The publication Services Working Group (Fillip, 2021) revisits the groundbreaking exhibition, Services: The Conditions and Relations of Service Provision in Contemporary Project Oriented Artistic Practice, which was organized by Helmut Draxler and Andrea Fraser at the Kunstraum of Leuphana University of Lüneburg in 1994. Mobilizing a two-day working group as a central operative structure by which the exhibition itself was realized, Services embodied key debates concerning the socioeconomic conditions of the art field as well as critically reflexive discussions on labor relations, governance arrangements, and authority dynamics that constitute practical efforts to transform institutions.

Services Working Group presents newly-produced transcripts documenting the entirety of the debut Services working group discussions. These transcripts are supplemented by a newly-digitized photograph documentation of the group discussions and a newly-commissioned post-script text by Draxler and Fraser that reexamines Services in light of current movements around the social conditions and political economy of art institutions.

Services Working Group is edited by Eric Golo Stone. Contributions by Judith Barry, Ute Meta Bauer, Jochen Becker, Ulrich Bischoff, Beatrice von Bismarck, Iwona Blazwick, Susan Cahan, Michael Clegg, Stephan Dillemuth, Helmut Draxler, Andrea Fraser, Renée Green, Martin Guttmann, Renate Lorenz, Christian Philipp Müller, Fritz Rahmann, Eric Golo Stone, Fred Wilson, and Ulf Wuggenig.

Participants

Helmut Draxler is an art historian, critic, theorist, and curator who lives and works in Berlin and Vienna. He is currently Department Head and Professor in the Art Theory department at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Previously, from 1999 to 2012, he was Professor of Aesthetic Theory at the Merz Akademie, University of Applied Art, Design and Media, in Stuttgart. He was Director of the Kunstverein München from 1992 to 1995. In addition to serving on the editorial board of Texte zur Kunst, Draxler writes extensively on contemporary art and theory for a variety of international magazines and artists’ catalogues.

Andrea Fraser is an artist and Professor of Interdisciplinary Studio in the Department of Art at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is a founding member of the feminist performance group The V Girls (1986–1996), the project-based artist initiative Parasite (1997–1998), and the cooperative art gallery Orchard, New York (2005–2008). Major works include projects for the Venice Biennale (1993), Tate Modern, London (2007), and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2016), among performances and exhibitions at many other venues. Her essays and performance texts have appeared in, among others, Artforum, October, and Texte zur Kunst. Her books include Andrea Fraser: de la crítica institutional a la institutión de la crítica (Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 2016); 2016 in Museums, Money, and Politics (MIT Press, 2018), and Andrea Fraser Collected Interviews, 1990–2018 (A.R.T. Press and Koenig Books, 2019).

Eric Golo Stone is currently artistic director at the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart where he has organized exhibitions by Eva Barto, Andrea Fraser, Anike Joyce Sadiq, Bea Schlingelhoff, and Ramaya Tegegne. His research, writing, curating, and lecturing consistently examines the political economy of art. His writing has been published in Afterall, Flash Art, October, and Texte zur Kunst, among other publications. He is editor of the newly released book, Services Working Group, published by Fillip, and with Rhea Anastas, Charles Gaines, and Jamillah James he is co-editor of the book The Theater of Refusal: Black Art and Mainstream Criticism (1993–2023), to be released 2023 from Dancing Foxes Press.