Emma Duester

The digital labour economy is a system where work is mediated through digital technologies and online platforms. Work is often also called platform labour or gig work. China has brought out new labour protections to promote and support these new forms of employment (NFE) to address gaps in existing labour rights, personal data protection, and AI governance. However, a new type of work in the digital labour economy is creative digital platform work, which is distinct from other kinds of digital work and gig work that only uses AI and digital platforms to receive work, gigs, and tasks. Visual artists’ work is mediated by multiple digital software, AI programs, platforms, and apps. However, they do not have the usual ‘labour relationship’ like gig workers or platform labourers, as they are not employed by any single platform.

Nationwide integration of AI into the contemporary art sector has taken place since government AI regulations in 2023 to promote AI use. China’s AI integration into industry is ‘ahead’ of other countries, meaning that other countries can learn from these creative professionals. Consequently, contemporary visual artists have devised arts-led sustainable AI solutions to overcome global AI concerns. They are now putting these solutions into practice to maintain their jobs, arts forms, and industry. This paper draws on 30 interviews with contemporary visual artists, and a survey with 118 professional artists from across China between 2023 and 2024. Findings show that 87% use AI and 76% say AI is useful and they will continue to use AI into the future. Findings show professionals have had time to find DIY, bottom-up solutions to AI concerns, including (1) building strong authorship practices, identity, and brand, (2) showing human creativity and inner thinking, (3) gaining a balanced independent position with AI. They want AI regulations to liberalise and promote AI use so they can freely experiment and develop AI. These findings show how humans are directing the use of AI, altering current narratives on AI-led impacts on industry, jobs, and human creativity.

This study examines the digital and artificial intelligence (AI) transformation in the contemporary art industry in China. This industry in China is undergoing a distinct digital transition and is “ahead” of other countries, having fully integrated digital technologies and AI (digiAI) into policies, regulations, organizations, and professional practices. A systematic, large-scale national integration of digiAI has led to its widespread adoption by artists and arts professionals. However, little is known about how or when this rapid and extensive integration and subsequent adoption occurred or about its impacts on professional practices. This study draws on research conducted between 2023 and 2024, including 30 interviews with contemporary Chinese visual artists, 23 interviews with arts professionals, a survey of 110 professional contemporary visual artists, and a systematic review of government policy. Findings indicate that the government began integrating digital technology into the contemporary art industry in 2016, further promoted digital technology integration in 2021, and introduced regulations to support AI usage in 2023. The data reveal a significant spike in the adoption of digital technologies by professionals between 2019 and 2020, followed by a rise in AI adoption in 2023. DigiAI has been accepted and now used across different kinds of arts professions, various types of visual artists, and several age groups. Digital and AI tools are now being applied in both creative and non-creative aspects of arts practices.

This paper explores a paradigm shift in work culture in the contemporary art sector due to digital transition and the introduction of AI. New ways of working with AI and digital software are embedded and normalized in everyday Chinese artistic practices. This work includes new forms of creativity and efficiency, yet, simultaneously includes new types of digital labour. This paper conceptualizes this as “digital art work,” which draws attention to the often-overlooked aspects of artists’ work, particularly their everyday artistic practices that increasingly include digital software and AI. What is the role and position of the artist in an environment where digital software and AI are becoming more central in artistic creation? How do artists creatively (mis)use AI? What does this paradigm shift in work culture mean for the future of the artist’s role and the future of the contemporary art sector? This paper draws on 48 semi-structured interviews with visual artists and arts professionals, including painters, sculptors, mixed-media, and internet artists as well as contemporary art gallery owners, museum project directors, curators, and culture policymakers living and working in China during 2023. The findings show how Chinese artists are mastering AI and opening up new spaces for creativity and how the contemporary art sector in China has already transitioned to a new “digital way” in artistic creation. These findings can help to create policy around AI globally and provide solutions for the sustainability of the artist profession and the future of the contemporary art sector.

This paper explores the nature of artists’ careers over eight years. It investigates artists’ career paths including developments, highlights, challenges, and stasis over eight years. This is a longitudinal study that comprises two sets of interviews conducted with the same fifteen artists in 2013 and 2021. It analyses artists’ reflections on their careers as emerging artists in 2013 and as established artists in 2021. It exposes how these artists’ experience changes and shifts along their career paths, yet, how the one continuity throughout their careers is precarity. Together, this longitudinal study uncovers new knowledge on the nature of artists’ careers by exposing how precarity is experienced over the course of their careers. This also develops existing discourse on precarious work and labour. Together, this expands understandings on ‘precarity’ in the creative industries by showing how it is experienced in artists’ careers as something that is tangible and mental, how it is experienced across their careers, and how strategies are found to cope with this precarious career. Addressing this can shed new light on the nature of artists’ careers and the nature of work in the creative industries today.

This paper investigates the use of Facebook by cultural professionals in Vietnam to maintain connections with their audiences during the Covid-19 pandemic. Facebook provided a simple and free way of maintaining connections with audiences at a time of increased pressure to shift and adapt to online work immediately. However, concerns have emerged about the nature of arts-centred endeavours that are at odds with this for-profit platform and the production of digital culture in the Global South via a Western platform. The investigation uses findings from 50 semi-structured interviews with cultural professionals and a digital ethnography of seven art organizations’ Facebook posts over two months. It highlights that the Covid-19 pandemic propelled a paradigm shift in how cultural professionals communicated with their audiences via Facebook. These shifts have longer and broader implications for the future of work in the cultural sector, both in Asia and globally.