Are You Working Too Much? Post-Fordism, Precarity, and the Labor of Art

It is infuriating that most interesting artists are perfectly capable of functioning in at least two or three professions that are, unlike art, respected by society in terms of compensation and general usefulness. Furthermore, when the flexibility, certainty and freedom promised by being part of a critical outside are considered as extensions of recent advances in economic exploitation, does the field of art then become the uncritical, complicit inside of something far more compelling? This latest issue of e‑flux journal addresses these important (though somewhat hostile) questions in the in‑your‑face style the journal is known for.