Contemporary Art and Post-Work Politics

Contemporary Art and Post-Work Politics Contributors David Attwood, Diana Baker Smith, Andrew Brooks, Eva Bujalka, Rex Butler, Darren Jorgensen, Lisa Radford, Francis Russell, Mladen Stilinovic´, Masato Takasaka, Natalie Thomas, Tim Woodward Edited by David Attwood, Francis Russell Text Only Series The Art of Laziness: Contemporary Art and Post-Work Politics The Art of Laziness: Contemporary Art and Post-Work Politics Contributors: David Attwood, Diana Baker Smith Andrew Brooks, Eva Bujalka Rex Butler, Darren Jorgensen Lisa Radford, Francis Russell Mladen Stilinović, Masato Takasaka Natalie Thomas, Tim Woodward Editors: David Attwood, Francis Russell CENTRE of VISUAL ART Publisher _ A+A Publishing, Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne Distribution _ Peribo, Sydney and John Rule Art Book Distribution © 2020 A+A Publishing University of Melbourne ALL RIGHTS RESERVED EDITORS David Attwood Francis Russell SERIES EDITOR Edward Colless AUTHORS David Attwood Diana Baker Smith Andrew Brooks Eva Bujalka Rex Butler Darren Jorgensen Lisa Radford Francis Russell Mladen Stilinović Masato Takasaka Natalie Thomas Tim Woodward The views expressed in this publication are those of the contributing authors and editors, and not necessarily those of the publisher. The publisher respectfully acknowledges the Boonwurrung and Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin Nation, on whose land Art + Australia publications are produced. We acknowledge their ancestors and Elders, who are part of the longest continuing culture in the world. A+A Publishing Text Only series The Art of Laziness: Contemporary Art and Post-Work Politics 2020 ISBN 978-0-9924589-0-4 Victorian College of the Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne 234 St Kilda Road, Southbank, Victoria 3006, AUSTRALIA T: +61 3 9035 9463 E: [email protected] W: artandaustralia.com CENTRE of VISUAL ART Contents 3 Foreword 5 Introduction David Attwood and Francis Russell 27 Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Capitalism So Fast, So Accelerated? Slow Art and Decelerationist Strategy Francis Russell 39 Myth-making in the Settler Colony: On Laziness, Representation and Refusal Andrew Brooks 63 Sculptures That Go Home at Night: On Labour, Performance and Re-enactment Diana Baker Smith 81 Natty Brings Her ‘A’ Game Natalie Thomas 99 Like a Rug on Valium: Homer Simpson, Georges Bataille and Excessive Laziness Eva Bujalka 129 Dole Bludgers, Junkies and Share Houses in Australia, 1972–96 Darren Jorgensen 139 Four Orders Tim Woodward 147 The Artist’s Practice as Always Already-made: Remaking and Repetition in the Work of Marcel Duchamp, Mutlu Çerkez and Masato Takasaka Masato Takasaka 167 John Nixon’s ‘Laziness’ Rex Butler 181 Not Making Public Lisa Radford 197 How to Work Better David Attwood 217 The Praise of Laziness Mladen Stilinović 222 Authors 224 Acknowledgements ix Foreword As one celebrated painter whose work was almost singularly dedicated to black once said, black is not as black as all that. In the broader palette of art, one might adapt this modernist maxim and say, with the authors of this book, that laziness is not anywhere near as lazy as it sounds. Two principles, despite their apparent paradox, quickly become agreeably clear in this anthology, expertly edited by Francis Russell and David Attwood: that laziness can be an artful pursuit; and that, because of that artfulness, this pursuit is a type of work. It can be the type of industrious self-attention that keeps Ivan Goncharov’s anti-hero Oblomov confined in an effort of dignified indolence, getting him only from his bed to a chair in the first 50 or so pages of that eponymous novel. Or it could be the industrial slog of Al Capp’s comic strip hillbilly, Li’l Abner, when he was employed by a bed manufacturer as a mattress tester—requiring him to sleep in the new models each day long. What is also clear is that this book has little time for lazy art. Despite initial appearances as a ‘found object’, Duchamp’s famous urinal, Fountain, is, for instance, anything but slothful. True, Duchamp disowned making it, though indeed didn’t actually make it, and then even disowned that gesture of not making it. And of course it doesn’t work as a urinal. As its persistent aesthetic irritation proves, it is a work of art without the work that is expected to go into a work of art. Or perhaps it only has the work that has gone into making it, which by disowning that work unmakes it. Fountain may be a piss-take, but it takes hard work to appreciate just how artful its laziness it. We might say the same of Martin Creed’s wonderfully slacker neon motto: ‘the world plus the work equals the world’. The work is a drop in the ocean of the world’s already working worldliness; or it simply doesn’t matter. One plus infinity still equals infinity. But it is, of course, also infinity plus one. It is precisely that effort of adding to the uncountable that makes this volume unique, and worth the effort. The Art of Laziness is the first in A+A Publishing’s venture Text Only. Commissioning a project in the visual arts that relies only on text without illustrations may sound perverse. But we want to place an emphasis on new writing, and writing on new topics, that is sustained by the writers’ own powers of invention, invocation, investigation and inspiration. Edward Colless 1 Introduction Why can art not exist anymore in the West? The answer is simple. Artists in the West are not lazy. Mladen Stilinović, ‘The Praise of Laziness’1 Over the course of your working life, you are likely to have several careers across a range of occupations. Employers have an increasing focus on transferable skills which enable workers to adapt to changing workforce demands. Job seekers who can show they have these skills, in addition to role-specific expertise, will have an advantage in recruitment processes. These skills include digital literacy, critical thinking, creativity, problem solving and presentation skills. Aptitudes such as adaptability, resilience and entrepreneurial skills will also be important. Department of Jobs and Small Business, Australian Jobs 20182 While the global financial crisis promised the ruin of neoliberal ideology,3 the past decade or so has shown the durability and obstinacy of the cultural obsession with entrepreneurial self-development and work. Despite the fact that the aftermath of the financial collapses of 2008 required a broad systemic response, ever-more attention has been paid to how individuals—especially individual members of the millennial cohort—can adapt themselves to the demands of a world that seems increasingly ungovernable and crisis prone.4 As economic austerity has lowered living standards and increased precarity worldwide, the typical response seems to be one of producing more resilient and flexible individuals. Rather than simply being imposed from above, the drive to become better suited to the unforgiving and crisis-prone neoliberal society is evinced by the general tendency to work harder, longer and for less. The notion that our relationship to work can be resisted, if not transformed, strikes many as an anachronism—an inability to understand that, for good or for bad, the future is now fundamentally ‘disrupted’. Indeed, while Australia still prides itself on being a country defined in part by its laid-back attitude towards life, the activity of workers and the statements of politicians suggest otherwise. Whether in terms of the enormous number of workers putting in extra, unpaid hours, or the sheer volume of young workers engaging in free internships and unpaid work ‘experience’, or the constant haranguing 3 Introduction Introduction of politicians that suggests Australians have developed a mentality of entitlement, Australia’s richest woman and the ninth richest woman in the world (at the it is difficult to view contemporary Australia as other than dogmatically committed time of writing)—could be so naked in her contempt for struggling Australians. to overvaluing work.5 Moreover, the vast majority of jobs being produced will do As quoted by Emily Bourke, Rinehart advises that: little to help ameliorate, if not prevent, future ecological and economic disaster. While job creation and longer hours are demanded at each election, the impact If you’re jealous of those with more money, don’t just sit there of increased production and consumption on our ecology and culture is rarely and complain; do something to make more money yourself— taken seriously by policy makers and media pundits. Indeed, for a host of politi- spend less time drinking, or smoking and socialising, and more cians, journalists, academics and influencers, the future of work will be unavoid- time working.8 ably precarious, dynamic and all-consuming. An artificial intelligence that is yet to manifest and a digital revolution that is poorly defined are often cited as the It is worthwhile considering the impact that such an emphasis on work ethic and causes of this fundamental shift towards unstable and increasingly demanding entrepreneurialism has had on our contemporary understanding of art. While work. Despite the rhetorical power of such explanations—tapping into, as they the popular figure of the 20th-century artist may have been a countercultural do, a cultural obsession with the semi-deistic status of technology, an obsession rebel or a work-shy dropout, the contemporary figure of the artist is arguably that is at least as old as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein—they ultimately miss the both preemptive and exemplary of the contemporary ideology of

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