Episode Details

What happens when Artists are embedded

inside the systems that run the world?

--- hospitals, railroads, steel mills, shipping companies, government ministries...

In this episode, we explore the the strange, funny, visionary, and unexpectedly influential story of Barbara Steveni and the Artist Placement Group — a loose coalition of British artists who, beginning in the late 1960s, attempted something radical: placing artists inside the machinery of everyday institutional life not to decorate systems… but to complicate them.

This show explores how artists embedded themselves inside mega-corporations and government agencies — often producing confusion, resistance, revelation, and occasionally profound organizational insight. And:

* Why artists may function best not at the edges of society, but deep inside the systems shaping public life.

How attention, metaphor, and observation can help institutions become more self aware and better run.

* Why imagination inside organizations is often disruptive, inconvenient, and deeply necessary.

Notable Mentions

People

• Barbara Steveni — British artist, organizer, and co-founder of the Artist Placement Group whose pioneering work embedded artists inside industrial, governmental, and civic systems as catalysts for institutional reflection and imagination.
• John Latham — Influential conceptual artist and APG collaborator whose work challenged conventional ideas about institutions, perception, time, and social systems.
• Ian Breakwell — British artist, filmmaker, and diarist associated with APG whose observational work explored institutional life, mental health systems, and everyday social rituals.
• Mierle Laderman Ukeles — Maintenance artist whose long collaboration with the New York City Department of Sanitation transformed public understanding of labor, infrastructure, and civic care.
• David Whyte — Poet and organizational thinker known for bringing metaphor, reflection, and human inquiry into corporate and institutional environments.

Organizations & Initiatives

• Artist Placement Group (APG) — Radical British initiative founded in the late 1960s to place artists inside corporations, industries, and government agencies not to decorate systems, but to deepen and complicate them.
• Organisation and Imagination (O+I) — The later evolution of APG, continuing its investigation into the relationship between imagination, institutions, governance, and organizational culture.
• Intermedia Arts — Influential Minneapolis arts organization that helped pioneer artist/community development collaborations and embedded civic arts practice in the United States.
• The Hayward Gallery — London arts venue that hosted APG’s influential 1971 exhibition Art & Economics