Artist Placement Group - (APG)

What a brilliant idea!

This is all preliminary research pertaining to the Artist Placement Group.

                                                                                                                                                      

E-Flux

"Artist Placement Group, APG." E-flux. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Nov. 2012. <http://e-flux.com/timebank/event/artist-placement-group-apg>.

Note: This appears to be a press release for an exhibition, The Social Contract, 14 Feb - 23 Feb 2012

http://e-flux.com/timebank/event/artist-placement-group-apg

"Artist Placement Group (APG) was conceived by Barbara Steveni in London in 1965, and established a year later by Steveni and founding artists Barry Flanagan, David Hall, John Latham, Anna Ridley, and Jeffrey Shaw, among others. Between 1966 and the mid-1980s, APG negotiated approximately twenty placements on behalf of artists in industry and government. Unlike most residency schemes that have emerged in its wake, APG artists were not required to produce any determinable object as a result of her or his placement."

The goals of the APG were to:

-place an artist in an industry or government non-art related
-not to have the artist "work for" the industry, but it was more of an experiment to see what might be the benefit/outcome of a creative individual in an typically "non-art" situation

It was very difficult to evaluate the influence on either the artist or industry this program had.  

Artist Placement Group, Between 6, Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 1971. Courtesy Barbara Stevini

                                                                                                                                                       

Frieze Magazine

Context is Half the Work

Peter Eleey 
 

Eleey, Peter. "Frieze Magazine | Archive | Context Is Half the Work." Frieze Magazine RSS. N.p., Nov. 2011. Web. 27 Nov. 2012. <http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/context_is_half_the_work/>. 

"In 1966, the Artist Placement Group was founded to integrate artists into businesses and corporations around Britain. Did the strategy bear fruit?"

In the same decade two similar groups developed:

• Los Angeles County Museum of Art, "Art and Technology Program" under the direction of curator Maurice Tuchman
• A collaboration between Bell Labs and Robert Rauschenberg, Experiments in Art and Technology (EATS)

"APG favoured the notion that artists could have a positive effect on industry through both their inherent creativity and their relative ignorance of its conventions." 

1968 - Industrial Negative Symposium, London

Artist Placements:

Garth Evans - British Steel Corporation
David Hall - British European Airways + Scottish Television
Stuart Brisley - Hillie Co. Ltd
Leonard Hessing - ICI Fibres
Lois Price - Milton Keynes Development Corporation
Ian MacDonald-Munro + Marie Yates - Centre for the Study of Human Learning at Brunel University
John Latham - National Coal Board + Proteus Bygging
Ian Breakwell + David Parsons - British Rail
Andrew Dipper - Esso Petroleum

APG recieved much criticism as an art practice. 

"Lathom's...'least-event,' an idea borrowed from scientist friends, which he saw as a kind of zero moment from which things flowed forward into the present and beyond."

"Instead of pulling the audience and environment into the art work, APG located the work out in the world, a tabula rasa on which society’s approval of artists (or lack thereof) would register."

In 1989, APG refocused its efforts in advocacy and policy than actual placement and renamed "Organization and Imagination" (O+I).

"Nevertheless, the Utopian vision of what she called ‘repositioning art in the decision-making processes of society’ remained and continues in force."

"The approach of APG makes evident artists’ obsession during the 1960s and ’70s to engage with the new ‘systems’ of social science, culture and industry, but it was among the first to model in its practice the shift towards a service-based economy that was occurring in society at large, as well as the rise of intellectual property as a product."

Other service-based practices referenced in this article:

"When artists work in open-endedly collaborative relationships – projects such as Marjetica Potrc’s infrastructure improvements in impoverished communities, Superflex’s guarana co-operative and soft drink company in Brazil, Thomas Hirschhorn’s Bataille Monument (2002) or France Morin’s The Quiet in the Land residencies"

                                                                                                                                                        

Raven Row (Contemporary Art Space, London) 

The Individual and the Organisation: Artist Placement Group 1966-79

Curated by Antony Hudek and Alex Sainsbury, consultation by Barbara Steveni

"The Individual and the Organisation: Artist Placement Group 1966-79." Raven Row. Ed. Antony Hudek and Alex Sainsbury. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Nov. 2012. <http://www.ravenrow.org/current/>.

"APG arranged that artists would work to an 'open brief', whereby their placements were not required to produce tangible results, but that the engagement itself could potentially benefit both host organisations as well as the artists in the long-term."

"Instead of commissioning art works, the host organizations were asked to pay the artist wages and in exchange, they would benefit from the artist's reports, ideas and insights."