How to Provide an Artistic Service

23.1.08

And since it’s relevant, we’re now sharing a text that has been forgotten for a while in our browser’s Favorites. The text is from the mid-90s but has not been translated into Spanish until only a couple or three years ago by the people of the Trama project, whom we should thank. Under the title “
How to Provide an Artistic Service: An Introduction
“, Andrea Fraser analyzes the economic and political consequences for artists of practicing what has been characterized as “artistic projects.” Assuming that there are no thematic, ideological, or procedural features common to this type of practice, Andrea Fraser concludes that what they seem to share is the fact that they all “involve the consumption of an amount of work that is either greater than or independent of any specific material production, and that cannot be carried out as, or together with, a product.” In other words, what characterizes work in “artistic projects” could be reduced to an economic model: the provision of services (as opposed to the production of goods).

This categorization would serve on the one hand to establish a guideline in the professional relations of artists with institutions, however, on the other hand it highlights a controversy that is not always evident. In the words of Andrea Fraser: The logic of the matter is quite clear. We are demanding fees as compensation for working within organizations. Fees are, by definition, payment for services. If we are, then, accepting payment in exchange for our services, does that mean we are serving those who pay us? If not, who are we serving and on what basis do we demand payment (and should we demand it)? Or, if so, how are we serving (and what are we serving)? “. In other words, what is at stake here is the artist’s “autonomy” to “express critical and committed opinions in controversial activities.” For our part, we wonder if that of the artists is not to some extent a public service and even to what extent museums and art centers do not in turn provide certain services to the artists: the provision of resources and means of production is perhaps the most obvious, but we also refer to the provision of a context of dissemination, consumption, and reading.

Andrea Fraser distinguishes artistic practice understood as the provision of services from other types of activities that she designates as the production of “content” (she gives as an example “education or security in a museum“). From the outset we can agree with this categorization, but what happens when the provision of “educational content” becomes an exercise in institutional critique (and a collaborative practice for a specific site)? Shouldn’t the same degree of autonomy be given to this type of activity as to artistic practice?

A few weeks ago, during the round table of the conference for Municipal Technicians of Visual Arts organized by the Diputació de Barcelona and after our narration of all the conflicts and restrictions with which we have encountered in the realization of projecte3*, Lidia Dalmau, from the Sinapsis collective, asked us this question: To what extent were we ourselves not the “culprits” (emphasizing the quotation marks) of this situation of conflict and disagreement? Of course, the question is absolutely pertinent and deserves an extensive and complex answer, but one of the keys to answering it may be that we do not understand education so much as the provision of educational content that would respond to pre-set objectives but as a cultural practice in every way, which includes engaging in “controversial activities”, or if not, what is culture for? and what should education be for?