The Work of Art: A Manifesto

Artists work.

This is the work:
Create problems. Solve them.
Impose limitations. Limitations overcome inertia.
Play with chance. Aleatoric methods reveal connections.
Don’t worry about it. All is arbitrary and nothing is arbitrary.
The work makes use of what is there.
Go where the work takes you.

The work is of Place.
If it is out of Place, it is no longer the work.
Surrender to situation.
Let the work be in the Place it is.
Attempts to create work of Place out of Place results in a derivation without roots or fecundity.

The work is of Time.
If it is out of Time, it is no longer the work.
Surrender to temporality.
Let the work be of the Time it is.
Attempts to create immortal, unchanging works is a foolish monument to one’s ego that results in work that has no life.

The work is inter- disciplinary.
The work is trans- disciplinary.
The work is dialogical.
The work is polyvocal.
The work rejects definition.
The work questions.
The work responds.
The work compels.

Working the work reveals content: in and through, between and around, sub- and meta-.
The work is more than the object or the event or the process or the product.
The work is what the work needs to be.
The work is what it is, not what we want it to be.
The work has its own logic, do what is required of it.
The work does not serve us, we serve the work.
Work as commodity is alienated work. Selling the work is not the work.
Documentation of the work is not the work.

Reject the divine auteur. Collaboration is essential to the work.
Collaboration is not a given. Collaboration is work.
The work determines the terms of its sharing.
The work is mine, but it does not belong to me.
The work is ours, but it does not belong to us.
The work is individuals in community.
The work is community in individuals.

- Joséphine A. Garibaldi and Paul Zmolek
Mise en Abyme, Vol. VII, Issue 2. July-December 2020