In our initial proposal for “Services,” Helmut Draxler and I (Andrea Fraser) offered the term “service” to describe what appeared to be a determining feature of what has come to be called “project work.”
We wrote: It appears to us that, related variously to institutional critique, productivist, activist and political documentary traditions as well post-studio, site-specific and/or public art activities, the practices currently characterized as ‘project work’ do not necessarily share a thematic, ideological or procedural basis. What they do seem to share is the fact that they all involve expending an amount of labor which is either in excess of, or independent of, any specific material production and which cannot be transacted as or along with a product.
This labor, which in economic terms would be called service provision (as opposed to goods production), may include: - ‘the work of the interpretation or analysis of sites and situations in and outside of cultural institutions; - the work of presentation and installation; - the work of public education in and outside of cultural institutions; - advocacy and other community based work, including organizing, education, documentary production and the creation of alternative structures.
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