Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Valuing Labor in the Arts: Renee Rhodes

On April 19, 2014, the Arts Research Center hosted Valuing Labor in the Arts: A Practicum. This daylong event included a series of artist-led workshops that developed exercises, prompts, or actions that engage questions of art, labor, and economics. We have asked participants to send us their reflections on keywords, puzzles, or recurring themes that came up throughout the day. This post is by artist Renee Rhodes. 

Ok, so I have been working on a project with a friend and I am thinking about ways to get heavier on purpose, un-interface my need for collectivity, and to settle endless desiring and the pursuing precariousness.

I wrote a little shortie poem, related-ish...
part of desire and want and longing are done for survival
right, like if we didn't hungrily want our mothers milk no calcium would get to our young baby bones and we would die

somewhere a long time ago i read that "our desires desire desiring"
what if we practiced loving the feeling of longing and gave up on the endless acquisition 
what if we practiced loving our collective indebtedness and stopped worrying about attaining freedom from it
is debt like an aura or a skin or a trauma or a memory or a true story about you
knowing so many of us are wearing these heavy auras makes me feel less lonely at least
I want to lead us on a group nap
a nap might be more productive and less harmful than keeping all these lights on

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Valuing Labor in the Arts: Beth Grossman

On April 19, 2014, the Arts Research Center hosted Valuing Labor in the Arts: A Practicum. This daylong event included a series of artist-led workshops that developed exercises, prompts, or actions that engage questions of art, labor, and economics. We have asked participants to send us their reflections on keywords, puzzles, or recurring themes that came up throughout the day. This post is by Beth Grossman, a participatory performance artist based in San Francisco. She has recently been appointed to a new people-powered project called the US Department of Arts and Culture

I appreciated that this conference had plenty of artists leading the workshops....and I trust that they were all paid, well. I know how much work it is to prepare for these workshops. I appreciated and enjoyed that Cassie Thornton used her persona for parts of our workshop, Big Soft (BS) Contract, and I think it gave people some space to get in touch with their feelings about debt. 

I know that I am unusual in that I have never accrued debt that I couldn't handle easily. Many of my artist friends are drowning in debt. I have the advantage of growing up in a time when education expenses were not oppressively inflated as they are now. I also never took on any monthly charges, like gyms, car payments, etc. While I can afford it now, I still don't have cable tv, a cell phone, subscriptions, or other monthlies beyond the bare necessities..basic internet, basic phone, electric, water and garbage. It all adds up, and I always weigh the expense with time for my art. My son will be going to college next year, and we have saved up carefully for this time so he doesn't have to start his creative life out in debt.

Since debt is not a personal financial concern for me, it freed me up to exploring debt in other forms. In the meditation led by Cassie, I focused on my/our debt to the planet, my debt to my parents and ancestors, my debt to future generations. It is all related to the debt culture we live in. I would like to make some art about this. I am a participatory performance artist and have been recently exploring rights and privilege. Adding debt to the mix would be interesting. 

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Valuing Labor in the Arts: Katherine Mezur

On April 19, 2014, the Arts Research Center hosted Valuing Labor in the Arts: A Practicum. This daylong event included a series of artist-led workshops that developed exercises, prompts, or actions that engage questions of art, labor, and economics. We have asked participants to send us their reflections on keywords, puzzles, or recurring themes that came up throughout the day. This post is by Katherine Mezur, a freelance dance theatre scholar and Research Associate at the San Francisco Museum of Performance and Design. She was recently based at the International Research Center of the Freie University Berlin, "Interweaving Performance Cultures." She is investigating the work of Japanese women butoh and contemporary performance artists who create work in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, focusing on issues of gender, migration, and new media. She also works as a performance dramaturg.

"Making" as labor and revolution
            
I participated in two workshops. The first: Collective Actions, Moving Thought lead by Sara Wookey and the second: The Exchange Archive led by Caroline Woolard. When I first walked into the registration area I was excited to see a real mix of people, and I later found out that they artists from different disciplines, established artists, new artists, curators, and scholars, but mostly a diverse array of visual artists. I was impressed by the interest and drive of these artists to take on the deep problems of artwork value and compensation. Because I research and practice in the cross-disciplinary performing arts, particularly dance, theatre, and performance/media art, I wished there had been more theatre and dance artists represented. Why weren't they there? Perhaps because dance and theatre are collaborative arts and they produce a product that is experiential…. The Wookey workshop raised many issues that we did not have time to deal with: setting up a system of monetary self-evaluation and making a strict budget for earning a living wage (after taxes) so that one can evaluate what one is offered as compensation. Dancers are notorious for saying "Yes!": an inner automatic response because one so badly to dance.  The "movement" sections seemed tangential to these deeply felt discussions on labor value and living wage issues. Wookey brought up the hot topic of the "historic" dance "commodity" such as Yvonne Rainer's Trio A, which she performs and teaches all over the world. Should we all try to learn a dance of historical value and pitch it to make a living? Within the dance communities there are also the differences between the traditional dances such as the South Indian Kathak, where there is a guru teacher to whom one gives money but the dancer would never ask for compensation. Dance seems caught up in this endless cycle of little monetary compensation and immense self-sacrificing devotion and drive.

Juxtaposed to this The Exchange Archive led by Caroline Woolard, was lively and forward looking and even daring in its pursuit of (almost but not quite) utopian exchange. Woolard had very direct questions and problems for our small sub-groups to debate and come up with suggestions. She had us deal with the idea of "Archive" (in all its complexities of canons and compensation) by making an archive of performance art/time artists. By playing a kind of card game and placing our "bets" on a gridded outline on a table top, we all could see and feel the complexity of the task of creating an ensemble exchange archive project. I really enjoyed the depth of the visual artists' knowledge and passion for "naming" the influential performance artists for this archive project. Several artists brought up how race is still so marginalized in these canonizations of valued art makers. Diversity is a constant ongoing ensemble project.

In small groups again (with reporting back to the whole group that was very important) we chose topics that had arisen in our smaller groups. And luckily we diverged from that too: we ended up by talking about how to engage the engineers in the tech (wealthy) classes in art making and supporting: how does one create true interaction, not just The Possible but the ACTUAL that could deal with housing, sharing real estate differentially: Woolard and Jackson created a kind of synergy of ideas that defy the usual "us and them" strategies, instead we wanted to move on to engagement that uses creativity in these new relationships. How do we deploy the methods we use in making things to these other challenges? Collaboration and ensemble "making" spun around our groups and table. Woolard also reminded us to work with the others' terms: be the staying and committed to the neighborhood artist, the one whose work is "making," and whose "making" can work.

I think we need to have these conversations on a weekly basis, perhaps in online webinars with visual, performance, conceptual artists, curators, scholars and yes those interested  and needed supporters.  Thank you so much ARC!

Valuing Labor in the Arts: Aurora Crispin

On April 19, 2014, the Arts Research Center hosted Valuing Labor in the Arts: A Practicum. This daylong event included a series of artist-led workshops that developed exercises, prompts, or actions that engage questions of art, labor, and economics. We have asked participants to send us their reflections on keywords, puzzles, or recurring themes that came up throughout the day. This post is by Aurora Crispin, chef and museum preparator.

I wanted to send along some information about a group, an allied project, I am a part of that is in line with conversations, content, initiatives, movements, and questions related to the weekends events. 


We are also participating as an organization in this summers Bay Area Now 7 at YBCA, in July. 

Friday, May 2, 2014

Valuing Labor in the Arts: Eleanor Hanson-Wise

On April 19, 2014, the Arts Research Center hosted Valuing Labor in the Arts: A Practicum. This daylong event included a series of artist-led workshops that developed exercises, prompts, or actions that engage questions of art, labor, and economics. We have asked participants to send us their reflections on keywords, puzzles, or recurring themes that came up throughout the day. This post is by Eleanor Hanson, co-founder of The Present Group, a creative studio working at the intersection of art and technology.  Much of her creative practice has been focused on developing proposals-in-practice for new funding models in the arts. Projects of The Present Group include an art subscription service, a web hosting service that funds an intermittent arts prize, Art Micro Patronage - an experimental exhibition platform showcasing and funding artwork online, The People’s E-book - a free online tool to build e-books, and Compensation Foundation - an online database for gathering and displaying how cultural producers are compensated.  

From the Independent Artists' Union in Canada

From the San Francisco Building Trades Union

From Chet LaMore, on why we need(ed) permanent WPA. 

Valuing Labor in the Arts: Gibson Cuyler

On April 19, 2014, the Arts Research Center hosted Valuing Labor in the Arts: A Practicum. This daylong event included a series of artist-led workshops that developed exercises, prompts, or actions that engage questions of art, labor, and economics. We have asked participants to send us their reflections on keywords, puzzles, or recurring themes that came up throughout the day. This post is by Gibson Cuyler, a fine artist who has supported his art making process working commercially in the culture industry for 19 years. He starting doing windows at Barneys New York at 23 and subsequently ran his own commercial display studio in NYC mainly for the fashion and music industries. Currently Gibson works through the Allied Crafts International Union for Entertainment (I.A.T.S.E. local 16)  and for the SFO Museum.  He is, and always will be, a Painter and a Musician.

Well, it is a sunny May Day today and I sit here at my computer and I am filled with thoughts and excitement for the possibilities for the future of labor and the arts. It is especially appropriate to think of these issues today, as May 1st...is the international day for Labor Awareness.  I have always considered the delicate dance between Art and Commerce to be a fine art in itself. I have worked for free for my portfolio when I was young and also readily donated art for auction to galleries and organizations I appreciate and have been good to me ..Such as Momenta NY, White Columns NY, and the Bay Area Girls Rock Camp.  How an artist is compensated and remunerated has a wide array of answers and varies greatly from individual to individual and I found it stimulating to hear others view points on this subject at the Practicum for labor in the arts recently in Berkeley.  

What I most came away with was not from an artist at the Practicum, but from Catherine Powell, director of the Labor Archives and research at San Francisco State.  Her brief overview of the history of Labor and Unions in the 20th Century made me realize that I had a responsibility to share my knowledge and to help other artists who are marginalized in the marketplace by perceptions of labor, its difficulties, and intrinsic values, both monetarily and culturally.  I was lucky to meet up with Aurora Crispin who has been diligently formimg the Bay Area Art Workers Alliance for over a year now and subsequently met her for a meal in Oakland and I realized that her Alliance and my work experience and Union affiliation with the International Allied Crafts can be useful to this end.  She shared with me her pictures of her specific aesthetic brought to her from working behind the scenes as an art worker putting on shows.  It did illuminate and codify something for me that has been a source of great interest to me for years. As both artists and workers it is necessary in this day and age for us to come together in strength and commonality in order to eventually highlight our individual artistic contributions. By realizing common needs in health and welfare both socially and financially, a stonger and more independant artistic voice can be born for artists working for themselves and within institutions such as Museums and Galleries.  

Catherine Powell's advice to use the young workers toolkit -AFL-CIO is proving useful and made me realize a grey area does in reality... really exist in fair labor practices for fabricators, art installers, and artists themselves as we are patronized without a roadmap for adequate pay or benefits. Instead of becoming disenfranchised and frustrated, as I have seen so much before happen to talented people trying to "make it" as artists in the western capitalist paradigm; I have become empowered by this open discussion and I see the importance of a continued, open, unafraid, and honest  dialogue about these most important issues facing all working fine artists today.  It is my belief that a true and quantifiable position can be undersood and benefit both working artists and the institutions who showcase them.  I must give thanks to artist  David Wilson and his magical rug as I believe it has actually made community where it did not exist before and to artists Helena Keefe, and Caroline Woolard... who have addressed such necessary subjects without hesitation and with succinct language.  I also must thank Catherine Powell for her insights into real labor and the artists who worked within it. The time is always now....but now the future is here and we will come together and we will not fall or falter as we make art and commerce for the next century. 

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Valuing Labor in the Arts: Maria Billings

On April 19, 2014, the Arts Research Center hosted Valuing Labor in the Arts: A Practicum. This daylong event included a series of artist-led workshops that developed exercises, prompts, or actions that engage questions of art, labor, and economics. We have asked participants to send us their reflections on keywords, puzzles, or recurring themes that came up throughout the day. This post is by Maria Billings, an artist who completed her studies of textile art at the University of Cologne. Her new, bilingual book Roman Horses, Cavalli Romani is an art book of water colors and drawings which accompany you on a historic stroll through Rome - finding horses in unexpected places.


I attended Lise Soskolne's session on "Defining Value, Labor and the Arts". W.A.G.E. was founded 2008 in New York to research artists fees, or lack thereof, and to create a minimum fee schedule for artistic services provided to non-profit organizations. The whole area is so complex that I found the restricted scope very useful.


What is a fee in this context and what is it not a fee?
  • The fee is a price or the remuneration for services to a non-profit organization.
  • It is NOT the basic programming expenses which are the responsibility of the institution who wants to include artistic services.
  • It is NOT intended to cover production expenses (which are more speculative in nature). The coverage of production expenses does not constitute compensation even if the work produced may result in future sales.

Lise divided the fee schedule into three levels.  She has complex spreadsheets for a number of services. The WAGE team is still in process of refining them and will publish them on their website.


 What can change?
  • Funding: Foundations could continue to give money to non-profit organizations, BUT request proof that they are paying artist feed.
  • Issue of transparency: Artist fees should be a visible line item in budget plans of organizations.
  • Raising awareness of practical realities.


Personal reflections
The entire event, especially the conversations with various participants was helpful is defining my "borders":
  • As before attending the workshop, I will support some non-profits for free.
  • For others, in the past, I used California minimum wage plus actual expenses (materials directly related to the service, such as printing handouts, travel, and so on). I used to think of this as "exposure". - This I'll probably replace with a minimum fixed fee, because it's simpler than counting my hours. Although the shock value of knowing precisely how long I labored on an artistic project has convinced some organizations that there is value in it.
  • What I will decline are donating my services or works to small museums who want to sell them (without dividing the profit) to buy other artists works and add to their employees bonuses.
  • What I will also decline are donating my services or works to organizations who go out-of-their-way to make me feel guilty for not supporting them. I hate emotional blackmail, and this entire event helped me to understand that I don't need to go there.

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Valuing Labor in the Arts: Chelsea Wills

On April 19, 2014, the Arts Research Center hosted Valuing Labor in the Arts: A Practicum. This daylong event included a series of artist-led workshops that developed exercises, prompts, or actions that engage questions of art, labor, and economics. We have asked participants to send us their reflections on keywords, puzzles, or recurring themes that came up throughout the day. This post is by Chelsea Wills, a visual artist who works with places in flux and works closely with people inhabiting them.

I came home thinking about was risk and the number of ways that we as artists deciding (or being pushed) to take on risk with our work. All kinds of work include risk, and I relish some kinds of risk in my creative work. Artists work play many roles, some of its purposes are that our world is interpreted and re-interpreted to create newness , it bring attention to things unseen, it offers and enacts space where intersections are possible in previously unimagined or forgotten ways. 

This work is inherently risky. It is talked about in terms of creativity but this risk is invisible in lots of other ways. Artists are unique in their position of being the site where the risk meets in the art world. They interact directly with their own work, institutions, galleries, collectors, and the general public. The ways artists assume risk in these convergences is somewhat ambiguous at best. I came home from Valuing Labor in the Arts with seeds of what grew into some working fluid categories that I see in thinking about artists embodying risk.

Personal Risk: What am I risking? What do I stand to gain? Does this work compromise relationships to my self/family/friends/community/collaborators? Is this risk worth it for what I am trying to convey? Who else is shares this risk with me? Will I be able to count on them if things go wrong?

Creative Risk: Can I do this? Have I done it before? Is it a “valid” idea in my mind? In someone (collaborators, institutions, etc.) else’s mind? Who shares the risk if I mess it up? Who decides if I mess it up?

Financial Risk: What value is this work assigned by me? By someone (collectors, audience, insurers) else? By institutions? How much of my time does that constitute? Who recieves the benefit of this works success?

Institutional Risk: What does this institution stand for? How do they share risk with artists? How do they allow/support/create success for artists? What value do they put on all types of labor that happen there?

Broader Cultural Risk: What bigger conversations do I have access to? Who supports inclusion/exclusion from them? What risk do I put myself/my collaborators/the communities I work with in?

I am interested by beginning this articulation of risk in thinking about how risk is shared. By who and when? How do we as artists create, dismantle, imagine situations where we can share hard kinds of risks and allow each other the autonomy to work to our edges?

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Valuing Labor in the Arts: Sarah Wilbur

On April 19, 2014, the Arts Research Center hosted Valuing Labor in the Arts: A Practicum. This daylong event included a series of artist-led workshops that developed exercises, prompts, or actions that engage questions of art, labor, and economics. We have asked participants to send us their reflections on keywords, puzzles, or recurring themes that came up throughout the day. This post is by Sarah Wilbur, choreographer and PhD candidate in World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA.

Let’s Ask Ourselves…
[A Dance-based Addendum to the “Grey Matter” Quiz]
April 23, 2014
Sarah Wilbur

As a cross-sector dance maker and scholar who writes about dance makers and institutional dependency, I appreciate how Helena and Lauren’s slippery “Grey Matter” quiz resists tidy “yes-no” answers. The very structure of a quiz mandates self-reflection. By hailing artists who attempt to fashion careers through the nomadic practice of “gig dependency”, the Grey Matter quiz should constantly be retaken. It institutes a practice of looking before we step and stepping with a sense of what a steadier foothold feels like, when confronted with an invitation to depend. “Gig dependency” might be a crude characterization for some, but within the hyper-dependent field of dance, “gig dependency” behaves as a kind of institutional dependency, one requiring local strategies of belonging and engagement. The institutional attachment of certain dance makers to the contemporary museum or biennial circuit, while unexceptional historically given the longstanding co-operation of dance artists with non-dance institutions, begs us to consider how the institutional promiscuity of US live dance performance might score in this inspiring quest for advocacy and reflexivity. To start this thread, I’ve remade the quiz from a dance perspective. LET’S ASK OURSELVES… [201]

GAUGING the GREY AREA: Standards for Artistic Labor
[DANCE BASED ADDENDUM]

QUESTION No. 1: Does this opportunity align with your creative strengths, experiences, and goals as a dance maker?
ANSWERS:
A: This idea inspires me creatively to become involved. While its scope does not align perfectly with my experience/training, the invitation provides an occasion to research and learn from the organizers, context, and collaborating artists. I think that my collaborators would probably want to work with me on translating my work within this context. [10]
B. I find this work interesting, but not well aligned with my present investments as a dance maker. The project of adapting my work may contort its general scope and intentions, and would require a great deal of rehearsal time for my dancers to learn and master the task at hand. I’m torn. [5]
C. I cringed when I saw the scope of this project. My values do not align with those of the presenting organization. I cannot participate in this project without a deep sense of personal conflict and a deep loss of time that I should be working on other things. My dancers/collaborators do not value this kind of work or approach. [0]
D. I’m eager to take advantage of this unique and exciting opportunity. The experience and working relationships are excellent and the support structures are strong. The timing and resourcing available for this opportunity converges with the availability of my closest artistic collaborators. It’s as if I dreamt this. [15]

QUESTION No. 2: What is the potential financial gain/impact of this project? (same question)
ANSWERS:
A: MEAGER. I get a small performance honorarium, one free parking space, and reception food/drinks the night of the performance, and networking opportunities on the night of the performance. [5]

B: STOKED. This commission includes space, designer fees, rehearsal and performance pay for the dancers, a design budget, and choreographic stipend. [15]
C: NADA. I’m subsidizing the entire cost of rehearsing, designing, and producing this work, which is largely irreproducible due to the context of this production. This subsidization includes [0]
D: INCOMENSURABLE. They are paying an artist fee that does not include ancillary costs of production. [10]

QUESTION No. 3:  How does my acceptance of this opportunity condition or constrain the future exploitation of dance artists by sponsoring organization/institution?
A: Production conditions are inadequate, but there is room to negotiate on behalf of myself, and my collaborators, which could set a good precedent for future projects and other artists interested in working with this sponsoring organization. [10]
B: This opportunity is suboptimal, but presents an opportunity to bring attention to the issue of exploitation by communicating areas of disconnect to this partner to contextualize the affiliated expenses at play in my dance making. [5]
C: This opportunity is so fair and so transparent that it benefits all involved and sets an ethical standard for future collaborations in this type of production context. [15]
D: Even if I benefit (minimally) from this project, I will be complicit in the system of artist exploitation and will subject my collaborators to exploitive conditions. [0]

QUESTION No. 4: What are the personal, financial, embodied, and relational risks and rewards of this project?
A: There is financial support but a relatively high degree of risk via poor working conditions, low production values, and insufficient time in the performance space, minimal publicity and exposure, or other kinds of heavy contingencies. [5]
B: This opportunity involves suboptimal conditions that pose physical hazards to my dancers and myself and that incur debt and strain my working relationships. Why am I even considering this? [0]
C: I am excited about the possibilities opened up by this opportunity and reassured by institution’s willingness to mitigate potential risks for all participants. [10]
D: This project puts me and my collaborators in a good position financially, physically, and professionally through heightened networking and exposure to new/important constituencies. I’m optimistic that the benefits outweigh the risks. [15]

QUESTION No. 5: What kinds of communication labor does this project demand and how does this work affect the impact of my dance making?
A: Project targets a narrow but committed constituency. There is little room for exposure beyond immediate participants, and little budget/desire to reach beyond current targets, but the quality of interaction is strong for those involved. [10]
B: Project marketing falls on me with the provision of materials fees but no mailing list. The time to fashion and distribute publicity takes time away from the creative labor of dancemaking and institutional rationale for presenting is minimal or at least suspect. [5]
C: The institution has minimal experience working with dance and little capital has been invested in contextualizing this work for potential audiences. Audience demand/interest is questionable, time and resources to promote the work nonexistent, and risk of misrepresentation for artists is high [0].
D: The institution has broad reach and an excellent reputation within the communities that I work in or desire to connect with. Past publicity by the institution resonates with my own value system, and the possibility of national press exposure is high [15].

RATIONALE:
*(Addendum to No. 3) Here I account for the intermediary function of the choreographer as a frequent subcontractor of designers, performers, and third party collaborators as a significant distinction for dance and live performance. The risks to secondary and tertiary collaborators in dance contracting frequently fly under the radar if/when presenters do not know to look for these details (or feign ignorance, as the case may be). Conversely, sub-exploitation of dancers and support personnel by choreographers remains a relatively closeted discourse in dance.[1] To mitigate this, this question asks the negotiating dance artist to account for these sub-dependencies and interpersonal ethics.

*(Addendum to No. 4) A general account for time outside of the event and adequate working conditions in dance, is of paramount importance in any booking situation. Most of the preparatory work of dance making costs time beyond the space of public presentation, and time in rehearsal does not generally equate with the time on stage yield of a particular work.[2]

*(Addendum to No. 5) Helena and Lauren’s concern with ‘exposure’ is replaced here with communication as a responsibility of all parties engaged in the dance making process. Again, I think that the social practice of dance making demands this, and demands a reciprocal exchange that , in my experience, suffers when discourse gets collapsed into a “my” vs. “their” turf war.  Perhaps I’m softening too much for some, but mobilizing communication as a co-researching and mutually supportive project promises more mutually agreed-upon results. Just as institutional intermediaries conduct various levels of research during their selection of artists, selected artists should come clean and recognize when a reluctance to study the history of a presenting organization and/or the value systems and spreadsheets at play in the institution’s commissioning process stands in the way of a more productive working relationship. Here is where I appreciate W.A.G.E.’s charge to artists to research the history and culture of funding and presenting institutions as part of the production negotiation. This kind of critical literacy trumps gut instincts by revealing deeper practical and material disjunctures that might evidence why an artist may or may not “like” a presenters approach.

These suggested expansions of Helena and Lauren’s “Grey Matter” have attempted to foreground the intermediary role of the choreographer as labor subcontractor, the secondary constituencies who are doubly vulnerable to sub-exploitation as a concern, and the co-researching required to sustain productive equilibrium as key issues worth considering when navigating the ‘grey matter’ of artistic standards in dance. This quiz should constantly be retaken. By challenging choreographers to recognize the interdependent relationships embedded in the question: “What do you need in order to feel supported?”, I shift the “what” to the “who”, in part, to honor the many “makers” whose support contributes to the resultant dance “work”. I imagine that an extension of these logics to the institution-side of the contract would yield dizzying numbers as well. To Helena, Lauren, ARC, and Art Practical: Thank you for the quiz and the quandaries. I depart from this exercise of quiz making as an even more robust advocate for a critical practice of reflection through interpersonal re-collection (re-collectivization?). While the temporal, spatial, material, and “human” contingencies at hand in making dance (within and beyond the Museum) remain un-standardizeable, Helena and Lauren’s quiz amplifies the stakes and energizes the discourse. Sometimes the wheels do not need reinventing, but we need to notice when they stop spinning.

Let’s ask ourselves…


[1] Robin Lakes’s essay on the Authoritarian roots of Western Concert Dance stands as an exception in this regard. See: Dance, Human Rights, and Social Justice: Dignity in Motion. N. Jackson, T. Shapiro-Phim, eds. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2008, p. 109-130.
[2] Author’s note: The bolded letters in the latter sentence refer to a self-fashioned term invented (albeit facetiously) in the early 2000s with a colleague/collaborator Ben Munisteri to refer to a well-known and little-reported rehearsal circumstance in dance, wherein an artist and dancers work on a particularly thorny part of a dance for hours, days even, only to have the belabored moment last for very short amount of time in the resultant dance product. The audience, viewing the dance in performance, will never be aware of the hours spent to refine a particular choreographic moment or subsection. On the rehearsal side, Ben and I decided to jokingly institute the use of the term TOSY –Time On Stage Yield-with dancers at the start of a rehearsal to let them know in advance whether we anticipated the day’s work to be low-yielding or high-yielding. By these temporal and physical ‘standards’, a dancer hearing our intention to work on a low TOSY section should put his thinking cap on and warm up, because the amount of repetition, adaptation, and confusion is likely to be high. In contrast, a high TOSY rehearsal could involve reviewing a large unison section with reliable timings, zero tactile contact, and simple spatial patterns. Different outcomes require different amounts of time, risk and corporeal preparation. Thus the disregard for the offstage time of dance making by commissioning or presenting institutions stands here as a potentially highly exploitive dimension of production negotiation.

Valuing Labor in the Arts: Todd Gilens

On April 19, 2014, the Arts Research Center hosted Valuing Labor in the Arts: A Practicum. This daylong event included a series of artist-led workshops that developed exercises, prompts, or actions that engage questions of art, labor, and economics. We have asked participants to send us their reflections on keywords, puzzles, or recurring themes that came up throughout the day. This post is by Todd Gilens, a project- and place-based visual artist working from commissions as well as initiating his own projects. Recent work has involved the San Francisco MTA, the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden, the Stockholm Resilience Center and, through fall 2014, a private building façade at 1286 Sanchez St. in San Francisco. He lives in the San Francisco Bay area. www.follywog.com

Thank you for a delightful and energizing conference; the positive effects of considering common difficulties in community should not be underestimated, and I wonder how to translate some of the exercises into accessible, ongoing form. Where could I find a dozen practitioners to reflect together on professional dilemmas? How often, in a year, in a career, would such a gathering be useful? Who are my ideal respondents?

The conference I experienced focused on ‘labor’ as time, pushing to the background other aspects of value-creation, such as skill, demand and distribution, all fundamental pieces of professional leverage. Likewise excursions into other professional models might have yielded both insights and new parameters of community, for example how architecture, graphic and game design offices bill for services, or non-profit systems in the conservation community, or the teaching professions; or how real estate developers, in their highly speculative, capital intensive activity, manage risk and investment.

A take on ‘patronage’ is described in Lewis Hyde’s excellent “Created Commons”, an essay which you may know already. His example is Thoreau and the kinds of support, none of it monetary, that he received during his short career. He suggests a model of monetization in creative work as a common pool resource.

Another thing that came to my mind is/was a performing arts initiative I worked under in the late 80’s called the Performing Arts Network. This was a system to book performers into small theaters around the US. Performers and crews fees were set to a ‘fair’ standard and some of the admin work was done by PAN, leveraging tasks and infrastructure that were appropriate at different scales. I suspect this program is no longer operating; even so, it would be interesting to know what influence it had on compensation in a wider scope.

It was exciting and empowering to go through your workshop together, and as a group of artist-persons (I am assuming we were mostly that), we collectively encourage each other. But my sense is that that experience will have little impact, and perhaps little practicality too, without being set in context of the rest of the system.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Valuing Labor in the Arts: Caroline Woolard

On April 19, 2014, the Arts Research Center hosted Valuing Labor in the Arts: A Practicum. This daylong event included a series of artist-led workshops that developed exercises, prompts, or actions that engage questions of art, labor, and economics. We have asked participants to send us their reflections on keywords, puzzles, or recurring themes that came up throughout the day. This post is by visual artist, and Valuing Labor in the Arts workshop leader, Caroline Woolard.

         
The work I'm doing now (by facilitating the start of associations http://bfamfaphd.com and http://nyctbd.com/resources) is focused on creating longterm community livelihoods where shared decision-making and shared profit are possible. Personally, I was able to focus on OurGoods.org and TradeSchool.coop and SolidarityNYC.org for the past five years because I graduated without debt from Cooper Union, because I refused to go into debt for graduate school, and because I created a job for myself by co-managing a studio space that I built out with friends to keep rent low. So, while we resist conditions of debt and underpayment (Non-Participation, WAGE, Strike Debt), raise consciousness about our shared realities (Present Group, Collective Actions, Yoga for Adjuncts), and suggest self-organized initiatives (Appropriate Technologies, NYCTBD, BFAMFAPhD), we must also join the long-term struggles of all working class people by educating ourselves about the existing work around us (Labor Archives). We must understand the endurance work and leadership training that is necessary to make change- it took Fourth Arts Block three decades of organizing to get 8 buildings from the city for $8, and decades after that to sustain and maintain it! As I leave from SFO now, I am excited about bringing the initiatives highlighted together in a framework that welcomes and trains many leaders. As I leave, I am more excited about the importance of community land trusts and worker cooperatives as living examples of resilient institutions that keep individuals in dialog over time and create jobs for exploited individuals, looking to Fourth Arts Block (http://catalystreview.net/2014/02/fourth-arts-block-leading-cultural-advancement-in-new-york-city/) and 3B (http://3bbrooklyn.com/) as examples of just, democratic, and sustainable examples of solidarity economies that will remain stable options for future generations because the land is held in trust.

I am very interested in continuing the conversation, and hope to work toward another gathering, on the East Coast. Also, I would love to return to the Bay Area in late June, or in the fall/winter, to complete the Exchange Archive, do an audio project about Community Economies and time-space geography mapping, and write about Real Estate (not just land) Art! I also see a lot of overlap in the tech sector with the "sharing economy" as aligned with worker cooperatives, if sharing means shared decision-making and shared profits. Inspired by the gathering, Caroline.

Valuing Labor in the Arts: Kate Rhoades

On April 19, 2014, the Arts Research Center hosted Valuing Labor in the Arts: A Practicum. This daylong event included a series of artist-led workshops that developed exercises, prompts, or actions that engage questions of art, labor, and economics. We have asked participants to send us their reflections on keywords, puzzles, or recurring themes that came up throughout the day. This post is by visual artist Kate Rhoades.

          I came to this event hoping to be part of a Marxist revolution and though that definitely was not what happened, I was not disappointed. I found out about this practicum on W.A.G.E.'s website, so naturally I signed up for the workshop on Defining Value, Labor, and the Arts, hosted by W.A.G.E.'s Lise Soskolne. W.A.G.E. had a summit earlier this year to work out their certification program, which is a program to certify that non-profit arts exhibition spaces are fairly compensating their artists. Looking at some of the figures Lise shared with us, I was surprised by how huge some nonprofit arts institutions' directors salaries are, while their exhibiting artists are being paid next to nothing. There was also discussion during the workshop about a certain famous artist who will remain nameless, and their exploitative relationship with younger, non-famous collaborators--no surprise there, but still thought-provoking.

          I feel some ambivalence about this issue personally. I'm a young(ish) visual artist trying to eke out a living and make a name for myself, like a lot of people in Oakland. If some notable artist or prestigious organization that I respect asks me to come participate in their project for free I think it would be really hard for me to turn them down. In fact I've been in that very situation a few times in my career, and usually have some regrets about my decisions whether I agree to participate or not. On the other hand, I've been looking into W.A.G.E. or artists' unions of the past like the Art Workers' Coalition (thanks to Julia Bryan-Wilson's book, Art Workers) because I think that the only thing artists can do to counteract the winner-take-all art market, and all the other art world financial bullshit, is to band together and stop clawing each others' faces off to get the tiny sliver of the pie available to us. I brought up my ambivalence during the workshop, and one of my thoughtful fellow participants said that part of the beauty of W.A.G.E.'s certification program is that it holds accountable the institutions and their funders, rather than the individual artists who are perhaps the most vulnerable party involved. 

          In the afternoon I was fortunate to hear Catherine Powell's talk about the history of labor unions in the Bay Area. During the discussion following the talk people brought up the idea of artists aligning themselves with other labor struggles, like those of freelancers and educators. Later my partner and Catherine were talking about the possibility of creating an artists' union today. Unlike the conclusion that my fellow morning workshop participant came to, Catherine said that it would probably be more effective for artists to unionize rather than rely on institutions to hold themselves accountable. After all, institutions must first elect to participate in W.A.G.E.'s certification program. Without pressure from artists and the public, how many organizations are really going to volunteer to dramatically overhaul their budgets? I thought it was funny to have heard two equally convincing, but opposing solutions to the same problem. In the end, I think the two approaches don't have to be mutually exclusive. Artists could band together to hold each other accountable and not give their labor away for free, while at the same time pressuring the institutions we decide to work with to pay us more fairly. 

          I'm still waiting to figure out when we're going to start setting up barricades in the street or chain ourselves to something. If anybody has plans for further action, whether dangerously revolutionary or not, you can email me: KateRhoades@gmail.com.

Valuing Labor in the Arts: A Practicum

On April 19, 2014, the Arts Research Center hosted Valuing Labor in the Arts: A Practicum. This daylong event included a series of artist-led workshops that developed exercises, prompts, or actions that engage questions of art, labor, and economics. An important component of this event was a two-part thematic issue curated by the Arts Research Center for Art Practical, a leading arts publication in the Bay Area. This special issue served as a primer for workshop participants and as an inspiration and handbook for artistic communities who want to imagine alternative artistic economies in their own domains. Part one, published April 3, 2013, can be found here. Part two will be published in May and will feature workshop exercises as well as a series of commissioned reflections from writers and researchers. Below is the introduction to Part one, written by ARC Director Shannon Jackson.

When is it okay to work for free? Is it acceptable as long as you’re working with—or for—another artist? What is an artistic service? These are just a few of the hundreds of questions circulating for artists working in the 21st-century economy, a scene in which the very old question of art’s financial contingency arguably has a different kind of urgency and opacity. With “Valuing Labor in the Arts,” the Arts Research Center (ARC) gathers artists, curators, organizers, and researchers to work together on such questions.

One key value for ARC is to make sure that artists from various disciplines contribute to the conversations we stage. For this assemblage, we have invited a range of artists to create small, artist-led workshops devised to spur dialogue, action, and art making around questions of art, labor, and economics.

This special issue of Art Practical, curated by the Arts Research Center, serves as a primer for the April 19, 2014 gathering and will include more responses and meditative essays from writers working in economics, sociology, art history, performance studies, dance, film studies, and literature. These future texts, along with work produced in situ, will help us both document our processes and reflect further on the issues explored.

Most of our workshops will be limited to small groups to allow for meaningful creation within the parameters of the workshop. While we are acutely aware that this depth of interaction will necessarily limit those who have access to it, the hope is that the ideas raised in these articles can be widely shared and will provide fodder for more.

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Recap: Living Time: Art and Life After 'Art-Into-Life'


On February 20 and 21, the Arts Research Center was delighted to welcome over 200 attendees to the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive Gund Theater as our ARC community debated and discussed the connections surrounding and between the boundaries separating "art" and "life." We were equally delighted to host 15 celebrated international, national and Bay Area artists, curators, and scholars from a variety of art fields who presented on historical and contemporary, visual and performance based iterations of the distinctly 20th century cultural phenomenon of ‘art-into-life’.


On Thursday, February 20 , André Lepecki (New York University) turned our attention to Brazil and the the work of Hélio Oiticica in a talk titled "Temporality and the Question of Life.” With thoughtful responses by both Suzanne Guerlac (UC Berkeley) and Claudia Calirman (John Jay College), the evening served as a wonderful primer for the all-day gathering on Friday.



On February 21, Maria Gough (Harvard University) presented on the historical precedent for art and life in “Corps Concepts: Notes on the Soviet Collective”. The day’s first “Regional Check-in” centered on Eastern Europe and Beyond as both Bojana Cvejić​ (Performance Scholar) and Ana Janevski (MoMA) discussed politics, dance, aesthetics in the former soviet bloc. In the afternoon, we turned our attention to "Life" and Transnational Curating with presentations by Claudia Calirman (John Jay); Lawrence Rinder with David Wilson (BAM/PFA); Jeff Kelley (Critic and Curator); and Dominic Willsdon (SFMOMA). This lively session touched on the promises and pitfalls of curating time and performance based, socially engaged, and relational art, citing contemporary and historical examples of each.


 
Karin Sanders (UC Berkeley) and Knut Ove Arntzen (University of Bergen) shared expansive accounts of time-based art in the High North, with both exploring “ice” as a material in ecological art. Our focus on regions around the world concluded with China’s Time: Experimental Art and Labor, where both Winnie Wong (UC Berkeley) and Yi Gu (University of Toronto) shared thoughtful, critical, and amusing tales of art production in and beyond China.


ARC would like to thank our major symposium sponsor, the Institute of International Studies, and our symposium supporters, the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the History of Art Department, The Institute of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, the Department of Scandinavian, and the Philosophy Department at UC Berkeley, in addition to our amazing staff and volunteers for making the day happen. Thank you also to our presenters and to our attendees who came out for the two days and supported the ARC community!