artist as ... producer, quarry, thread, director, writer, orchestrator,ethnographer, choreographer, paet, archivist, forger,curator, and many other thingsfFirst

The contributions in this reader seek to understand how artists move through the world, and how that movement might necessitate other roles to pursue a project, a position, a politics, or a practice.

“How do artists work today? What kinds of roles do they occupy, have these roles changed over the years, and how does this impact the ecology of art? Has the pluralism of art given way to a pluralism of roles that artists may occupy? What are the contemporary conditions of labour producing this new state of affairs, and what reskilling does it ask of artists? Or, by contrast, what does it mean to sustain a lifelong commitment to another kind of practice, another kind of conversation? How does familiarity with another discipline—whether that of the autodidact or the professionally trained—influence an artist's practice, and shift how their work is conceptualised, made, and received?”