MAINTENANCE ART – Artistic Practices of Connection
“We have no art. We do everything as well as we can.”
According to a Balinese proverb, Mierle Laderman Ukeles: Manifesto of Maintenance Art.
In 1969, the American artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles wrote her much-discussed manifesto, "Manifesto! Maintenance Art. Proposal for an Exhibition." It was intended as a proposal for an exhibition or performance within a gallery. Titled "Care," she intended to clean the gallery spaces, sweep dust, and mop the floor, thereby making reproductive labor visible within the gallery. Under the motto "My work will be the work," she exhibited daily reproductive labor as art. The trigger for this manifesto and her performance was Ukeles's experience of being excluded from the art world following the birth of her child, reduced to motherhood, and relegated to private space.
Today, over fifty years later, the situation in the arts and culture sector seems to have barely changed, despite many struggles and demands. The image of the completely autonomous, always flexible, endlessly creative, financially and emotionally independent artist, constantly available everywhere, and free from all restrictive circumstances still prevails. The cultural and arts sector is organized accordingly: Residencies are only awarded at short notice before the start of the project, often without the possibility of bringing accompanying persons or those requiring care; applications must present completed concepts without any assurance that funding will actually be forthcoming; and the actual time invested almost always does not correspond to the money ultimately earned by the project. The argument that often prevails is 'everything for art' and that this is not just a profession, but a life choice. But who can even be an artist if making art works like that? People who have to or want to do care work, lack financial resources, or are otherwise emotionally involved beyond their work relationships are not actually considered artists. Nor are people who are less resilient due to health reasons or require longer work processes, nor are people who are denied access to art and cultural institutions from the outset for structural, racist, classist, ableist, or sexist reasons. The image of an artist is therefore often still cis-male, white, financially secure, non-disabled, childless, and from an educated household.
In our research project, "Maintenance Art," we draw on struggles that attempt to question, subvert, and challenge this image. However, we are not primarily calling for a change in the structures within the art and cultural sector; rather, we are asking for an artistic practice of connection. What might an art look like that places reproduction, not production, at the center of its work? What would art look like that rejects the rules of the art market and, contrary to perfectionism and the constraints of production, focuses on process, conversation, preparation and follow-up, rehearsal, and everyday maintenance? To what extent can our care relationships, our emotional connectedness, become part of our artistic exploration? And to what extent can art itself be a form of care work? What does this mean for our work? How do we organize ourselves, how do we work together, and how do we care for one another? Does art, as care work—as always already connected to others and no longer standing alone—open up perspectives on other forms of relationships, on other ways of organizing community?
The MAINTENANCE ART project is a long-term project by andpartnersincrime to link care work and art, which is divided into several sub-projects:
1. Manifesto
Research and rewriting project by Inga Bendukat and Eleonora Herder on Mierle Laderman Ukeles' 'Manifesto! Maintenance Art. Proposal for an Exhibition,' funded by the takecareresidenz Fonds Daku and Künstlerhaus Mousonturm. February to April 2021.
2. ART AS LABOUR – On art, motherhood and institutional critique
Discourse format and publication as part of "Care City," Wunder der Prärie Festival 2021, Mannheim. Inga Bendukat and Eleonora Herder together with accomplices.
3. ACADEMY OF THE RADICALLY CARING
A performative symposium with lectures, workshops, a concert, discussions, and a shared meal at the ada_kantine in Frankfurt am Mannheim on the topics of radical care work, care piracy, and art as care work. Part of the Politics in Free Theater Festival 2022.
Nouria Behloul, Inga Bendukat, Eleonora Herder and Tim Schuster together with ada_ists and accomplices.
4th Workshop – WE HAVE NO ART: WE DO EVERYTHING AS WELL AS WE CAN
An attempt at Maintenance Art: Workshop with students, actors from artistic practice, dramaturgy and production by Inga Bendukat and Eleonora Herder as part of the co-production Impulse Theater Festival and Cheers for Fears, Mühlheim an der Ruhr 2023.
5th Workshop – MAINTENANCE ART RELOADED
© Karam Ghossein
Lecture by Eleonora L. Herder and Nepomuck (Inga) Bendukat about Maintenance Art at “Rehearsing Futures” Annual Meeting of IETM 2025.
What if reproduction, rather than production, were at the center of our understanding of art? How do artistic work processes function when they are no longer conceived in neoliberal production logics, but rather as maintenance, as resumption and reconnection? What can art learn from activists of radical care work? What kind of connections, relationships, communities, networks, but also strategies and spaces are needed when times become increasingly precarious? And what would happen if we were to ultimately understand art itself as care work? Would that then be maintenance art? And what would be the thing being cared for?
www.ietm.org/en/meetings/ietm-berlin-plenary-meeting-2025/register