approach to creation.'

Ye Funa

Is this the moment to re-evaluate the relationship between art and labour? In my first publication as Asymmetry’s Librarian-in-Residence, I’d like to introduce our modest reading group—‘Anartist’. We prefer to interpret the name ‘Anartist’—originated from Duchamp’s concept of ‘anti-art’—as an 'artist of disorder' rather than merely an 'anti-artist'. Our rendition still embraces the intrinsic traits of an artist, yet champions a freer, more unbound approach to creation.

Organised by three individuals from the fields of visual art, sociology, and anthropology—myself, Dr Linzhi Zhang, and Dr Feixuan Xu—‘Anartist’ zeroes in on a monthly selection of texts pertaining to art and labour. Unlike more intense reading groups, we maintain a leisurely, spirited pace, engaging in what we’ve coined as ‘active laziness’. Far from lauding idleness, this is a call to achieve goals with minimal effort within the existing system—a strategy of resistance, not of resignation.

In the contemporary sphere of artistic production, the blurred lines between labour and creative work, along with the invisible forces behind the creation of art have been the focal point of the recent readings and discussions of 'Anartist’. The texts mentioned in the article will soon be accessible from Asymmetry’s library.

The following are some brief insights into the array of compelling texts we’ve delved into, with a sharing by each reading session’s leading discussant relating the texts to their research and practice; from the backstage workers in art production to the participants of collective projects, they paint a multi-dimensional picture of art and labour. For instance, Dr Linzhi Zhang reintroduces Marx’s foundational concepts of labour into our dialogue, emphasising the dignity and fulfilment everyone should derive from work which enables self-determination and a decent life. Ziyi Wang explores collectives that delve into inequalities and exploitation within artistic labour and cultural production, shedding light on disputes over the value and conditions of labour in the arts, and how artists and cultural workers position themselves amidst globalisation and different stages of economic development. Mohan Shao applies a practical lens to the unseen values and meanings in the creative industries, probing how materials, technology, labour, and knowledge intertwine. Meanwhile, Dr Ruoxi Liu's ethnographic fieldwork focuses on the lives and work of independent cultural workers in towns like Jingdezhen and cities in Guangdong, investigating how they seek individuality and self-sufficiency under contemporary societal constraints. Our discussions also touch upon the often-ignored dichotomy between reproductive (that is, imitative or copying) and creative labour, a binary that is reinterpreted through Tian Jiayi’s fieldwork in Shenzhen's Dafen Village.

Merging these readings and shared experiences, we gradually form a more comprehensive view of artistic labour. Art production is recognised not only as a creative activity but also as a social and economic one, fraught with complex judgments of value. Through these texts, we may begin to reflect on the roles of individual agency, subjectivity, creativity, and labour in the art industry. Such is the deep-rooted binary perceptions of labour and creativity within the arts and how these perceptions influence the self-identity and social standing of various actors within the industry.

— Ye Funa (Artist, Current Librarian-in-Residence at Asymmetry)

2.

'These complex realities reveal the weaving of material, humans, skills and emotions underneath the halo of the capital. At the same time, they raise the question: How do different art workers identify and locate themselves in such weaving; and what are the different kinds of values they pursue?'

Shao Mohan

For the first online session of our book club, we read Working Aesthetics: Art, Labour and Capitalism (Danielle Child, 2019), a book that is personally inspiring to me. Through the lens of labour, it depicts a range of backstage roles (or behind-the-scene moments of frontstage roles) in the contemporary art industry, such as art fabricators, production studios, artists as project managers, performers and volunteers in performance art and activist interventions, and virtual participants in digital projects. These roles join differently in the art production shaped by the contemporary economy and culture, benefiting from or confused by the system. The contents of this book on art fabrication in particular echo my daily work. Beginning with the idea of deskilling in the history of modern Western art, and through specific examples such as Lippincott Inc. and Mike Smiths Studio, the narrative describes the emergence and evolvement of fabrication factories and artist studios, how they have become integral to artists and changed the logic that underlies the production of art. The details of the early cooperations between artists and fabricators remain the realities of today’s art production work, for example, how artists translate artistic proposals into data and drawings readable and executable to factory workers, how segments of artworks are assembled like commodities from different parts produced by different sections in an assembly line, or how technical consultants facilitate the interface between creative ideas and manufacture scenes. These complex realities reveal the weaving of material, humans, skills and emotions underneath the halo of the capital. At the same time, they raise the question: How do different art workers identify and locate themselves in such weaving; and what are the different kinds of values they pursue?

With experience both as an artist and curator, I have transitioned into the role of an art technician. I use various objects and control circuits to make kinetic, interactive and automated designs and fabrications, which support the technological needs of artists and cultural workers in creation and display. Also, as a researcher, I am concerned with the invisible inputs (both material and immaterial) that contribute to the creative industries, thinking about how workers inhabit the complex web of materials, techniques/technology, labour, and knowledge.

— Shao Mohan (Technician, graduated from the Curating program at the Royal College of Art and the Experimental Art program at the Central Academy of Fine Arts)

3.

'I am driven by the belief that everyone deserves fulfilling and dignified work that leads them to self-determination and a decent life.'

Dr Zhang Linzhi

For the second online session of our book club, I led a reading of Marx’s texts on labour. We delved into excerpts from Capital and Economic and Philosophic Manuscript of 1844. I chose to revisit Marx’s concept of labour—as his theories, drawing upon the profound German philosophical traditions, inform the most important strand of thoughts about labour and work in political economy. Marx’s understanding of labour is rooted in his anthropological view of humans as homo faber, that is, humans as creative beings. This is also why the image of an artist often comes to represent the ideal, free, and unalienated labour. Hence, by visiting Marx’s original conceptualisation of labour, we could then gain deeper insights into the nature of artistic labour.

My own research is also heavily shaped by Marxism, particularly so by Marxist feminism in recent years. It is not only an academic pursuit, or a professional endeavour, for me; it has become integral to my worldview and life. I am driven by the belief that everyone deserves fulfilling and dignified work that leads them to self-determination and a decent life. My hope is to live up to this ideal and help more people achieve this goal.

— Dr Zhang Linzhi (Received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge, recently completed her British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Courtauld Institute of Art, where she remains a Research Associate. Her research examines artistic labour against the background of China’s demanding work culture.)

4.

'How can we recognise personal agency in cultural and artistic work while recognising the precarity and instability in the meantime? —Would there be any hopeful features? How do we avoid the narrative of "hope" from becoming an optimistic cliché?'

Dr Ruoxi Liu

For the third online session of the book club, we read the paper written by Ana Alacovska, ‘Keep hoping, keep going: Towards a hopeful sociology of creative work’ (The Sociological Review, 2019), which proposes new perspectives to understand ‘precarity’ and ‘hope’ through creative and cultural work. Contextualised in contemporary Southeast European society (a non-traditional field of research), this paper provides nuanced details of creative labour/cultural workers and their communities. It offers a more diversified understanding of how creative workers respond to instability and vulnerabilities. How can we recognise personal agency in cultural and artistic work while recognising the precarity and instability in the meantime? —Would there be any hopeful features? How do we avoid the narrative of ‘hope’ from becoming an optimistic cliché? This reading also leads us to re-examine the cultural and artistic work often addressed as informal, temporary, voluntary, inspiration-based, ingenuous, talent-oriented, meaning-pursuing, interpersonal, and community-driven.

As a sociologist, my primary research interests centre on exploring individual agency and grassroots creativity within the constraints of social, economic, and political conditions. The title of my PhD research is 'The Meaning of Being Independent: Precarities and Alternative-seeking of Self-employed Cultural Workers’. Between May 2020 and April 2021, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork among independent cultural workers and their communities in Jingdezhen and Guangzhou, which represent the rural and urban contexts in China. My goal is to dissect the notions of 'individuality', 'creativity', 'autonomy', and 'self-sufficiency' in the post-socialist Chinese landscape, against the backdrop of an authoritarian regime and neoliberal ideologies. My work also contributes to a deeper understanding of the cultural/creative industries, the workers therein, and their communities, offering fresh perspectives on the interplay between the individual and society, personal agency, and self-sufficiency at the grassroots level in China. My research and life practices are guided by a constant search for 'alternatives’, and a commitment to breaking down the barriers between academia and activism.

— Dr Ruoxi Liu (As a sociologist, I am concerned with the individual agency and grassroots creativity of people under socially and politically restrained contexts. I examine the independent cultural workers in contemporary China during my PhD project.)

5.

'Why is reproduction—in the sense of "imitation" and "copying"—a sharp opposition to creativity?'

Tian Jiayi

Why is reproduction—in the sense of ‘imitation’ and ‘copying’—a sharp opposition to creativity? In the fourth session of our book club, we read together the excellent monograph Van Gogh on Demand: China and the Readymade by Winnie Wong, which studies the painters in Dafen Oil Painting Village in Southern China who worked on reproducing Western oil painting masterpieces for export. Through discourse analysis and ethnographic research within the Dafen community, Wong shows that the dichotomous ‘reproduction/creativity’ discourse is collectively produced by the government, media, and conceptual artists in an effort to show the Dafen painters are transforming from uncreative labourers to creative artists. In the meantime, however, the Dafen painters are in fact making artworks in the same ways as the ‘real artists’ do, thus effectively deconstructing the binary view between reproduction and creativity. Wong’s research invites deeper retrospection about how creativity is defined, especially under the historical social change in post-socialist China.

I have been working with some Dafen painters since the summer of 2019. That timing was accidentally critical for what I learned and saw in Dafen—as of that summer, the refurbishment of Dafen village led by the local government was finally completed, most notably resulting in the removal of all self-constructed spaces in the alleys in the community. Many Dafen painters rented these very tight but cheap spaces as their studios and galleries, so the removal meant many painters had to move somewhere else or even leave this painting business. Those who remained in Dafen, on the other hand, usually had higher painting skills and stronger economic capabilities, and many owned their private galleries and entered exhibitions of different kinds. In other words, the landscape in Dafen today is sharply different from the reproduction business that Wong observed in 2013, even though, unfortunately, the ‘reproduction/creativity’ binary and the ‘transformation’ narrative persist in the mindsets of many painters and local officials. How do the Dafen painters establish their creativity now?

— Tian Jiayi (PhD student in Sociology, The University of Edinburgh)

6.

'[...]Chinese artists often adopt an experiential approach: working in factories, delivering takeout, or sticking invoices in galleries.Through embodied experiences, they undergo specific systemic training, practising alienated labour, and then expose the inherent absurdity.'

Ziyi Wang

For me, the study of art and labour is like a constant process of negotiating identities and positions. Initially, as an audience, an intern, and a philosophy student, I wondered how theoretical myths such as ‘the autonomy of art’ could counteract or potentially obscure the realities of labour within the art world. My research integrates Marx's labour theory and Autonomist Marxism's discussion of ‘immaterial labour’, and examines how contemporary art in its development can be reinserted into the labour theory landscape. Why is art often not considered to be labour? Who is the subject of labour? What kind of labour is it? How is the division of labour formed and distributed? How is the value of the labour involved assessed?

As I then engaged in art practice at Slade, my work focused on liquidity and identity—how to confront awkwardness and loosen larger systems through minor interventions. In my research, I started to pay attention to works that straddle the line between art and labour, exploring instances of overlap. Examples include Liao Li working at the Foxconn factory (Consumption, 2012), Finnish artist Pilvi Takala idling in the office of Deloitte (The Trainee, 2008), Yulu Ge substituting for Fei Art Museum staff (Holiday Times, 2020), and German artist Maria Eichhorn giving Chisenhale Gallery staff time off (5 weeks, 25 days, 175 hours, 2016). They hide or present as artists, and reinsert themselves into labour scenes in traditional Fordist factories, modern corporations, and art institutions. What perspectives do these dual identities bring? What different logics are introduced into the existing work field? I endeavour to further dissect the relationship between art and labour under the rich semantics of these dual exposures.

Reflecting on these works, I found while both sets of works involve artists entering labour scenes, Chinese artists often adopt an experiential approach: working in factories, delivering takeout, or sticking invoices in galleries. Through embodied experiences, they undergo specific systemic training, practising alienated labour, and then expose the inherent absurdity. Conversely, European artists seem less inclined to compromise themselves, preferring to question why doing nothing can’t work. It brings to my mind the portrayal of an East Asian worker in the Japanese drama ‘Rebooting’, whereupon reincarnation, protagonist Sakurai's first words are still ‘excuse me’. Does this kind of work inertia stem from a certain East Asian or Chinese specificity, or is it a result of the globalisation of labour division and economic development stages?

With these observations, and inspired by discussions at the ‘Anartist’ reading group, when the Italian theorist Maurizio Lazzarato enthusiastically praised the ‘laziness’ inherent in Duchamp's readymade as pointing to a new and different vision of anthropology. However, my recent curiosity is, do we really still have an imagination for laziness? ‘Imagination’ isn't just an abstract illusion; it's deeply rooted in the common logic formed by generations through socio-cultural influences, assessing the potential to propose alternatives. When it is hard to imagine the refusal to labour, it may also struggle to enact such refusal. In the context of Chinese labour and contemporary art, how do we reimagine ‘laziness’?

Here is my archaeology into some of the UK-based collectives discussing labour in the arts. These groups were active between 2010–2015 but ended around 2019. Carrotworkers’Collective is an organisation founded by arts and cultural workers in London. Their name is vividly borrowed from the image of how a donkey works to chase the carrots. They started by paying attention to the specific work conditions of volunteers, interns, and free labour, focused on exploring inequality and exploitation in arts labour and cultural production. Their self-publication Surviving Internship: A Counter-Guide to Free Labour in the Arts is a free toolkit shared online, which not only contains recommended pieces to educate oneself in theory, but also shares writing templates such as samples of how to write a contract, resist unpaid internships, and strive for better working conditions. The Precarious Workers Brigade, which was founded based on the Carrotworkers, extended the reflection from the arts to the precarious working conditions in other industries and supported broader solidary campaigns around precarity at large.

These platforms hold rich resources for art and labour. Yet, while these labour issues remain a pressing reality, these once-thriving organisations are a flash in the pan. The websites left behind are like ruins, strewn with remains of the struggles years ago; some of the sites are no longer valid. The emergence of these discussions in the UK happened during the wave of austerity and the Occupy movement, and now leaves us with a historical text to consider what discussions have existed and what context led to their exit.

— Ziyi Wang (Artist and researcher based in London, MA Media at Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, graduated from the School of Philosophy, Beijing Normal University)