The Artist is In: On Residency and Embedment

In the past twenty years, interdisciplinarity in the arts has shifted from being a buzzword to an imperative, wherein artists are increasingly positioned as creative consultants or “visual strategists,” serving broader agendas of technological innovation and market performance. Beginning with IBM and Bell Labs, the computer tech industry led the way, establishing residency programs that provide artists with much-needed funding and access to cutting-edge tools and expertise. But what does it mean to be “in residence” in such circumstances? In the face of a significant power imbalance wherein the sponsoring institution defines a program’s success, are resident artists indeed fully free to innovate, let alone criticize or fail? In the 1960s and ‘70s, artist-based organizations such as U.S.-based E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology) and the U.K.-based Artist Placement Group provided bureaucratic support that is lacking in the current corporatist environment. Even so, resident artists were subject to the constraints of the contract. In examining the bureaucratic structure of industry-based residencies past and present, this paper queries the techno-optimism behind such endeavours, but also highlights how artists embedded in industry can inform and transform future models.