ABSTRACT
Outsourcing is a labour practice that deepens racialised, gendered, classed and able-normative divisions of labour and prevents workers’ access to structures of support and care, including sick and holiday pay, regulated wages and pensions. This chapter explores the relationship between outsourcing and social reproduction asking how outsourcing and its broader culture beyond the contractual contribute to the devaluing of social reproduction and care work and the diminishment of resources for taking care of ourselves and others. Outsourcing is exemplified in the art field through the production of artwork in places with lower labour costs, the institutional outsourcing of cleaning and catering services, and the rise of temporary contracts. However, while the art and curatorial field is marked by outsourcing, there are a growing number of practices pushing against its logics and associated labour practices. In conversation with Sandi Hilal around the work (Al Madhafa–The Living Room, 2016–ongoing) and Lisa Tan (Other Artists, 2019), this chapter examines the methods and infrastructure these practices develop to expand our capacity to care for ourselves and each other, in which the critical lens is also turned inwards, demanding a reconfiguration of the oppressive forms of cultural production marked by the practice of outsourcing.
