Work ethics: On fair labour practices in a socially engaged art world

Abstract This article shifts the conversation around ethics in social practice art from a focus on individual artist’s engagements with particular communities towards a critical exploration of the discursive practices that are bringing ‘socially engaged art’ into being as a field. Drawing from social theories of work and labour, and traditions of institutional critique in art practice, along with providing an analysis of the author’s own artistic research projects in Moscow and New York, this article addresses the ethical implications of the means by which socially engaged art is produced as a profession, or a form of skilled labour. The article presents socially engaged art as defined by particular habitual interactions, often within the context of institutions, and proposes practical ways by which to address ethics in the production of socially engaged art.