“Labour, Work and Play: Action In Fine Art Practice" Brief Review

I briefly wish to discuss here the notes "Labour, Work and Play: Action In Fine Art Practice"  written by Neil Maycroft. Maycroft  deals with some familiar issues from Richard Sennett's 'The Craftsman', a book which is definitely an interesting read. There, Sennett claims among other things that the pattern of the old craftsman, the ‘homo faber’,  who was doing the job for job's own sake, should expand its scope to contemporary professions like software programmers,  doctors etc.  

Maycroft similarly claims that artist's work does not simply produces an object, but that this object has the capacity to make a whole new world. How? First, he distinguishes between the notions ‘work’ and ‘labour’, where the first is an imaginative, productive and object-centered activity that does not prioritize the time needed for its completion, while the second is an unimaginative, productive and process-centered activity that is repetitive and standardized. According to Maycroft, 'art' relates (or should relate) to work, while 'commodity production' relates to labour. The category of 'art' should be defined according to the qualities of the organization of time and effort that it is required in its production. That is to say, a coca cola bottle cannot be art because it has been produced in an industrially organized time, where the labourers are not giving away their labour-time for the sake of the object itself, but for accomplishing a predetermined process. Similarly a Damien Hirst artwork cannot be regarded as art as

…if we step into the workshop, or factory of the artist entrepreneur and witness paid employees, imposed schedules, linear clock time, surveillance, serial production and so on, we may be tempted to conclude that what we are seeing is labour not work and that the end result is not art but the commodity masquerading as art.

This recalls some old Romanticist binary oppositions between art/commodity, man/machine, nature/culture that have provided the meta-narrative for much of the 20^th century art practice and criticism. 

Another sign for his persistence on these oppositions, is the connection he makes between the repetitive, mechanic actions for accomplishing an object and those who control the means of production, that is to say the profit maker capitalists. They, according to Maycroft, try to prevent the  exercise of imagination from workplace deploying for this end all sorts of different resources and techniques.

History shows us that at many times and in many places those who control labour and laborers have deployed all manner of resources and techniques in order to prevent labourers from plating or from attempting to turn labour into work through the exercise of imagination.

This statement is perhaps a little bit ambiguous, given today’s celebration of imagination, creativity and play from capitalists themselves. There is of course abundant bibliography on this, ranging from critical sociology studies to contemporary Marxism. It is a commonplace that many of the creative workers nowadays are asked from people who “control labour and laborers” to be imaginative, creative and spontaneous. This sometimes is a prerequisite for having the job in the first place. Of  course, again this release of imagination is controlled by output imperatives, but does not this happen (perhaps in a more indirect way) in relation to the artist’s work as well? (since art seeks valorization in the domain of social). Art is not a self-valorized and thus autonomous institution; it needs to belong within categories of the social world in order to be recognized as such. 

Later on, drawing on Wilis, Maycroft  says towards the end of his article/notes that the most important thing that the art object does, is that it introduces in the world a ‘temporal disruption’ since it is made in the non-repetitive, standardized labour time of the industrial object. Someone here might ask why can’t we expand the ‘type of action’ argument and include here other types of work that is made in non-repetitive temporalities such as doctor’s work, household work or indeed academic work. To preserve such a privilege only for the artist is delusional and celebratory not only towards the mythic artistic figure that ‘does things differently’ and better than the others, but also towards the artistic ‘way of doing things’, which has already been a pattern for new forms of flexible capital accumulation. 

The whole ‘slow food’ mentality that the paper suggests in relation to work and labour practices is definitely a move to welcome, but it has to be done so in a more critical fashion and not as a pure celebration. Notwithstanding, it is quite an interesting article indeed.