label

conditions of work

Linked to 5 items

• from: Irene de Craen (chapter)

  Irene 06:52 I think there’s a lot to your question. The way I set up Errant, structurally and organizationally, is also very important for the content. There is the editorial process and how I approach each contribution, and then there is an umbrella over the process of how I approach the object of the book and how I subvert that. So, there are different layers to it. To start with organizational aspects, I was the artistic director of a very large space before I started Errant. conditions of workIn my experience, the bigger the space, the more limiting it actually is. One of the things that constantly frustrated me was that when we didn't have any budget, we still needed to fill the space, which forced artists and others involved to practically work for nothing. This is the kind of situation that is causing burnouts, and I think it is ridiculous to have to perform for the funders in this way.

• from: Irene de Craen (chapter)

  Yesterday, I was looking at another magazine that I didn’t know yet. conditions of workThere are a lot of magazines out there that say that they're giving space to ‘other voices,’ but one of the problems that I see is that a lot of these publications don't pay people. They say they are open to everyone, but by not paying people, you're not open to everyone, you’re open to people who can afford to work for free, which is a very small segment of our society. It’s very important to me to pay people, and that’s one of the main focuses when trying to reach ‘other voices.’ Although I don’t think I am able to pay people the actual worth of their work, I try to do my best.

• from: Silvio Lorusso (chapter)

  Silvio 16:17 That’s the hard part. Broadly speaking, I think that event engagements are better paid than writing engagements. If everything is good, you are paid 500 euros for a 45-minute talk, and if it all goes well, you are paid the same amount to write an essay of many pages. So this doesn’t make any sense, right? This means that if you care about something other than the event, as a cultural organizer, as someone who has the chance to invite other people, you have to see that event, that thing that you organize, not just as a service that the speaker does, it’s not about the person coming to the stage. conditions of workYou’re sustaining the practitioner’s writing for other days. So how, as a cultural organizer, how can you facilitate this? Not creating burdens for the author, in the sense that you don’t ask necessarily something new. You don’t insist too much on the format of the slides. You don’t ask too many meetings in advance. I have a text about this. I can send it to you. I have like a list with this.

• from: Silvio Lorusso (chapter)

  Silvio 27:45 Wonderful reflection. I’m very much in this line of thought in the sense that I appreciate a lot of people who have taken on this kind of idea of abandonment, jumping ship not only from the art world but also from academia. governance and ownershipOne positive side of this is that many people have lost reverence towards institutions. They realize that in most ways they don’t work. They don’t work for them. Academia, for example, and I speak again from my experience, if you want to put down ideas, is the worst place. I’m not the first to say it. conditions of workSusan Sontag already said back in the day that the best writers of her generation were destroyed by academia. What’s the concrete reality of abandonment?

• from: Silvio Lorusso (chapter)

  The people I’ve seen manage to cut ties with traditional institutions, when they manage, it’s an exceptional and somewhat uncertain path. I’m talking about people starting Patreon. But if you want to have a sustainable life with Patreon, you need to have an extremely huge user and fan base. And that also limits your output in the sense that the fan base, the people that will pay the five dollars every month, expect from you the same thing that you did the month before. So I think the most convincing negotiation between abandonment and staying, I found it in a book, which probably you all know, called “The Undercommons”. This idea that you stay in the institution because, to a certain extent, you cannot escape it completely, unless you are a superstar. conditions of workAnd you steal from the institution: you steal the tape, for instance. Of course, it’s metaphorical, but you create spaces within the institution without reverence to the institution to pursue your goal. And why don’t you feel guilty? You don’t feel guilty because, after all, what you are doing is what you are paid for, to do research, to write, not to not to embark on managerial jobs. These are necessary things, but if they take 100% of your time, then better go to corporate, no?