The Invigilator Research Network is a working group of artist/invigilators seeking to illuminate and complicate relationships between labour conditions, hierarchies, institutional practices, surveillance mechanisms and arts economies.
IRN’s members regularly exploit and interrogate their wage-labour day jobs for the benefit of artistic practices. As professional art-observers, paid to watch and be forever vigilant in the presence of art, IRN activities manifest relationships between artwork, capital, and artworking. Explorations span multiple (and multiplying) platforms including academia, activism, fine art practices, fashion and live events.
IRN’s explicit aim is to make tangible the links between invigilation, art making, pay-per-hour and a neoliberalised cultural sector. Considering the artist as a networked thinker, IRN aims to raise questions surrounding the meaning of creating and consuming in an age of insecurity, economic and cultural polarisation and opportunity.
