A(n idealized) portrait of the art worker crumbling
by Alina Lupu ︎︎︎15 Aug 2021
Welcome!
In this position, your role is to plot (alongside equally driven young - emphasis on young! - professionals) an evolving proposition about the future of art, and the role of the artist in society. You must be committed to the development of the next generation of artists and to innovating.
You must be energetic, collaborative, caring (think, someone’s mom), open-minded (since you’ll be required to work overtime), creative (at this point words just lose meaning, don’t they?) and have a deep knowledge of the field in which you work (and if you have that you’ll realize that your best bet at making an income will never truly be through your artistic practice, it’s better if you get accustomed to the idea early in your career).
You will be given the responsibility and freedom to inspire and maintain an innovative output. You won’t be given guidance on how to do that at any point throughout your practice, but that builds character. It means you’ll need to roll up your sleeves plenty of times and stretch your working time to the point where you’ll question ever stepping into this field altogether.
Worry not though!
All of your peers will also be artists with a strong position in the (international) field. Notice how I slipped international in there between brackets? What this means is that they will come from other countries, they will study within a country in the global North. They will build up a practice locally, but with every show they will be a part of, even if their output won’t be tangential to their upbringing in their country of origin, that very country of origin will be listed in their bio, next to their name, to stand for openness and international outreach. You’ll be hard-pressed to find an institution or exhibition space that won’t instrumentalize someone’s original background for clout. Nevertheless, this is fine, since you’ll have to bring some critical edge to the table and you can comment on this variation of exoticizing in your work.
Work through it.
You’ll be pushed to examine, undermine and leave the cultural comfort zone of assumptions, conventions, and privileges. Oh, but don’t talk about class! Or it’s fine if you do if you’re pointing your criticism downwards, to the downtrodden, just don’t point your criticism up. The King of the Netherlands comes for a visit? Iron your best frock and/or practice your curtsy. You don’t want to shoot yourself in the foot professionally after all of this struggle, do you?
What you need to do is to, for example, use your critical faculties as a way to discover unknown and hidden connections, absurdities, and free space. Call these the paradoxes of capitalism, I suppose! Like how the freedom of the arts is seen as an absolute end goal, yet the encroaching spread of private funding is threatening said freedom, but you’re asked to not raise questions.
Like how you have to be a critically acclaimed artist by 27 to access housing and a studio, since there’s an age limit placed on these resources, most likely by those that benefited from squatted buildings in the 80’s to build their practices and now they’ve turned landlords and committee members and are actively sabotaging a new generation of talent.
What the hell is talent anyway?
Like the fact that you have to be under 35, or under 40 or 28 to apply to certain prizes, yet said prizes don’t have any issues setting themes in tune with the times, among which the idea of telling you to slow down, be mindful, take your time, and be sustainable in your practice.
Art could then be considered as a critical and meaningful way to play with the perception of knowledge, conventions, and social codes. It requires imagination, intuition, humor, and a keen eye for presentation. Only it’s not some of these things. And it can’t be if the ones that have access to it squeeze into an ever more narrow mold.
D & I.
The art field values a diverse and inclusive composition of itself. It considers that working in a diverse field makes us more effective, innovative and the work more enjoyable. It doesn’t do much to actually and actively promote diversity and inclusion though, except mentioning it in all institutional brochures and budget plans since the local government recently got woke to the fact that the art field is not at all representative of the composition of the country as a whole.
They’ll want you to be well organized, strategically smart, a social sponge with a good sense of humor, and an outspoken mind matching their vibe. And to have a critical view of current social issues and other shifting paradigms confronting the contemporary world.
You should be enthusiastic about questioning established norms and behaviours through art and design and be an advocate of critical new skills. You should be critical, but not too much - critical enough to have a good sense of humour at parties.
Don’t get bitter!
The ability to work collaboratively is a must. But you’ll find quite some issues in being taught to work collaboratively when the format of education you’ve been put through treasures individuals, with individual studios, with individual problems, in individual living quarters they can’t afford, while individually complaining about their condition and doing jack shit about the collective.
At the end of the day though all you can count on is: Showing up. Shutting up. Making space. Criticizing and being criticized. It is the discomfort that sits on top of one’s belly after an evening meal and reading the precarious 12-hour contract the dream job offered, which doesn’t pay the rent in a city where only baby boomers, their children & some expats can afford mansions and the rest sit in tiny houses with paper-thin walls.
At times you’ll find yourself being overly white, western, urban, lower class, male-female, precociously precarious, a 12-hour-shifter, no-pension-planner, dreaming of sunnier days, of flowers in the sidewalks, laughing all the way to the bank, taking the subway, containing your feelings, starting to believe you’re in love, each reflection in a window reflecting back your bright face.
Then again employers trade on the persistent myth that when we do something we love, that labour no longer counts as work.
Imagine, in this case, what it must feel like to be your own boss!
You’ll realize you’re well embedded and that you operate in a vibrant local and regional biotope of academic, engineering, arts & music, research institutions, and initiatives. That you interface with a growing international network of like-minded institutions and groups and are in a continuous process of strengthening and deepening the research dimension, challenging the boundaries of both the arts and the sciences.
You’ll let out a gentle sigh, and then a scream.
At the end of it all, if all else fails, remember that it's a process.
The alternative.
Existing outside the confines of this field, with an awareness of its limitations, understanding its lingo, but refusing to engage, might be the only true form of resistance.
You’ll look at yourself with some form of honesty or another and wonder, throughout your practice:
What are the opportunities you have refused?
What are the institutions you have boycotted?
What are the types of labour that are vital to your artistic practice, but that you generally leave off of your CV?
What type of work that you’re doing remains unacknowledged?
Where do your ethics lie?
What or rather who has rejected you? “We’re sorry to inform you…”
What or rather who can you reject in turn?
Can you, at the end of the day, refuse?
Only by the time you realize that you could refuse, it might be honestly too late. You’ll have to sift through the discourse, cringe, grin and bear it and work on carving out an alternative to it – do whatever you’ve got to do to stay in it and stay sane.
Endnotes: In trying to figure out what a contemporary art worker’s profile would be, I took a step backward and compiled their profile out of job openings for positions within the field of art and design, indirectly attributed in the text, since it's by looking at what others think you should be, that you figure out where you might fit - and then decide to collaborate or run for dear life.
The full list of references are:
- Job openings ArtEZ: https://www.artez.nl/dit-is-artez/werken-bij-artez/vacatures
- Amal Alhaag - A scream is never a dispossessed footnote, sonsbeek 21-24 catalogue
- Onomatopee - Catalyst of public engagement: https://www.onomatopee.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Catalyst-of- public-engagement.pdf
- Job Opportunity Lecturer Photography, Transformation Design - https://www.wdka.nl/news-events/job-opportunity-lecturer-photography- transformation-design
- There is Nothing New Under the Sun, Kata Geibl, 2019
- This is a Work of Fiction, Alina Lupu, 2019
- Docenten ArtScience Interfaculty - https://www.kabk.nl/nieuws/vacature- docenten-artscience-interfaculty
- Art Goss’s Curriculum Veto initiative - coming soon!