How do artists work today? What kinds of roles do they occupy; have these roles changed over the years; and how does this impact the ecology of art? Has the pluralism of art given way to a pluralism of roles that artists may occupy? 

These are some of the questions that led to this volume, The Artist As. It began as a lecture series, co-produced by the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, and Curatorial Practice at Monash University, Melbourne, and the essays by Brook Andrew, Tara McDowell, Emily Pethick, and Cecilia Vicuña, and conversations between Tirdad Zolghadr and Suhail Malik and Isabel Lewis and Adam Linder, began as lectures within that series. New commissions by Heman Chong, Helen Hughes, and Helen Johnson, and previously published by Walter Benjamin, Ekaterina Degot, Hal Foster, and Terry Smith complete the reader.

Ziga Testen