The precarious labour of art workers and initiatives fighting it

Today we had such an interesting lecture of art theory that I felt doing a post about it. One of the reasons why I think doing Erasmus is so important is getting connected to other mentalities and approaches to life. We often think the way we do things in our country is the "right way", but once we step out of the border  things change and we realize there are just many "right" approaches.

So whereas in Portugal we learn about asthetics, philosophy and art history in art theory class, over here at Estonia we have a more practical and contemporary approach, discussing many current topics and checking the practices of different artists and institutions.

Today we spoke about the precarity of art workers and some initiatives that are being taken aroud the world to deal with it. When thinking on the contemporary art, we see a shift thowards the immateriality of the artistisc work. Many artists dont produce "objects" that can be commercialized, but they produce a social impact, a relation, an experience. Anyway, regardless of the art materiality, artist are facing many difficulties regarding precarious work. First, they work as self-employed/freelancers, not being able to claim for specific social benetits (sick leave, paid holiday leave, health insurance, etc). Secondly, and speaking on art workers, they often face the question of free work.

A particular example of free work are exhibitions. Around the world, artists are not expected to be paid to do an exhibition. We don't even have doubts that the recepcionists of the exhibition should be paid, the light and sound technicians should be paid, the cleaning staff should be paid, the catering and the organization employees should be paid, the graphic production should be paid, but then why don't we think the artist, who is the central point of the exhibition, should be paid?

Organizing an exhibition has many costs for the artist. There is the cost of producing the works, the cost of installation, the making of the photos, the texts that come with it, the travelling, then there can be costs associated to press releases, doing performances, talks, interviews and presentations. This sums up to many hours of work and to a finantial cost which the artist has to bear upfront. And if you add this up to the immateriality and non-commercial purpose of art production, the artist will not even financially benefit from the exposure given by the exhibition. This makes the art worker in practical terms a volunteer worker.

There have been many protests/initiatives around the world where artists associate in order to get more rights. We spoke about two initiavives that derived from this protests:

MU AGREEMENT IN SWEDEN
This agreement came to place in Sweden since 2009 and it applies to public institutions, although other art institucions volunterly followed this model. In this agrement government issued a law where institutions have to pay fees in two categories:
 - Exhibition fee - Which is like a "rent", a copyright fee for every week the exhibition takes place
 - Participation fee - It's a fee calculatet per hour for the artist work in tasks connected to the exhibition (guided tours, presentations, talks, performances etc) - For this the governmet set the price on around 80 euros/ hour, by leveling the fee of other professions with the same experience (design, engineering, consulting...)
You can read more about it here.


W.A.G.E. IN NEW YORK
W.A.G.E. (Working Artists and the Greater Economy) is an organization created by artists association and initiative. It is a certification for art institutions which recognizes institutions who pay artists according to W.A.G.E. minimum standarts. Institutions are reviewed and then classified, making it therefore more transparent to artists which are the best organizations to work with.

More information here.

There is so much to read about this topic, so many examples around the world and yet so many things to do in our country. In Portugal we don't even have a recognizable status for the art worker, we just have a framework for theatre and performance artists. We also don't have substantial collectivities protecting the art workers, and no formal union either.
In Portugal, just in 2017, we had 7119 exhibitions which included more than 50.000 artists (source). We are yet to know which of these paid the artist.

Overall, what we concluded is that the initiative to change the framework has to come from the artists themselves. So hopefully this article gets you thinking about what else can you do in your context. Do you have more examples about these initiatives? What is your experience? What do you think can still be done?


More readings:
http://www.art-workers.org
https://artsleaks.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/corina_apostol_artleaks_gazette_3.pdf
And listenings:
https://fumaca.pt/debate-portugal-mercado-nao-suportara-producao-artistica-elisabete-paiva/