Future of Work

In the current debate about precarisation, the artist appears to embody the successful combination of unlimited and wide-ranging ideas, creativity on command and clever self-marketing which is demanded of everyone in today's workforce.

Artists – who operate outside the mainstream labour force – are celebrated as self-motivating sources of productivity and the originators of new, subversive ideas and innovative work and lifestyles (to which they are passionately committed). One of the many reasons for this shift in values is that formerly stable institutional and organisational specifications have been deregulated and stereotypical, predominantly male, long-term career paths have eroded. As a result, it is becoming difficult to determine – at least from the perspective of groups who are oriented towards this type of career – when, how and why a distinction is made between work and leisure. The artist emerges as a reference point for the development of this understanding, or at least is significant in conveying a new understanding of life to a wider public.

Architect of one's own fate

In the general political debate in Great Britain or Germany, support for workers or the unemployed is dependent on their willingness to gear their work and life towards the requisite "productivity". Activities which were once regarded and experienced as private are now evaluated in terms of their economic function. The "entrepreneurial worker" must be the architect of their own life and fate. It is precisely this mystification of the outsider – the depiction of the artist as self-determined, creative and spontaneous – that underlies the slogans being bandied about in the current debate about the nature of work. A good example is the rhetoric of the Hartz Commission in Germany, which describes the unemployed as self-motivated "freelancers" and artists, journalists and other self-employed persons or those in flexible employment as "the nation's professionals" (Hartz Commission).

In this ways, artists – the classic "outsiders" – and their precarious employment situation have been transformed in the current economic debate into the role of economic actors. In managerial discussions, assessments, training, consultancy and the associated literature, creative thinking and action are no longer expected solely from artists, curators and designers. The new flexible workers on temporary contracts are the customers of the burgeoning creative skills industry with its advice brochures, seminars, software etc. These training programmes, learning techniques and methods for the acquisition of new professional tools also map out new potential forms of being. Their aim is to "optimise" the desired self. Creativity training "promotes and demands" the unleashing of creative potential, without taking account of existing social conditions which could pose an obstacle to this process. On the one hand, creativity in this context is conjured up as the democratic version of the genie in the lamp: we all have the ability. On the other hand, no one is exempt from the requirement to develop their creative potential. The call for self-determination and participation therefore no longer merely marks an emancipatory utopia; it also denotes a social obligation. And the subjects of these new power relations are apparently complying of their own free will. In the words of Nicolas Rose, they are "obliged to be free" – urged to be mature, autonomous and responsible for themselves, their behaviour no longer regulated by a disciplinary force but by "governmental" techniques based on the neoliberal idea of a self-regulating market. These techniques are generally intended to mobilise and stimulate rather than to discipline and punish. Today's worker is supposed to be as adaptable and flexible as the market itself.

Failure in the market: a new evaluation

The requirement – or indeed the imperative – to be creative and to adapt to market conditions is closely related to a very traditional understanding of artistic production, namely that the only possible income available to an artist results from the sale of his or her work in the art market (a myth, admittedly, but one which is currently being reaffirmed with full force today). But there is a significant distinction here from the managerial discourse, where failure in the market is viewed in very different terms from the artistic scene. An artist who is unsuccessful in the market place can always assert other subjective positions and transmute this failure into different forms. The figure of the undiscovered artist can thus be mobilised at any moment to legitimise the lack of success on the grounds that "the time isn't right", that "quality will always prevail" and "success may come later" (posthumously, if not before). And this myth of the undiscovered, unsuccessful but talented and misunderstood artist (of either sex) is not easy to integrate into the managerial discourse. It will be a long time before researchers turn their attention to long-defunct or bankrupt companies, or indeed before a highly committed, motivated, flexible and mobile – but ultimately unsuccessful – unemployed person who lacked any prospects on the job market despite their best efforts, is rewarded posthumously with a retrospective and catalogue at MOMA and ultimately a place in the Hall of Fame.

Even if the self-perception and self-management of the creative artist appear to dovetail precisely with the fantasies of labour market developers and apologists for the creative industry, the correlation appears to be of dubious merit.

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