Description of the Book

Byproduct presents texts from a variety of artists, activists, curators, and interdisciplinary thinkers that interrogate projects by cultural practitioners “embedded” in industries, the government, and other non-art sectors. Working with the physical systems and symbolic languages of these institutions, these cultural agents develop projects—or “byproducts”—that produce meaning contingent on their hosts.

The first section of the book considers the work of artists embedded in industries. In one interview, critics/curators Claire Bishop, Peter Eleey, and Stephen Wright examine the work of Artist Placement Group, whose work in the 1970s involved placing dozens of artists in corporations and government posts throughout the United Kingdom. Curator Joseph del Pesco examines the collaborations of A Constructed World with 120 employees of a bank; and art historian Michelle Kuo examines the founding moments of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), a group formed in 1968 to bring together artists and scientists. Alongside these texts, an excerpt from ‘Parasite’, a seminal work by the influential philosopher Michel Serres, points out the role of the parasite—or the outsider entering a host—as both alimentation (nourishment) and irritant. This relationship, Serres writes, oscillates between hospitality to hostility. Serres’ work, as well as a specially-translated essay by French art historian Paul Ardenne, points towards contingency as a fundamental principle of a contextualist notion of ‘art.’

Another section entitled ‘Performing Politics’ examines the age-long tradition of what performance artist L.M. Bogad refers to as ‘electoral guerilla theatre’—or artists running as candidates in political races. Artist Luis Jacob interviews Vincent Trasov, one half of ‘Mr. Peanut’, the larger than life tap-dancing Planter’s Peanut character who received 11% of the vote in his run for mayor of Vancouver in 1974; architect/artist Pedro Reyes interviews Antanas Mockus, the recent two-term elect mayor of Bogotá, Colombia whose creative solutions are emblemized by his decision to hire 420 mimes to work as traffic cops—a gesture so effective it cut traffic-related deaths in half.

One aspect highlighted throughout the book’s case studies in embedded artists’ practices is the subversive role of language—from utterance to written documentation. The philosopher Lev Kreft interviews the three Slovenian artists who in 2007, each changed their name to ‘Janez Jans¹a’, the centrist prime minister of Slovenia; the artist Kristin Lucas reflects on why she changed her name to Kristin Lucas (same spelling); and in ‘What Is An Institution?’ an essay by the noted philosopher of language, John Searle looks at the role of language in creating an institution.

The book’s introduction, written by Jahn and Bogad, reads like a play wherein the footnotes take on a life of their own. No longer passive references reinforcing the pillars of a central narrative, these mischievous agents provoke and tease the stuffy and pretensious Narrator. Designed by Ryan Hines, the book graphically reinforces the subversion of outsider-center/parasite-host binaries in favor of a dynamic system in flux and the byproduct—or artwork—that emerges.