The Project as Post-1989 Art Form

Key Principle

After 1989, the term "project" replaces the finite art object: "an open-ended, post-studio, research-based, social process, extending over time and mutable in form" (p. 194). Bishop's central move: this artistic project fills the vacuum left by collapsed grand political narratives at precisely the moment when project-based practice mirrors neoliberal labour conditions. Personality traits valued -- adaptability, flexibility, intellectual mobility -- are "indistinguishable from management literature's ideal worker" (p. 216).

Why This Matters

The Projective City framework (Boltanski/Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism, 1999) reveals that the artistic critique of capitalism (autonomy, creative fulfilment) was absorbed into capitalism's current phase. What is intended as radical overhaul of the art object is simultaneously survival strategy under neoliberal precarity (p. 216).

Good Examples

• APG (Artist Placement Group, 1966-89): Artists placed in corporations via "open brief" -- companies paid 2,000-3,000 pounds with no obligation to produce art (p. 165). Slogan: "The context is half the work" (p. 166). Central concept: the Incidental Person -- artist with "specific formulative abilities" transcending left/right through awareness rather than partisan politics (p. 171).
• APG's structural tension: Brisley's Hille Furniture placement -- earning trust was the main work, not sculpture. But the artist as intermediary risked "permanent conflict" between workers and management (p. 168). Arts Council withdrew funding on grounds APG was "more concerned with social engineering than with straight art" (p. 175).
• UK Community Arts (1970s-80s): Shared APG's goal of redefining the artist's role but at grassroots level. Declined through: definitional vagueness -> grant-dependency -> co-optation -> rebranding (p. 187-189). Community artists became "quasi-employees" of the state (p. 188).
• Site-specificity evolution: formal/phenomenological -> domestic/atmospheric -> socially constituted (p. 195). Project Unite (1993) as hinge: most artists chose self-contained galleries despite curatorial hope for social engagement (p. 197).

Counterpoints

• Two 1968 critiques converge: The artistic critique (autonomy) and social critique (equality) were historically separate; capitalism's current "spirit" emerged by absorbing both (p. 215).
• Participation and spectatorship are mutually exclusive in practice: "Culture in Action" privileged those who could spend the most time on site, producing new inequality (p. 216).
• Curatorial dominance: In the early 1990s, "the curatorial framework is tighter and stronger than the projects by individual artists" (p. 217).

Key Quotes

"the word chosen to describe these open-ended artistic activities arrives at a moment when there is a conspicuous lack of what we could call a social project -- a collective political horizon or goal" -- Claire Bishop, p. 194

"whether it is better for art to be engaged with society even if this means compromise, or to maintain ideological purity at the expense of social isolation and powerlessness" -- Claire Bishop on APG, p. 176

Rules of Thumb

• When "project" replaces "work of art," ask whether the shift reflects genuine political ambition or internalised precarity
• The personality traits participatory art values (flexibility, networking, mobility) may mirror neoliberal labour rather than resist it
• The best placements produced "abrasive mutual debate" -- friction, not harmony, signals productive engagement
• A community arts movement that refuses aesthetic evaluation leaves itself defenceless against institutional capture

Site-Specificity Evolution (p. 195)

Related References

• Three Revolutionary Flashpoints: 1917, 1968, 1989 - 1989 as the flashpoint producing the project form
• Quality vs. Equality: The Persistent Dilemma - Community arts' decline through quality refusal
• The Ethical Turn and Its Discontents - How process-over-product thinking enables co-optation