Lauren Wetmore <████████████████████████████████ >
To: Josh Schwebel <privatejosh@gmail.com>
The Employee was a year-long Conceptual artwork by Joshua Schwebel investigating how "artistic practice as we know it today is a sculptural form in itself, shaped by the constraining forces of policy and funding priorities confronting arts workers and artists." The Employee took place at Forest City Gallery in London, Ontario from 2020-21. One of Canada's first artist-run centres, FCG has been publicly funded for almost 50 years, yet is staffed by a single, part-time employee whose disproportionate workload is not uncommon in artist-run centres in Canada. To realize The Employee, Schwebel obtained funding from the Canada Council for the Arts to hire a performer, “the employee”, who he delegated to write funding applications on behalf of FCG. With this protocol Schwebel intended to reinforce the gallery’s capacity, while the gallery, in turn, provided the framework through which the performer’s administrative activities would be signified as art. Ultimately, none of the employee’s grant applications were successful.
This book, also The Employee, is a publication of critical texts and first-person testimonials by artists and cultural workers reflecting on Schwebel’s work and their own labour contexts. An online archive of the emails sent and received throughout the extent of the project (2018–2025) can be consulted at: www.the-employee.com. Parallel to this printed publication, this archive constitutes a trace of the artwork and characterizes the nature of cultural work as a continuous labour of network-building and communication.
The Employee is edited by Joshua Schwebel and Lauren Wetmore and includes contributions by the editors and Mariane Bourcheix-Laporte, Teresa Carlesimo, Bopha Chhay, Dana Kopel, Michelle Lacombe, Denise Ryner, Camille-Zoé Valcourt-Synnott and Marina Vishmidt.
Part One notes:
Numbers indicate: Page, Paragraph/Footnote, Line
17, 1, 8: lower case t is needed = "the employee"
17,1,12: Here The Employee should be lower case, no italics, because none of the employee's applications were successful but as a project The Employee did receive grants.
18, 1, 4: Happy to have this title be "Overcome Overwhelm"
18, 19, 2: "Application" should be plural, s needed
21, 2, 4: tens is wrong here, make two highlighted changes to read "A recent Canada-wide survey indicated that most respondents experienced high levels of stress and burnout, and this is more pronounced when they have a disability, are BIPOC, or are primary caregivers.
22, 4, 10: the employee - no italics, no capitals
26, title: Let's make the title just "Overcome Overwhelm" to match the table of contents.
31, 2, 9: I want to add a quote from your narrative to my conclusion here, so it should now read (with the highlighted inclusion): In turn, I have both the agency and the responsibility to effect change. As Josh notes in this book, "One way to counter the neoliberal restructuring of artists’ status vis- à-vis the cultural workers who support and contextualize our work is through a practice of redistribution of concern, of resources, and of awareness." This is the work in which The Employee is employed.
39, 4, 9: Looks like she now uses the name "Jennifer Snyder Cruise". Can you double check this and indicate the change, if I am correct? Also correct it in the footnote citation on pg 64.
41, 1, 3: hyphen needed, "collectively-born"
42, 3, 10: Honed should be "homed"
43, 2, 7: Just making sure of word choice here – either work, but should "recuperates" be "reiterates"?
45, 1, 5: Her name seems to shift a lot across publications, but her website uses "Marisol D'Andrea" so I am going to recommend that we change "M.J." to "Marisol" here, but keep it as "M.J." in the footnote citation.
47, 1, 13: What is the square bracket in this quote doing?
47, 3, 12: I think that it should be "Mitchel" with one L. Please confirm, and then also note the change in the footnote for this quote on page 69.
55 and 56, inset quotes: I like this as a solution. You are right that if they are inset, they don't necessarily need to also have quotation marks but, to be honest, I think that the quotes are useful to a reader and should stay.
58, 1, 1: I think that "lopsided imagination" should be in double quotes.
66, 8, 3: remove ", the employee,"
65, 17, 3 and 4: Why is the editor information underlined here?
66, 20, 1: Italics on title Documentary Protocols
67, 26, 1: Capital P needed on "Power"
68, 33, 2: Small c in "culture"
69, 34, 1: Format as a dash (spaces around are too large)
69, 41, 1: "van" should not be capitalized.
72, 62, 2: Yes, the A should be capitalized and, actually, I would also remove the brackets.
72, 64, 1: I think that the names should be switched in order - Boltanski first - for consistency and alpha order.
76, 3, 3: Comma needed after "Nova Scotia"
79, 4, 11: Sentence fragment, change to a comma and lower-case w = "no additional funding was secured, would it prove a point by "
81, 3: Should there be a space above Camille's e-signature?