Overview of the project

This project examines the current and changing forms of artists’ labour in contemporary Finland. The project focuses on intra-actions between working practices in different fields of art, wider ongoing changes pertaining to labour markets and societally prevalent forms of labour, as well as economic structures, ecologies and practices. To study the contemporary work of artists, “New Economies of Artistic Labour” combines theoretical and methodological approaches from humanistic study of the arts, social sciences, and artistic research. In terms of research material, we explore the professional profiles and everyday realities of art workers (visual and performance artists, musicians, writers) via ethnographic and interview-based case studies, writings collected from artists, and literary analysis. 

We investigate how contemporary forms of production and economy manifest themselves and are entangled in artists’ daily working practices and lived experience while focusing especially on different modes of entrepreneurship and collectivity within artists’ ways of working. We ask: how do different economic logics and dynamics limit and enable different kinds of artistic work? How do these dynamics interrelate with artists’ concrete working practices and their identity as art workers? How do the activities and professional profiles of visual, performance and literary artists exemplify wider transformations of work and economy in post-industrial society?  

The main aim of the project is to develop new research approaches and concepts related to art-working at the intersections of studies of art, social scientific research of labour practices, and new materialist study of culture and society. The results of the project will also be of interest and use to the sociology of art and artistic research. The main publications of the project will include a special issue for a peer-reviewed journal (in Finnish), three co-authored international articles, an exhibition, a sound art project, as well as a new vocabulary of artistic labour that will advance understanding of the specificities of art-working in different fields of research, labour market policies and administration, and public discussions. In addition, the results of the project will be gathered in an edited collection of research articles.