critique of labor vs. the IRL

“I just want to get paid for everything I do”.

I hear this all the time from “precarious” artists and cultural workers of all kinds: people I recognize as such, and people I consider not at all precarious, people from all over the world, the EU, North Americans, but also outside of that region. This has grown repetitive, tiresome, is misused in conditions of self-organized projects, where awareness of positioning from which this critique is delivered, is often lacking.

Don’t get me wrong, I would love to get paid for art gigs, or properly, for teaching, as in — to be paid for what I actually (want to) do, but there is just one problem. No such luck. Let’s see, though, how the dominant “labor critique” of working as an artist vs. organizer vs. teacher, and expecting to get paid is affecting the discourse IRL. 

I will begging from some critical distance: 

In the era when I was still on Facebook, before the Occupy and long before BLM (which really gained momentum in 2014 not 2020 during COVID, I don’t know why the latter perception prevails), and therefore in the era before racial profiling became mainstream talking point in the institutions (again), a British performance programmer, a friend of a friend, was travelling to NY from London. He updated his Facebook status with a complaint, something about being pulled aside to be frisked and general rudeness at JFK. Yes, he was white. And I was not yet the person I am now. So it was a big step back then, for me to comment: ”Yeah, welcome to how the rest of the world lives”.

Same message to everyone aghast at funding cuts in Berlin: 

“Welcome to how the rest of the world lives”.

The grantification and professionalisation, as antidote to privatization of cultural sphere has meant:

The policing of affect and tone

The policing of language

The meritocracy (as if interface does not determine what is considered “talent”)

The “relevance” (same)

The inherent nanny state function of the always belated pie charts of affirmative actions and attention

All these aspects continued stratifying who gets to speak and about what and when, and absolutely nothing got better. If it seemed to anyone otherwise, they had not been paying attention or perhaps, were willing to play along to the system’s demands.

In the afterhours of a recent event on identities and pushing against them, at diffrak in Berlin, as everyone huddled for smoke and conversation, I was told (re: publishing) that I needed to choose what I want. My two choices: get recognition (aka eventually start getting paid for what you do), or stick to my principles (i.e. in this cas, the artist/writer should not pay to play, be the difficult/ undesirable collaborator). 

That evening at diffrakt, Yasmin Zaherm, the author of The Coin, is there to represent the kind of identitarian position that “works in the entertainment”. The direct and humorous address of the problem of being a commercial writer is a familiar tactic I recognize from my time in New York, which feels new and refreshing again, amidst all the humble bragging and virtue signaling of Berlin. Zaherm is open about being willing to cut and slice the manuscript to meet the requisite editorial demands in order to reach more readerships via traditional publishing. As long as there is a kernel of what she still believes in, she says. She is described by the moderator as non- compliant with the requisite performance of a perfect victim expected of her, as a Palestinian writer. 

(There is fretting in the audience, from other aspiring writers, who wonder out loud if one should avoid a moralizing position in a novel. The question cracks me up, telling of the “climate”.) 

I appreciate the sentiment of not playing into a character, only I see Zaherm playing into one, just not of the victim: the well heeled young woman weathering palatable madness in New York (or another major city, equally exciting) is the narrative road well travelled — of late, by Ottessa Moshfegh, Natasha Stagg and Marlowe Granados (none of whose books I could fathom reading because they describe people and situation I know too well and have developed an allergy to).

Meanwhile, money-wise, as Maxi Wallenhorst brings up in her story of disappearing street addresses, many (more) artist-run institutions are about to lose their space in Berlin. The budget cuts hang over the upcoming Holidays, right next to all the other ominous dark clouds. I am, yes, sympathetic and (even more) depressed, but I am other things too. At home, I sigh and shrug. Many of these institutions, frankly, have questionable agendas and practices that do not differ from all the commercial outfits out there: heavy on declarative and performative, low on actual adherence to over-stated leftist politics. Idiosyncratically selective, insular (all of which, perhaps it is time we admit, is inevitable). Too often these project spaces’ versions of “international” mean heavily North American, Australian, and a dash of Global South (as bell hook’s” spice”), or on another end — zero-dimensionally diasporic community center. 

This summer a young German philosopher with 300 Euro/month grandfathered rent made big eyes and told me (with some schadenfreude), she would not know how she’d live, if she’d lost her place and had to pay my (new rate) rent — equivalent to her entire budget. 

Oh?

I will quote an acquaintance from Brazil here:

“They must think we pay for things in rainbows.”

Whenever these sorts of conversations happen I wonder who is supposed to show solidarity with whom, and who is expected to do “emotional labor” of supporting the one in need. Reciprocity would be ideal, acknowledging asymmetries too. Instead prickly resentments and self-soothing blossoms. A Russian-German curator, interested in joining my collective project, responds when I attempt to transparently discuss our positions during a moment of tension: “It is none of my business what you do…” Assimilating well, she has adopted the favorite local position, in Germany — the cover story of “privacy”. Those of us having no choice but to talk about things I bring up in this essay, have no “privacy” to retreat into.

Just like drawing the lux boundary between work/play or leisure/pleasure/work does not apply, there might have been something happening, long before COVID, long before everyone started wearing keffiyeh, the something that ushered in Trump and AfD, current budget cuts etc.

Neoliberalism, ecological disasters, exclusion on political grounds, high rent, and wars are at your doorstep?

“Welcome to how the rest of the world lives”.

Yes we will now all of us will have to work harder and without pay, because: no nanny state will bail us out of the current situation. Perhaps its function was not what we needed, and new forms of organizing are incoming as a result. From where I stand, it may be for the best. Is this “activism”, or is it survival? I just call it life as I know it.

As we leave the evening at diffrakt, someone says, at least the cultural sphere has a voice, (self-)representation and a momentum. There are other cuts, possibly bigger, possibly worse that are not mentioned at all these protests. I ask what cuts they mean. To social services. I ask if the person who tells me this will talk about it, out there, in a public sphere. Some sort of deferral ensues, they have no social media, the other person present, says they have low instagram stories reach (which is undoubtedly higher than mine). I am too tired to pursue this further. We are leaving a (purposefully tautologically named) center for theoretical periphery. We know that things always begin from sideline conversations, small story reach is irrelevant. Is it possible to talk about every single issue at hand with the same emphasis, at all times? Unlikely.

“Welcome to how the rest of the world lives”.