http://en.contextishalfthework.net/#program
http://www.ravenrow.org/texts/40/
The APG was a fascinating late 60's experiment in embedded artist practices and artist run organizations that was initiated and maintained by the British artist couple John Latham and Barbara Steveni. The APG was a London based artist collective that sought to organize, place and embed artists within governmental institutions as well as corporations. The artists they placed retained their autonomy and were not beholden to produce any work as part of their placement, let alone anything resembling institutional/corporate propaganda. The placement provided a first hand, almost ethnographic opportunity for these filmmakers, sculptors and photographers to work without a studio; dropping them directly into the context and site of their research.
To quote from the recent Raven Row exhibition looking at the history of the APG:
"APG's proposal to organisations was that they forego the idea of patronage by commissioning works of art, and instead consider benefitting from the artists' insights. In turn, APG would enable artists to benefit from a 'real world' context in which to develop new ways of working, or as APG's axiom put it: 'Context is half the work'."
These placements included the National Coal Board, Esso Petroleum Co Ltd, British Airways, the Intensive Care Unit of Clare Hall Hospital, and the London Zoo.
To quote again from the Raven Row exhibition essay:
"APG's radical premise – what it called the 'open brief' – was that artists would be paid a wage by the host organisation regardless of the material output of their placement. Both the host organisation and the artist were contractually bound to enter the agreement without precondition (except for a general compliance with the organisation's rules, a controversial caveat). Given the unpredictability outcome of the 'open brief', it is unsurprising that so few organisations were willing to take on placements, relative to the large numbers of letters written and meetings organised by Steveni to try to persuade them. As the chronology at the end of this publication makes clear, APG sustained itself for over two decades by engaging directly with the public through exhibitions and symposia, and by developing networks of sympathetic business people, politicians and financial supporters. APG's lack of formal strategy forced it to continuously reinvent itself."
The group similarly morphed the format of the gallery exhibition to suit their needs and their subversively mock-corporate aesthetic. At a rather infamous exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London, the APG experimented with a debate-based exhibition format: the main exhibit was a boardroom table entitled The Sculpture, where APG hosted live discussions between artists, industrialists and government representatives.
The group wasn't without it's share of internal conflict. Several of the artists left after initial placements as they felt that the APG's direct action approach to engineering policy was too dominant, too controlling, and no longer about exploring an artistic practice in the expanded field.
From my research, the APG is having a bit of a renaissance at the moment with a large scale exhibition and symposium having taken place in Berlin a few months ago. Their efforts seem pertinent to this class in a variety of ways: collective endeavors into direct political engagement, working in a form somewhere between a mock institution and the real thing, theorizing art's engagement in everyday life, as well as emphasizing context, research and process as artistic means in and of themselves.
A few other, very loosely related things I've been reading:
Jan Verwoert's essay "Exhaustion & Exuberance":
http://www.artsheffield.org/2008/pdfs/exhaustion-exuberance.pdf
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