Maintenance Art

Project description

In 1969, the artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles composed Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969! (opens PDF). In the manifesto Ukeles addresses the status of ‘maintenance work’ across public, private and domestic contexts. By ‘maintenance work’, she means, in the broadest possible sense, the cumulation of errands and tasks that must be repeatedly performed to maintain systems and facilitate development. She categorised maintenance work into ‘personal’ tasks such as washing, ‘general’ tasks such as cleaning the home or repairing roads and ‘Earth’ tasks such as removing pollution or preserving habitats, although she sees all three as intimately connected.

Ukeles considered maintenance tasks as performative processes within her creative practice, deliberately focusing on the act of doing them in order to place emphasis on their value. Ukeles suggested that for any form of personal, artistic, economic or social development to occur, tasks which aim to preserve and maintain are essential. She thus sought to elevate their status from unrecognised labour to art. By considering personal domestic maintenance alongside societal and environmental maintenance, Ukeles sought to connect these fields and emphasise the particular role of women in relation to maintenance work.

A proposal for a show, entitled Care, was included within the manifesto. The hypothetical exhibition would entail Ukeles the artist living, or simply working at the museum, performing maintenance tasks required for the general upkeep of the art museum. By performing these tasks within a museum environment, she sought for viewers to re-imagine these procedures as art. The exhibition would display transcripts of interviews between her and members of the public from a wide variety of classes and occupations discussing their perception of maintenance tasks. The questions included:

• What do you think maintenance is?
• How do you feel about spending whatever parts of your life you spend on maintenance activities?
• What is the relationship between maintenance and freedom?
• What is the relationship between maintenance and life’s dreams?

To address the concept of Earth maintenance in the exhibition, Ukeles suggested that the contents of a sanitation truck should be brought to the museum regularly to be reused for the purpose of art. In addition, she proposed for a container of polluted air, a container of polluted water from the Hudson River and a container of ravaged land to be brought to the museum to be ‘maintained’. The containers would be de-polluted and rehabilitated, demonstrating the importance of environmental maintenance tasks.

This show was never produced. However, Ukeles continued to navigate these ideas and themes into further works including Washing/Tracks/Maintenance (1973). This performance, documented through black and white photography, depicted Ukeles washing the steps of the Wadsworth Atheneum Art Museum. During the period, the often-invisible labour of care and maintenance work was typically done by marginalised groups, particularly ethnic minorities. Ukeles, a white female artist, highlighted the importance of these jobs and those who perform them.

Sustainability issues

• Putting maintenance at the centre of creative practice is one way of bringing sustainability issues to the forefront, through the overlap between practices of maintaining and sustaining.
• Ukeles’ articulation of the different scales on which this needs to be addressed (domestic, city and world) laid ground for understanding environmental protection and preservation as connected with social issues of class, race, sex and gender.
• By performing maintenance-based tasks within a museum environment, Washing/Tracks/Maintenance drew attention to art’s dependence on physical resources and materials.
• The performance Touch Sanitation encouraged audiences to recognise the significance of maintenance work. It raises the status of acts of preservation and conservation and draws a continuum from cleaning floors through to detoxifying air and water.
• Flow City and Landing seek to actively involve viewers by encouraging them to consider how they situate themselves in relation to the wider structures of waste management.
• The sculptures and performances that Ukeles made from DSNY’s equipment monumentalised the tools and resources involved in maintenance as well as demonstrating the value of working with re-used materials.

Lessons, tips and advice

• Ukeles’ work provides a model for how artists can engage with environmental sustainability through how they carry out their work as well as through its content. Her work actively helps to preserve and maintain her environment rather than consuming its resources.
• Ukeles’ artist in residence position with DSNY demonstrates how organisations can benefit from the input of an artist to encourage better understanding of and engagement with their work.
• The artist in residence position was unpaid, but Ukeles’ felt that she was provided with adequate payment in-kind through studio space, resources and ability to work with the Department’s employees.
• Although she sought to celebrate and elevate the status of the sanmen, Ukeles has been critiqued for her non-involvement in their strikes and pay disputes. This raises questions of how artists should approach their political role in socially-engaged practice.
• Much of Ukeles’ work is based outside of museum environments and is often created as part of or in close proximity to sites involved in waste management. This helps it reach new audiences and highlights connections with its environment.
• Ukeles’ work was at times hampered by ambition that exceeded available resources. For example, her full plans for Flow City were never realised.

Partners and stakeholders

• Ukeles is an independent artist who has worked with a range of museums and public organisations.
• Ukeles became DSNY’s official, unsalaried artist in residence in 1977. She was granted this position by Anthony Vaccarello, then DSNY Commissioner. DSNY manages the collecting, recycling and disposing of waste; cleaning streets and clearing snow and ice in New York City.
• Washing/Tracks/Maintenance was performed at the Wadsworth Atheneum Art Museum, Hartford, Connecticut, USA.
• Touch Sanitation was exhibited at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, USA.
• Flow City was based at West 59th Street Marine Transfer Station in Manhattan. The station is owned and operated by DSNY.
• Landing was commissioned by DSNY and New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs. It was designed by Ukeles in collaboration with WXY Studio and URS Corporation.

Funding

Ukeles’ position as the official artist in residence for DSNY was unsalaried. While working on Touch Sanitation DSNY provided Ukeles with a studio space but no stipend. Works such as Ceremonial Arch were produced using materials from the department.

Flow City was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Landing was commissioned by DSNY and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. It is funded through the New York City Percent for Art programme. Percent for Art requires that a portion of capital budgets for certain city-funded construction projects be allocated to public art.

Relevant links

• Article about Mierle Laderman Ukeles in Assemble Papers.
• Article about Mierle Laderman Ukeles in Hyperallergic .
• Maintenance Artist documentary.