Nizan Shaked < ██████████████████████ >
To: Josh Schwebel <privatejosh@gmail.com>
Cc: Lauren Wetmore <████████████████████████████████ >
Dear Josh and Lauren,
Here is my blurb, in two paragraphs, such that you can use just the first, or attach the, optional, additional two sentences.
Here is my blurb, in two paragraphs, such that you can use just the first, or attach the, optional, additional two sentences.
Feel free to edit, as I am aware that this blurb might be a bit theoretical or dense.
Proof that institutional critique still has a bite, Joshua Schwebel’s book The Employee is both a part, and documentation of an expanded artwork that reflects upon the conditions of its own making. Performing what Marina Vishmidt has termed “infrastructural
analysis,” it puts on display the absurdity and inadvertent cruelty of the labyrinthian arts-funding bureaucracy. Under a neo-liberal socio-economic order, workers in remanent artist-run eutopias are subject to exploitative and precarious conditions. Revealing
the thicket of obstacles and gaslighting processes of unreliable grant-based art funding, this book shows how funding mechanisms subject workers to an endless cycle of frustration. Beyond just the arts, The Employee forms a model reflecting problems
endemic to equivalent systems everywhere.
Brushing contracts against their grain, Schwebel’s subject is arts administration using the law as a medium, and thus furthering the historical use of contracts in conceptualism. Rather than using modified versions in their traditional capacity to protect
artist or worker rights, here, the contracts bracketing the project redefine roles, demystify economic definitions, and expose power dynamics.
Nizan Shaked, Ph.D. (she/her)
2024 Andy Warhol Foundation Art Writers Grantee
https://www.artswriters.org/grant/grantees/grantee/nizan_shaked
Museums and Wealth: The Politics of Contemporary Art Collections
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/museums-and-wealth-9781350045767/
The Synthetic Proposition: Conceptualism and the Political Referent in Contemporary Art
http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781784992767/
American Art Journal Editorial Board Member
https://americanart.si.edu/research/journal
Professor of Contemporary Art History, Museum and Curatorial Studies. California State University, Long Beach.
CSULB is located on the sacred site of Puvungna. We acknowledge that we are on the land of the
Tongva/Gabrieleño and the Acjachemen/Juaneño Nations who have lived and continue to live here.
Nizan Shaked, Ph.D. (she/her)
2024 Andy Warhol Foundation Art Writers Grantee
https://www.artswriters.org/grant/grantees/grantee/nizan_shaked
Museums and Wealth: The Politics of Contemporary Art Collections
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/museums-and-wealth-9781350045767/
The Synthetic Proposition: Conceptualism and the Political Referent in Contemporary Art
http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781784992767/
American Art Journal Editorial Board Member
https://americanart.si.edu/research/journal
Professor of Contemporary Art History, Museum and Curatorial Studies. California State University, Long Beach.
CSULB is located on the sacred site of Puvungna. We acknowledge that we are on the land of the
Tongva/Gabrieleño and the Acjachemen/Juaneño Nations who have lived and continue to live here.