The London Project Proposal C-C-C-G Conversations on Curating Commercial Galleries

An in dept investigative look into commercial gallery spaces in London, through a podcast discussion with people working in and around galleries.

Links to downloads:

Link 1: Introduction:

Link 2: Episode 1 Conversation with Gabriela Giroletti & Hedvig Listøl:

DESCRIPTION PROJECT

A podcast that could be commissioned by commercial galleries around London. The focus each time would lay on one exhibition. This show would be discussed in detail. The length of each episode would be around 40 minutes. The episodes will discuss the exhibition in great detail, presenting the perspective of everyone involved in the gallery, from the artist to the director to potential buyers or fans. This concept differes from other art podcasts, which often included interviews with an artist or focused on one museum show for a portion of the episode. This podcast will be in depth interviews centring on one gallery show and can serve as a counteract to reading the press release. The podcast will be available on Spotify internationally, for listeners anywhere and be able to be scanned at the entrance to the show and listened to after or while walking through the show. The inspiration of this project came from a lecture by Elliot Burns who talked about Fax Bak which was a collective in London invented during the 1980s that collected press releases of commercial galleries in London. Fax Bak used sharpies and markers to highlight and critique press releases based on the inaccessibility and phrasing of the text and faxed the marked text back to the gallery.

Following to the podcast episode there will be a “response” episode that will be a rereading of responses to the show that can be send in over a WhatsApp number either as audio files or text. Additionally, I would like to invite local students doing their A-levels in art to use the podcast format, walking through the show and contribute to the “response” episode. I believe that this project has the potential to make exhibitions much more tangible, exciting, and personal, avoiding the often inaccessible “art-language” of press releases and fostering a direct dialogue between artist and viewer and offering access to students interested in art.

I would love to have a response episode for each exhibition that would feed of voices of listeners sending in their interpretations about the interviews, podcast, the exhibition if they were able to check it out online or in person and the work itself. These responses could be send to a WhatsApp number as audio files or written text.

At the heart of this project sits the urge to engage on a deeper and longer level with the artist.

I believe gallery exhibitions should value the artists work and time, effort beyond the success of selling the show. I believe if we can change the way we engage with gallery exhibitions to include additions that prompt us to thing longer, deeper about the work that urge us to communicate about the work. If we spend time questioning the work and engaging with it.

To engage wider audiences, to have discussions and engage more people I believe we need more tools, in a sense more curation.

IDEATION PROCESS

Notes from the conversations from previous years  
Think about the theme that you are passionate about

Take some care into the proposal (so you can use it for the hand-in texts)

Think about the medium and the idea that you have fun and are very interested in

Build on a detailed, small area and be very perfectionist and intricate about it

Think about possible partnerships

Think about something that you can distance from the dissertation research

Look at how you can and want to bring the project to live (means and how much time do you have in what medium do you want to work in/ means do you have think budget, time, collaborators et cetera)

Structure your research and where you store images, research, own writings

Trust the process

Don’t worry if it’s to weird

Have fun with the process

Immerse yourself in the project (find maybe something soothing)

Document everything you have done !!

Option 4 (Second idea):

A project that makes accessible gallery visits / press releases through audio guided podcasts

vision: a company, initiative that can be booked by the gallery: Gallery sent press releases, interviews with the artists or even the direct contact information with the artists

The initiative builds a podcast episode for each exhibition with time slots for when certain artworks within the show are being discussed

This could also be extended to a youtube channel with time slots and visuals from the show

This way the “art-language” of press releases can be avoided. A direct dialogue between artist communication and viewer that makes the exhibition much more tangible, exciting and personal.

Link: https://thewhitepube.co.uk/art-thoughts/why-i-dont-read-the-press-release/

SCHEDULED PLANNING METHODS

Do a schedule / overview of by when I have to be done with the
work in the next weeks.

– Ask Isabelle for an interview agreement brief document

—> Fill in and formulate the interview agreement according to the
participants

Do more visual research:

mind maps for research portfolio
Do my own version of critiquing press releases like FAX-Bak service
AI generated texts? https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/  Specifically

About the exhibition (research):

collect artwork images,
press release for the show,
Think about a script
pdf press pack for the show,
Biography & CV of the artist
infos about the artist
Background about millie
Mission statement for the podcast .

Accessibility of the podcast, transcript

Do more theoretical research:

Interpretation and Art
Jerry Saltz renaissance —> how to view art
The development of art influenced by interpretation and press releases
looking at documenta 2022
Art language
Accessibility
Higher art language
The history of the press release
Development of art podcasts

WEEK (5th March – 12 March 2023)

Do more research into FAX-Bak and it’s contributors—> think about
writing an email to the FAX-BAK contributes to ask them a couple
of questions reflecting on their project, where they are now, how
this work manifests into what they are doing now, If they still
use any knowledge they gained from this experience, what galleries
responded and generally the feedback they got about the work
—> Doing a questionnaire for people about press releases for the
research journal that investigates their opinions and understandings
of press releases and their connection and feelings towards them
Do Research into the artists practice that would want to participate
Write the proposal email for Gabriela or Audun and for Hedvig
Email the proposal to the artist I want to get involved with and ask
Hedvig or Kristin and Millie if they would be up for helping or
someone else in the gallery.
Ask the journalist writing the press release
PRACTICAL STATISTCICS
Involve a graphic designer.
Check if I can create the podcast jingle or do research
h how much it would cost to involve a sound artist
Do research how exactly I would record the audio (lend microphones
possibly)
If I write a script, a brief for the interview
Where I would upload the episode which platform I would use.
-(Holiday 19th – 22nd March 2023)-
WEEK (12 March – 14 April 2023)
Do the interviews with:
– Artist
– Gallery Director
– (Writer/Journalist)
– Collector
WEEK (14 April – 1 May 2023)
– Go into editing the podcast and size it down
WEEK (1 May – 15 May 2023)
– spend time to write the essay for the London Project
– spend time to do the Research Portfolio
DEADLINE: 15 of May 2023 is the deadline of the London Project
3 kinds of options
Press release digest
One long conversation
With everyone involved in the show
Wild card option
Do more research into FAX-Bak and it’s contributors—> think about writing an email to the FAX-BAK contributes to ask them a couple of questions reflecting on their project, where they are now, how this work manifests into what they are doing now, If they still use any knowledge they gained from this experience, what galleries responded and generally the feedback they got about the work
—> Doing a questionnaire for people about press releases for the research journal that investigates their opinions and understandings of press releases and their connection and feelings towards them
Do Research into the artists practice that would want to participate
Write the proposal email for Gabriela or Audun and for Hedvig
Email the proposal to the artist I want to get involved with and ask Hedvig or Kristin and Millie if they would be up for helping or someone else in the gallery.
Ask the journalist writing the press release
WEEK (5th March – 12 March 2023)
PRACTICAL STATISTCICS
Involve a graphic designer.
Check if I can create the podcast jingle or do research how much it would cost to involve a sound artist
Do research how exactly I would record the audio (lend microphones possibly)
If I write a script, a brief for the interview
Where I would upload the episode which platform I would use.
-(Holiday 19th – 22nd March 2023)-
WEEK (12 March – 14 April 2023)
Do the interviews with:
– Artist
– Gallery Director
– (Writer/Journalist)
– Collector
WEEK (14 April – 1 May 2023)
– Go into editing the podcast and size it down
WEEK (1 May – 15 May 2023)
– spend time to write the essay for the London Project
– spend time to do the Research Portfolio

DOUBTS
QUESTIONING MY IDEA…

Think During the beginning stages of chaning my topic I felt very overwhelmed with ideas and questions, and tasks I needed to accomplish. Below is a stream of questions I noted down in my phone to figure out for the project:

Questions that I need to answer before I send out the emails

How long is each podcast episode? 

Who do I want to involve and what purpose and response do I want from each

person?

Think about accessibility in language read about the background of art speak:

What does this podcast serve?

How long should it be?

It should be an intricate, more extended look at the exhibition not from a review

or article or an abstract text from of the press release but an interesting more

nuanced conversation with the entire team that is involved in the exhibition

Something that goes at length into the detail of the work that shows the

history and thoughts of people that put together the exhibition

Is there a way in from community groups or other people to also talk about

the work in this context? Is millie a valuable asset to talk too in this form of

the podcast? Think about before writing email to her…

She would tell me about her point of view what she sees in the work

and Gabriella but she jsn’t puts together the press release and references

so maybe she is not important to this version?
Email Natalie the proposal

text to get in touch with the collector

What inside to I want to hear from the collector research:

Check out the instagram how the person writes about art, what is important

to them when looking and collecting, buying art…

What would they bring to the conversation..

What does this person look at in the show

Things to do:

Do a survey

Do my own survey and ask people about how much information they collect at a show
Questions: What they want to see in it. How much they care about the message, Does it have to be political

Do they need to know the artists story and background to be able to connect with the work?

Do they care about the institution do they want to know how they came to work together

Do they wanna know about the process of creating the show?

Send out emails tomorrow to Gabriela, hedvig, natalie!!

Maybe a separate episode of how other people connect to the work?

Should I split it into different episodes per interview so each person has their own episode they could click on for each perspective?

Listen to other art podcasts this is the questions they often asked:

Which is hanging on the wall?

What influenced the choice of works?

Motivation behind the works?

Which mediums, why?

Themes: Environment, pandemic, human proximity, memory, death, life, transience, different states, relationships → Other?

New themes in recent years? Motivated by current events? What influence did the pandemic have on your way of creating?

Exhibiting New possibilities? Other ways of creating?**

Over the years: Has the way of creating/inspiration changed? How? Why?

How did you find your way to art?*

COLLECTOR QUESTIONS: (check back in with other podcasts)

Are there important themes they focus on?

Do they have a focus in collecting?

Do they notice a certain feeling or thing when they know this is why they collect?

Do they try to reach out to the artists or do they wont to be kept distance form the talk and perspective of the work?

Can they become white obsessed with the work? have they formed close relationships with the artists? how much connect do they want from the show?

DEVELOPMENT AFTER FIRST PROPOSAL

In the past weeks I have spent time trying to deeply research each person participating in the mock-up episode of my podcast after writing a proposal email.

The first episode is going to compromise:

Gabriela Giroletti who is a Brazilian abstract painter and sculptor and recently had a show at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery
Hedvig Listøl who has been the director of the London Bridge location of Kristin Hjellegjerde gallery since 2020.
Pamela Hornik who is a collector who has previously collected art from Kristin Hjellegjerde gallery and is a prominent collector voice for accessibility of her own private collections in the USA.

I have send time reading articles, listening to podcasts, watching youtube videos of all three people and trying to become familiar with their background, passions and perspectives.  During and after I have comprised about 15 questions for each of them and emailed the questions back to each participants so they can get an idea before the interview. I have also given each of them a specific time frame until may for the interview. I have listened to the podcast by the Dephian Gallery interviewing Kristin, the galleries of Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery. I have listened to the podcast by The 8-bridges Podcast with Pamela Hornik.
Furthermore I have started to edit a website for the podcast and an instagram account. I have red the book Curator Conversations edited by Tim Clark and started reading the book Sensitive Caos by Tehodor Schwerk which was one of the main inspirations for the artist Gabriela Giroletti’s work. After April I want to work on the editing, the podcast jingle, the website, the logo and the collecting responses for the response episode, as well as record the introductory episode for the podcast that will introduce the podcast and it’s aims.

DEVELOPMENT DIARY

As a knowledgeable and motivated researcher, I am constantly seeking new ideas and inspiration for my work. However, after my previous hand-in and initial conversation with my supervisor, I realised that my original topic for the London project was too broad and difficult to tackle. This left me feeling shaken, as I had invested a lot of time and energy into the topic.

To move forward, I began brainstorming new ideas and documenting them in a pages document, marking each idea by number and adding any relevant details that came to mind. Although many of the ideas were based on my own neighbourhood or personal identity, they didn’t seem very tangible or easily realisable in a London-based project.

Eventually, I landed on the idea of creating a podcast that would focus on one exhibition in great detail, presenting the perspective of everyone involved in the gallery, from the artist to the director to potential buyers or fans. This concept differed from other art podcasts, which often included interviews with an artist or focused on one museum show for a portion of the episode. I also considered extending the project to a YouTube channel that would include visuals from the exhibition.

After discussing the podcast idea with fellow students, family members, and colleagues, I received positive feedback and enthusiasm for the concept. I believe that this project has the potential to make exhibitions much more tangible, exciting, and personal, avoiding the often inaccessible “art-language” of press releases and fostering a direct dialogue between artist communication and viewers.

As I continue to develop this project, I am excited by the possibilities and invested in the research process. I believe that with dedication and hard work, this project has the potential to make a real impact in the art world and beyond.

Development third hand-in

After receiving the feedback for my second hand-in that was a complete change in topic from the previous weeks I started to take action plans of what had to be achieved within in the next couple of weeks. This part of the process involved a lot of planning and strategising, looking forward and organising my time correctly. Time management and optimism for my projects are so crucial since I spend 3 other days working which really limits my time next to the Degree Group Project meetings, lectures, and the society I manage. I first made a weekly schedule setting multiple deadlines until the 15th of May.

At first I had to decide the first options of collaborators that I would want to bring on the podcast with me: the artist, the gallerist/ gallery director, as well as a fan or collector. Since I knew I wanted to speak to an artist from Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, the gallery I work for as well as have a professional interview dissecting the approach of the gallery with my gallery director I was very certain I would interview Hedvig Listol as the director. Furthermore I had made contact with some of the artists in the program and knew pretty quickly that I would love to speak to Gabriela Giroletti, who I had previously met and seemed open and talkative I knew about her way of researching and was sure she would be an interesting artist to talk to. Natalie gave me the tip to get in contact with Pamela Hornik, a collector from California in America with an outgoing personality, sits on boards, collaborates with museum exhibitions and wants to nurture contemporary art. After hearing about her I found out that she had also previously been in contact with Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery and that the gallerist, and director had spoken to her prior, which only made the selection of voices more reasonable.

After speaking to each collaborator and having them luckily agree to be part of the project. I send out an email with the draft of the project explaining everything in great detail. Thereafter, I took about 2 weeks to research, the gallery’s history, Pamela Hornik’s practice through articles and podcasts, social media as well as Gabriela Giroletti’s work and education through articles, youtube videos and read the research books she was inspired by for the latest body of works. From there I contextualised around 10-15 questions for each person adjusted to their interest and work and send them back for confirmation for the interview. On the 16th of April I conducted the first interview with Hedvig Listol at the gallery, lending a microphone from a friend from Ba CCC. I have been in contact with both Pamela and Gabriela to arrange the next two interviews in the next two weeks before I want to start going into editing in the beginning of May. From there I will have two weeks left to complete the introductory podcast, the 2nd episode with all collaborators, finish the website and instagram, jingle melody for the show and logo design.

Episode with Gabriella Giroletti and Hedvig Listol

Influence from other podcasts

Podcast Making Artist Information accessible in commercial galleries

Death of the Author

Art writing

Curator Conversations: Care for the artist

Podcast Making Artist Information accessible in commercial galleries

Art and Interpretation

Future Plans
Response Episode

International Art English by Levine and Rule

Fax Bak service

Arts and Politics: Arts Education and Underfunding

Inaccessibility of Language

ELLIOT BURNS LECTURE ABOUT FAX BAK SERVICE

One of the main anchors of this project was Fax-Bak Service introduced by Elliott in a workshop in November 2022.

The lecture already laid out a lot of the groundwork for the research I ended up doing.First and foremost it was Fax-Bak service explained on the next slides that grabbed by attention and which was the starting point for changing my topic in combination with the trigger if a recent press release text at a gallery.

FAX BAK SERVICE RESEARCH

Fax-Bak Service: Simon Bedwell, Milly Thomson, John Russell

A POSITIVE EXAMPLE – GROVE COLLECTIVE

Personal impression

One very recent example from the 11^th of May 2023, is the thoughts / Press Release shared by Grove Collective Founding Director Jacob Barnes.

Grove Collective is a new gallery and residency programme with founded in London that has recently expended to Berlin.

I really enjoyed the personal approach of the head curator using notes app, which is the same app many creatives use to note down streams of consciousness the emotions they feel but also things like grocery lists and poems.

The tone in which he writes is conversational like he shares his intentions about the upcoming exhibition with a close friend. It sounds earnest, passionate and personal.

QUIPLASH LECTURE 1 & 2 Ethics statement

Creative Access with Quiplash: 

How to use plain language.

Revisit that exercise of project ideation and see how your project has changed and what do you need to do
Think about all the access, money, resources that you want and then see what access you would want to bring in
What are our access non-negotiables ? I need / have to have/ want – if I don’t have these – the project doesn’t happen
Here’s what I want to explore (ie I want to make a clubnight deaf people can participate in and enjoy). If I don’t reach my goal I still learned lots, so next time I have more information and so can achieve more.
What is my – “I understand this is important but I can’t do it right now” – I don’t have the people / knowledge / money / time to make it possible right now.

Ethics Statement: + Quiplash workshop notes put in here

I am still doing research about the aim of access within my project and trying to grasp what access and care means from as many possible angles and perspectives of the project.

As my podcast aims to provide access to commercial gallery exhibitions that are generally seen as the shopping windows of the art world, where creativity, curation and care often seem to be left at the door I know that the term “access” can sound very presumptuous. The white cube space and cold establishment described by the white pube editors in “Why I don’t read the press release” Is afflicted with a white, male dominated history. In recent years many curators and more generally all art practitioners are fighting for a change in exhibition practice. I am well aware that my form of a podcast is not providing access in the most radical form but I hope it can provide a positive small-scale change to exhibitions within commercial galleries to provide a different medium that is audio-guided, and might help to be more engaging than written word. It provides access to people with vision impairment. Personally I can take in and remember information easer through audio then text – the podcast provides a second option to take in the information. It is important for the podcast to be language inclusive, with the help of lectures by the whiplash team and through ethic guidelines introduced by tutors, I am hoping to be aware of inclusive language. Within the podcast I will make sure to not use terms classified as “art-language” or “art jagon” and if terms are used to reiterate in editing and explain such points. Access within the space is something that is out of my person control but I will mention in the episode and on the website for the show.

Furthermore, I will provide a transcribe link on Spotify and on the website so that people with hearing impairment are still able to access the same information. I would like to spend extra care to adding extra visuals to the transcript of the different voices that are speaking.

During one of the tutorials at university I talked to other tutors, amongst them Hannah Kemp-Welch who is independently working on audience engagement project who critically questioned access in terms of voices represented within the podcast to provide accessible languages and positions. As the persons representing London galleries, collectors, journalists and many artists are speaking from a higher position of someone that has accumulated a lot of cultural and more than often come from a higher social and financial capital or come from wealth and has been part of the art scene. In that sense the voices representing such exhibitions might not always have the most accessible language. The responsibility seems to lay in my personal phrasing and choosing of the questions and the way the interview is led and edited. Furthermore Hannah mentioned the idea to talk to pupils, community groups about the work. Which lead me to the idea of a review/ response exchange.

This idea came from multiple tv shows, comedy channels, youtube videos that film a project and a response video. I am hoping the include this idea in my draft but might be short in time.   I would love to have a response episode for each exhibition that would feed of voices of listeners sending in their interpretations about the interviews, podcast, the exhibition if they were able to check it out online or in person and the work itself. These responses could be send to a WhatsApp number as audio files or written text.

At the heart of this project sits the urge to engage on a deeper and longer level with the artist.

To engage wider audiences, to have discussions and engage more people I believe we need more tools, in a sense more curation

ECTURE NOTES Podcasting: Passion, Research and Delivery:

Henry King at CSM – February 2023

Soundscapes for specific voices, and forming characteristics in the podcast.

Study Hacks:

Write, draw, or record YOUR LEARNING & QUESTIONS
Connect the learning to your practice & Share Knowledge as a team
Connect podcasting to your research and assessment criteria

Conversations with Purpose to Inform, Educate and Entertain:

Rant — getting out your opinions, issues, passionately and with little to no editing
Oral History — recording someones else’s story, a few prompts, some research, very little editing
Documentary — On location investigative piece grounded in research, including experts & witnesses
Opinion Piece — one side of a debate, not necessarily factual
Interview — Researched/ focussed conversation
Fully produced — Themes, research. A team, fully scripted, carefully timed and rehearsed

What are you qualified to talk about?

Have someone to talk to and who listens: Share my experience of visiting a certain cultural event and discuss the themes I spotted and discuss them, review them, form a critique (student age/ entry level)

Who do I do this for?

People also passionate about the same event, friends I know, people that create artists (student age/ entry level

Someone to communicate with, share their passion, converse about the same topic, connect with others

Reach out their platform

How do they change as a result?

Gain a new connection, new friends possibly?

More people interested

Hopefully gain knowledge from each other

What research have you already done and what research do you need to do?

What I have done:

Background into the collective that criticised press releases

Other press releases

Other podcasts that are good examples in interviewing artists / people in the art world

Theory research into art speak and why people don’t find it accessible

Research I need to do:

Which exhibition show I want to use as an example; when it will take place

In the next two weeks (20th February – 5 March):

Submit the proposal (24th March 2023)

Check if I can create the podcast jingle or do research how much it would
cost to involve a sound artist

Do a schedule / overview of by when I have to be done with the work in the
next weeks

Ask Isabelle for an interview agreement brief document

Ask the artist of the show if they want to participate and have an option B
and C prepared

Ask the gallery director or gallerist if they want to participate

Ask the journalist writing the press release

(5th March – 12 March 2023)

Involve a graphic designer

Do Research into the artists practice that would want to participate

Do research how exactly I would record the audio (lend microphones possibly)

If I write a script, a brief

Where I would upload the episode which platform I would use.

(Holiday 19th – 22nd March 2023)

(12 March – 14 April 2023)

Do the interviews with:

Artist

Gallery Director
(14 April – 1 May 2023)

Go into editing the podcast and size it down

(1 May – 15 May 2023)

Write the essay for the London Project

Do the Research Portfolio

15 of May 2023 is the deadline of the London Project

Task: Creating your podcast

Use your life Purpose Sentence:
Create a list/ Mindmap of 10+ episodes
List discussions
List interviewees
What is the problem / query you address

List of Episodes (Examples):

— Introduction to the podcast

— Gabriela Giroletti solo show “Mingling Currents” at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery

— Audun Alvstad solo show “As if you had a Choice in the Matter” at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery

— Nabil Anani solo show “The Land and I” at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery

— Kwadwo A Asiedu solo show at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery

— Grayson Perry “Posh Cloths” at Victoria Miro Gallery

— an artist at a London gallery

Section in the episode (whole episode 30-40 minutes)

Introduction
Concept of the show with the artist
Concept of the show with millie the journalist
Background of the artist with millie the journalist
Walking through the show with the artist
Analysis of two works in the show: close description
Interview with the director of the gallery background of what they like about the artist, how much they have worked together etc etc
Walking though the show with fan / collector who shares their thoughts
Links to where to find out more about the show and the artist

PODCAST RESEARCH HOW IT IMPACTS US

Over the past 5 years I have developed a deep passion for listening to podcast, especially with the rise of streaming services such as Spotify, I have grown very fond of consuming information about my interest into art exhibitions, politics, cultural theory, film through podcasts. They have become an integral part of my research into any kind of uni project, might it be essays, interviews or researching future employees and collaborators before job interviews.  Especially during the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and during the months of isolation podcasts served as a connection point on solo walks around London; during commutes on the underground. Even as my part-time job as gallery assistant our entire team continues to keep up with art world news, or entertainment through pop culture podcasts. Our team stays motivated and connect during office hours through such co-listening sessions. There are hardly any days that pass where I don’t listen to at least one podcast a day while commuting to work, uni or while cleaning, cooking, or doing other daily tasks.

Growing up in Germany, I have been influenced by the importance of audiobooks. As many people describe Germany as a society of audiobook listeners even before the rise of the podcast through streaming platforms.  During my early childhood most children I knew listened to Benjamin Blümchen, Bibi Blocksberg, Bibi und Tina, Die ???, TKKG — all stories that were primarily known in audio formats.

This trend never stopped during my years into adulthood as it was common amongst my friends even in our teenage years and during sleepovers to listen to and fall asleep to detective shows such as Die Drei ??? Or the “girly” equivalent Die Drei !!!, both detective shows. Other shows included Conni and Conni & Co audiobooks about the same girl growing up ranging from her experiences through kindergarten, primary and secondary school.  Funnily enough if you currently look at Germany’s iTunes Charts you will notice that the top 10 albums are still often dominated by these children audiobooks, the most famous one being Die Drei ???. A detective show around three boys growing up in Los Angeles and solving crime cases in their teens. As an international pop act trying to climb the charts to the number 1 spot often serves difficulty pushing such audiobooks of their top placements.

Inspirational podcasts

Gemischtes Hack is the biggest German language speaking podcast, and the most listened to European podcast that’s not spoken in English. The format is a weekly catch—up conversation between two male comedians, Tommi Schmitt and Felix Lobrecht in their mid 30s popular through comedy shows that discuss their lives, German culture and politics, and their everydayness in a very comedic and playful, down to earth way using very “common” language. They have succeeded at building up a strong listener community through additional engagement on their instagram accounts and their acknowledgments of fan pages that draw the themes of the episode, create memes et cetera.

The Art Newspaper podcast, as well as The Art Angle Podcast is a structured art podcast with usually up to 4 different segments of different people talking about exhibitions, interviewing participants, breaking down what happened in the art world, auctions, exhibitions, openings, museums et cetera. The Art Angle is a very similar to the previous podcast also a selection of news segments that vary from monologues to interviews about the art world.

The podcast titled by Spotify & Süddeutsche Zeitung podcast titled Wirecard: 1,9 Miliarden Lügen (transl.: Wirecard: 1,9 Billion Lies) that goes over two seasons, in total 12 episodes each around one hour long discusses the biggest recent German credit card scandal in great depth and investigation with a large team of producers and journalists. The podcast that takes an in depth look at germans biggest international finance affair. It is a discussion between two journalists with interview segments of other participants, each episode having a specific theme, linear going through the development of the crime over 2 seasons and 8 episodes per season in total lasting over hours twelve hours.

The podcast Alles gesagt by ZEIT , one of Germany’s other biggest newspapers is a collaboration between two of ZEIT’s most established journalists Christoph Ahmend, Editorial Director of the ZEIT magazine and Editor in Chief of ZEIT online Jochen Wegner. Each month they invite a high-profile guest of Germany’s media, political, intellectual landscape. They research this guest in great depth with an entire team from the newspaper beforehand. The show itself can last from 3 up to 10 hours — the rule is the episode doesn’t stop until the guests says the “stop word” that they set at the start of each interview. Overall, the atmosphere of the show is set out to be very relaxed. The language is very conversational — furthermore each episode features games and restaurant deliveries that are being brought in; a whole dinner is consumed while recording the interview. The guests might they be some of Germany’s biggest politicians, artists, art collectors, authors, actors, et cetera are supposed to let loose and go into in depth conversations about their work, their personal life; their upbringing (if they want to) and current cultural happenings. Usually the podcasts last between 4 and 10 hours per episode.

Each of the above named podcasts were key references to how I would proposition my own podcast. I wanted to bring together a symbiosis of all these different characteristics of these shows. The main attributes that I noted could be characterised as  1) conversational

2) comedic, personal

3) easy, comprehensible language

4) Interview Formats

5) In depth, investigative discussions

6) Understanding the inner thoughts, psyche of the interviewee

7) In general longer formats all these are at least 40 minutes up to 10 hours per episode

Translation into CCCG- Conversations on Curating Commercial Galleries podcast:

After noting down all the strengths of these different podcasts I tried to acknowledge how they informed and shaped my approach towards the questions and approach of interviewing for my own podcast.

All these different podcasts shaped for my own project to become rather conversational. I wanted the interviews to be focused and critical but also to introduce new themes and aspects very smoothly and easily. The selection of which question was asked was based on the previous answer the interviewee had given. It was a conscious effort to try and incorporate my own voice and experience into the podcast when it was fitting. I was conscious of not taking up space or interrupting but at the same for it to feel more conversational, friendly and a close connection between friends, rather than individual people as that was the inspiration I had taken from all shows mentioned prior.

I was aware of making the setting comfortable leading up to the interview I reminded the interviewees Gabriela and Hedvig that they could stop and repeat their answers any time or take breaks if they wanted to. Before starting the interview I made sure to create an easy conversation with them about their week to build an easy transition between small talk and catch up hours to asking my questions. I advised interviewees be as natural as possible to be aware of not using art language “art jagon” terminology and that they are allowed to swear, or drink while recording, and should laugh as much as they want, every thought was welcome I was the happier the more blunt and straight-forward they expressed themselves.

I incorporated personal questions in the beginning to make them loosen up and to be able for them to freely retell their memories and background.

PODCAST RESEARCH HOW IT IMPACTS US

link: https://www.wework.com/ideas/professional-development/creativity-culture/seven-reasons-why-podcasts-are-dominating-the-media-landscape

Wework

Seven reasons why podcasts are dominating the media landscape

October 9, 2019

Wework talked to Mr. Brewer – founder of a celebrity and influencer management agency, a model and talent agency, who hosts the podcast Lipps Service, for which he interviews influential names in music and pop culture—to understand why podcasts are dominating the media landscape. He listed seven points as to why the podcast is succeeding during the decline of Television, radio and other media traditional media formats.

Firstly the podcast is accessible as it is readily available to listen to without preparation from your smartphone at any time of day. Apple Podcasts, Apple’s podcast-streaming app, comes built-in on the iPhone—no download necessary. The music-streaming giant Spotify also introduced a dedicated podcast section on their platform. To listen to a podcast, you don’t need to buy a book, a Kindle, a cable or newspaper subscription. For most of these platforms, listening to a podcast is completely free on a device most people own anyways. Secondly, podcasts allow you to multitask doing multiple things at the same time such as working, running errands et cetera. As podcasts come in all different lengths, they can serve as a recap of the political news for 2 to 10 minutes or serve as a 10 or 3 day series through an entire road-trip. you can take a deep dive into, say, a nature podcast that teaches you how trees speak to each other with an episode that keeps you entertained for hours on a road trip. Even from the side of the creator podcasts are easy to produce as the main tool is a microphone. Many podcasts have launched out of basements, living rooms, and kitchens. Furthermore streaming services offer endless versatile interests for podcasts.

Another reason is the intimacy that podcasts build to their listeners. Many high-profile guests, celebrities have given more inside into their personhood through podcast shows that otherwise would be extremely unreachable. The accessibility for many people to become their own producer has enabled many public personalities to become reachable. Brewer says “When you’re listening to a podcast, you feel like you’re sitting around the dinner table with these people,” he says. “And that’s intoxicating.” The closeness of having someone speak directly to your ear at any time anywhere and be able to play anywhere can build on an intimacy or para-social relationship towards the speakers. Therefore podcasts easily build communities coupled with the niece topic, interest of each episode many podcasts work through emotive and personal stories, many shows are completely unscripted different from many traditional media formats that such as tv productions, that involve a large crew a podcast can be made up by one, two, three people. This sense of community is supported by a community that patiently awaits the release of a weekly update (or more/ less dependent on their schedule). Many podcasts develop a real fan community through added signifiers such as merchandise; community instagram profiles that share updates, memes about the recent discussions; many of them organise their own podcast tours; meet-ups, and discussion groups. Furthermore podcasts are easily adaptable to change transform based on the reception of the audience. The producers can easily change and adapt their format in order to fit the wishes of their listener audience this way the community builds further trust and relationships. It tells the audience that they are value.

PODCAST RESEARCH HOW IT IMPACTS US

link: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2017/12/05/what-10-years-of-producing-podcasts-with-social-scientists-has-taught-me/

In 2017, London School of Economics’s Christine Garrington explained in her post ‚What 10 years of producing podcasts with social scientists has taught me’ the power of podcasting as an impactful research tool for the future.

It’s never been easier to create, edit, and upload a podcast and an increasing number of academics are using it to showcase and share their research. Christine Garrington explains why podcasting is such a powerful and impactful tool for researcher.

Saying that, it struck me very early on that these audio interviews released over time with a format similar to a mid-morning radio interview were potentially a great way to communicate research and increase its potential for impact.

A decade on, I have produced podcasts on the world’s largest longitudinal study and how it’s used to benefit society; a programme of research designed to reduce inequality between men and women; genetic testing for breast cancer; children’s health and development; and the role of evidence in human rights advocacy, the most recent series of which is working to end modern slavery by 2030. I don’t think podcasting can get much more impactful than that! One of the most popular podcasts I produce is all about research methods! Who knew?

But what is it about podcasting that works so well when it comes to sharing research and showcasing and achieving impact?

The most recent RAJAR report, which analyses audio listening in the UK, sheds some light on this, explaining that podcasts.

The RAJAR report also notes that people who commute, exercise, struggle to sleep but need some relief from the blue-white fuzz of a computer or smart phone still require stimulation, concluding that “podcasts fit our lives in a way that virtual reality headsets may never. They liberate our eyes”.

There’s something quite personal and intimate in hearing a researcher talk about their work, especially in a conversational setting rather than in a presenting situation – it can help bring complex ideas and issues to life. As long as a researcher can talk confidently and accessibly about their research, adding context and comment where they can, this can really help non-academic audiences get to grips with those ideas and see how they relate to them.

Reaching a global audience

Audience research figures in the US estimate that 112 million people have listened to a podcast at least once. 67 million are listening to podcasts every month; 42 million do so every week. Those listening on a weekly basis listen, on average, to five different podcasts.

Here’s the Oxford English Dictionary definition and it’s a great place to start:

PODCAST RESEARCH HOW IT IMPACTS US

And here are a few more things to think about:

Just as you would think about potential beneficiaries in a grant bid, think about who is going to benefit from your podcast.
Set up a Facebook group and Twitter account not just to share but to engage – get ideas and feedback.
Consider the format and aims of your podcast before you switch the microphone on. For example, the human rights podcast I produce has a clear aim “to get the hard facts about the human rights challenges facing us today”.
Think about tone and style – will your podcast feature hard-hitting interviews, fireside chat, edgy conversations, or quirky commentary?
Let each episode tell a story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Think in terms of series – say, one episode a month for 12 months for Series One.
Invite and consider feedback from listeners along the way and ask yourself what worked and what didn’t.
Newsjack – is the topic of your podcast in the news today? Join in the conversation and point to episodes of your podcast that might be of interest.
Get some professional training or support – write this into your grant bid; there are lots of great courses.

Podcasting is perfect for people with big ideas

There has never been a better or more exciting time to be podcasting and to be using podcasts not just to share research findings but to really engage with people interested in getting the hard facts about the many challenges facing the world today. But what’s more important is getting the subject matter, aims and format of your podcast right in the first place, and you do that best by thinking about and engaging with your audience from the outset.

One thing I have learned in ten years of podcasting is that podcasts are more about communities engaging than being a simple a vehicle or tool for communication. Viewed that way, podcasts have the potential to put you right on that pathway to impact.

Christine Garrington is a freelance consultant with extensive experience collaborating with social science researchers to maximise the impact of their work. She co-edits a number of research focused blogs and specialises in the production of podcasts for research centres and individuals around the UK and in the States. She also manages a number of social media accounts for research projects/blogs and produces compelling print and digital content for researchers and centres that clearly demonstrates actual and potential benefits to research users.

DEATH OF THE ARTIST / AUTHOR SEGEMENT RESEARCH

The death of the artist link to medium article: https://medium.com/counterarts/the-death-of-the-artists-8db3909f62f1

The Death of The Artists

The Birth of The Viewer Must Be At The Cost of The Death of The Artist

August 23 2021

Roland Barthes famously noted in his 1967 essay “The Death of The Author” that: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author. The same research can be translated to the death of the artist and birth of the curator or critic. The conversation has extended well beyond the 1980s and still proves relevant and transferable today. The initial writing of Michel Foucault’s 1969 “What is an author?” to the writings of postcolonial theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s writings on the author as a relation of temporality.

Roland Barthes responds to his own inquiry with the argument for the death of the artist; It is the language which speaks, not the author. In equally complicit terms, it is the art which speaks, not the artist. The artist is no more or less than a tool in which great art is created. The artist should inherently experience their own death, for their art to be born and flourish, lest their conscious presence detracts from the art itself.

The artist’s death is synonymous with that of the author, insofar as both play, even perform the same roles in their creation: they are the new “medium” through which works of literary fiction or artwork are conceptualised, channelled, created.

Not to mention potentially being audited for my claim to having degrees in art history and curatorship; death to my career I guess.

The artist must be nothing more than a “medium” through which art flows through, allowing for pure expression devoid of the artist’s ego. The artist and their artwork’s symbiotic relationship must suffer in order for the art to flourish, to stand alone, to withstand the changes of time.

DEATH OF THE ARTIST / AUTHOR SEGEMENT RESEARCH

Michel Foucault Death of the Author:

Link: https://www.open.edu/openlearn/pluginfile.php/624849/mod_resource/content/1/a840_1_michel_foucault.pdf

Podcast episode 

New Books in Critical Theory Podcast

Death of the Author 1977, published Image Music Text, tranl: Stephen Heath, new York: Hill and Wang, 1977

Death of the Author by Roland Barthes

The intention of the author doesn’t matter. Authority intention doesn’t exist. The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the author.

This idea has crept into our way of thinking. We are willing to privilege, prioritise and belief our own interpretation over any authoritative narrative set out by the creator. In order to do any good close reading / criticism what you are looking for when you are looking at the specifics / details is not for an omission author, who is incredibly good at putting all the details in, you are not looking for the best but you are looking for the ways in which language acts through the author. You are building your own opinion not looking at what the author was looking for but what you can see in the work.

In some cases the biographical details of the author are quite important in the way they read the texts. Individual subjectivities and interpersonal relations are less individual then we assume them to be and are much more interconnected by shared experiences and interpretations. Society and our interpretations and thoughts, opinions are that much more socialised then we think. That image of the networked world.  There is a discussion about the individual vs the society – the way that we imagine ourselves acting as individuals in terms of the social contract; and individual agency and potentially if we didn’t

think of ourselves so much as individuals to begin with, we would not be so worried and focused on maximising and exclaiming our individual interest.

The responsibility of the reader is actually really important topic to think about. If we can’t expect responsibility from the writers ( political figures) of our public discourse then we can perhaps shift responsibility on our readers by necessity the responsibility also has been shifted on to our readers in the way we consume things, which writers we give attention and who dominates public debate.

The best line: “In fact the answer on how the death of the author could make a positive impact. “In precisely this way, literature it would be better from now on to say writing by refusing to assign a secret – an ultimate meaning to the text – and to the world as text – liberates what maybe called an anti-theological activity and an activity that is truly revolutionary, since to refuse to fix meaning is the end to refuse god and his hypothesis: reason, science, law.”

Barthes’ point is that we cannot know. Writing, he boldly proclaims, is ‘the destruction of every voice’. Far from being a positive or creative force, writing is, in fact, a negative, a void, where we cannot know with any certainty who is speaking or writing.

Indeed, our obsession with ‘the author’ is a curiously modern phenomenon, which can be traced back to the Renaissance in particular, and the development of the idea of ‘the individual’. And much literary criticism, Barthes points out, is still hung up on this idea of the author as an individual who created a particular work, so we speak of how we can detect Baudelaire the man in the novels of Baudelaire the writer. But this search for a definitive origin or source of the literary text is a wild goose chase, as far as Barthes is concerned.

In so far, this research theory of the death of the artist relates to my research into interpretation, press release as a sheer representation of this development over time.

Nowadays, the idea of the death of the artist is a constant in the discussion about art and artist as well as discourse.

Nowadays, there is a tension between the focus on the author / artist and their thoughts = the discourse they start and the work itself and the discourse the work and interpretation of the reader / critic starts.

Another current tension exists in the readership and which discourse / artist / artwork gains attention and money, extended readership and if they deserve or have owned this discourse as well as ways to disown the power they have achieved through attention.

All in all, the theory behind the death of the author is an interesting one when Roland Barthes argues for the author to step back and let the work take centre stage as something that is flexible and which’s meaning changes throughout time and societal, historical developments then I do strongly agree with this approach.

Nevertheless my project does not argue for the death of the author / artist and their “authority” voice over their own work rather I argue for a longer attention span to truly grasp and care for the thoughts of the creator and from their build a new discourse that is not necessarily dependent on the authority voice set out by the artist but builds towards flexible engagement with the work and community building through interpretation, attention and care of the work instead of immediate labelling or judgement.

ARTIST RESEARCH

Information about Gabriela Giroletti (b.1982):

Brazilian painter
Lives and works in London
In 2018 Master in Fine Art (distinction) from Slade School, UCL
2019-2020 Honoary Research Fellow UCL, Slade School
In 2015 graduated from Middlesex University in Fine Arts (first class)

– Themes within past work you explored the themes of… The relationship between the painted image (the meaning, the immaterial, the metaphor, the mind) and the material presence in the painting (the corporeal, the touch, the physical presence, the body).  Paintings fluctuate between their crude materiality and their metaphysical aspect, encouraging the viewer to formulate peculiar connections with our tangible surroundings, as well as with individual and unique lived experience.

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS GABRIELA GIROLETTI

Hello Gabriela welcome to the podcast. I am very excited to speak to you today..  I want to begin from the very start…

Questions:

How did you develop an interest in art?
What was your route to working as an artist?
What is the most valuable skill you required from working as an artist?
What does it mean to be an artist in an age of image excess and such a highly competitive industry?
Can you describe what kind of atmosphere, impression you wanted to express with the paintings in this show “mingling currents”?
Themes: Theodor Schwenk’s book Sensitive Chaos: The Creation of Flowing Forms in Water and Air describes the relationship between water and air and their relationship to biological forms
The title of the exhibition “Mingling Currents” comes from a passage that you found particularly inspiring can you tell us about this passage and what it sparked for you.
When did your interest in nature, biology arose in art was it from the very beginning?
Does it serve as a further escape from the busy live in London to research and refocus on such close biological mechanisms?
All the works in the show have a very specific textures. Some are very sleek and shiny like “magnetic fields, sea above” and others have very thick layers of paint such as the series of miniature paintings with very thick oil paint layers; and then other works in the show like ”The Natural, Here and There” extend over the canvas with wooden pannels attached to the outside. Can you tell us about your fascination with texture and the combination of sculpture and painting?  
How was the selection of these works inspired were they created as a close collective concept or quite separate from each other?
Have paintings been motivated by specific experiences, and happenings over the past year?
How has your approach developed in practice but also maybe has your research/inspiration/method of inspiration changed?
What is the most memorable exhibition you have seen yourself?
What was an important exhibition for you to take part in?
What is the myth that you would like to dispel around working as an artist?
What advice would you give other artists that are just starting out at uni?

GABRIELA GIROLETTI CV INFORMATION

“MNGLING CURRENTS” EXHIBITION IMAGES

“MNGLING CURRENTS” EXHIBITION IMAGES

MNGLING CURRENTS” EXHIBITION IMAGES

Exhibition MINGLING CURRENTS

10 MARCH – 15 APRIL 2023 at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery

Brazilian artist Gabriela Giroletti’s luminous, elemental paintings are rooted in the emotional experience of being in nature. To stand amid her paintings is to enter a shifting landscape, to tunnel deep beneath the earth or to become submerged in a shimmering pool. Mingling Currents, her second solo exhibition at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, presents a new series of translucent, fluid forms that explore the sensations and movements of water – flowing currents, rippling light, weightlessness and depth.

While Giroletti’s work emerges from and responds to periods of introspection, Theodor Schwenk’s book Sensitive Chaos: The Creation of Flowing Forms in Water and Air formed an important point of reference for this latest body of work. The book explores the subtle patterns and phenomenon of water and air and their relationship to biological forms – the title of the exhibition comes from a passage that Giroletti found particularly inspiring and which discusses the ways in which everything is interconnected and in constant flux. Keeping these ideas in mind, she used paint in a very spontaneous and vigorous way in an attempt to translate ‘some of nature’s potent energy’ onto the canvas. The result is a series of curved, stacked and overlapping forms that seem to simultaneously emerge from and sink beneath layers of translucent colours. Though we might glimpse something familiar in the shapes that we see, she retains a deliberate ambiguity to evoke a sense of slippage and wonder. ‘I try to dance between different possible meanings so people will read my work using their lived experience,’ she says.

While Giroletti has previously worked with deep, earthy colours, this latest body of work is both lighter in colour palette and atmosphere. Layers of translucent paint create an appearance of radiance while also allowing the viewer to glimpse through the surface to the marks beneath. At the same time, the canvases remain textured, full-bodied, almost gritty at times, as if capturing sand or stones tumbling through water. Bodies, like most real-world details, are stripped away, but we feel almost as if we are being pulled into or washed over by the paint. They’re paintings that seem to spill over their edges to envelop both viewer and surrounding space.

These contrasts between different depths and materialities, between stillness and movement are central to Giroletti’s approach to painting. She is interested in transitions and borders – the points at which things meet, intermingle, gain form or collapse into shapelessness. As she puts it, ‘I’m exploring the idea of whether the work can be painting and sculpture at the same time.’ This is most obvious in the works where she has extended the painted surface by attaching sculptural objects to the stretcher bar that appear like bits of rock, coral or shell, but even those without added elements, evoke a space far vaster and more tumultuous than the stiff linen that contains them.

It is this expansiveness that makes the paintings so compelling – they are caught in a never-ending process of transformation. Shape-shifting, churning and illuminated, what these works capture is not one moment or thing, but the pulse of life in all its strange brilliance.

Research artist Exhibition “BREEZY” at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery

Research artist Previous Exhibition “BREEZY” at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery

Research artist Previous Exhibition “BREEZY” at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery

19 NOVEMBER – 18 DECEMBER 2021 at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery

Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery is pleased to present Breezy, a presentation of new paintings by Gabriela Giroletti at the gallery’s Wandsworth location. Breezy is Giroletti’s first solo presentation with the gallery and is on view from November 19^th to December 18^th, 2021.

To look at Giroletti’s work is to be enveloped in an animated terrain where swollen masses with shimmering surfaces writhe and crawl, locked into what seems like a territorial competition. In amongst the maelstrom roots get diverted, growths get stunted and billowing excesses crunch into each other. Our vantage point onto this world shifts from painting to painting. At times we appear to be above ground. At others we have fallen down a rabbit hole and are tunneling under the earth. But as we turn the burrow’s bends the walls shift like tectonic plates before transforming back into sky, revealing the inside to have been outside all along.

Giroletti is interested in the notion of the in-between and the paintings are full of things on a journey from one state of being to another. The landscape undergoes its restless mutation and the forms that inhabit it often seem to be expanding beyond their capacity or deflating as the animating energy leaves them and moves onto something new. Indeed breeziness, the sense of movement in the flickering planes that are to be found throughout the work, is itself an in-between condition; neither windy nor still, Breezy accelerates and decelerates indecisively between the two.

This stirred motion is rendered by layers of translucent directional brushstrokes of varying hues that build into a diaphanous pointillism. In “Heat Haze”, for example, streams of fizzing dots intermingle generating ripples of modulating intensity and in “Spatial Places” these dots throb and scatter like water droplets on a train window. Radiation or gaseousness come to mind, not least when the skies gleam amber orange or sap green.

The smaller works are more fragment-like. They lean towards inert mineral colours, like charcoaled fossils or bits of rock. In paintings like “Tralalitions” or “Last Not Least” the paint is heaped, dug and scraped making the surface seem like part of an excavation. Here, subtle variations of tone poke through the mottled texture, echoing the optical energy of the larger paintings.

Spatial disjuncture is another theme that underlies the work. In the smaller pieces, devices that are reminiscent of collage techniques, like cuts and fold-ins, are experimented with. In “Some Things Cosmic II” for instance, thick seams appear between the forms, stitching them together into assemblages. Also an adjunct, in the form of a perched mound of paint, materialises on top of the stretcher bar as an extension of a shape within. This causes the painting to flip ambiguously between pictorial space and objecthood.

These experiments get scaled up in the larger works where they evolve further. In “Transparent Things”, for instance, the seams between the forms are accompanied by an overlaid fade and a drop shadow. Both elements have widths that remain constant all the way round, stamping out the edge, emphasising its status as a border. And in “Compass”, dark orbs, that start out by hugging internal thresholds within the picture, escape and re-appear as separate panels on the wall. This melding together of different spaces creates an array of formal possibilities. As we witness the development of the devices from painting to painting, we start to imagine what it would be like if we combined them differently, taking a bit from one painting and placing it on another, like pieces in a board-game.

The use of emptiness in the work also conjures up this sense of possibility. Although Giroletti draws from everyday life when conceiving her compositions, most real-world details are stripped out, leaving the shapes with smooth striated surfaces. Giroletti doesn’t seek to represent the specifics of particular objects so much as the relations between them. This use of voids, cuts and in-between states is what makes the arrangements inherently open and playful. The viewer feels on the verge of stepping into the frame, picking up one of the forms, and participating in the world building themselves.

PROPOSAL EMAIL FOR ARTIST, GALLERIST, JOURNALIST

Participation in a podcast episode about the exhibition “Mingling Currents” by Gabriela Giroletti running at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, in London (London Bridge) from the 10th of March to the 15th of April 2023. The podcast’s aim is to create a dialogue between creators of the exhibition and the visitor / collector, the episode will be sectioned into interviews with the artist, the gallery representative, and the journalist writing about the show.  As an avid podcast listener and a frequent visitor of museums and galleries, I have noticed the necessity and in/accessibility of the press release has been a question that arises every time during my visits and work. This is why I propose an exhibition guide for galleries in the form of a podcast that challenges the use of the press release as the primary tool for information about the exhibition.

Similar to the press release, the podcast could be played while visiting the show and scanned via QR-code at the entrance to the gallery. The podcast is a collaboration between the artist, the gallery director, and additional collaborators such as further representatives of the gallery, long-standing collectors or fans of the specific artist. The episode brings in multiple perspectives addressing the concept of the show, the development, the history of the gallery working with the artist, and closer descriptions of a few pieces in the exhibition. The idea behind the podcast is to provide a more accessible, detailed and personal approach to inform collectors, gallery visitors, as well as people not aware of commercial galleries about the work of the artist. The goal is to spark conversations about how we can make art more accessible and engage a wider audience.

Bring them in, convince them to participate…

In conclusion, I believe that an exhibition guide podcast is an excellent way to make art more accessible to the public and to collectors, bringing multiple perspectives into the episode and providing honest and intricate information about the exhibition. While the podcast is not meant to replace the press release or many of the duties, it is an excellent addition to it, and it would provide a more nuanced understanding of the art pieces, artists, and the exhibition as a whole.

(A conversation is to be had about the agreement of publishing. I am personally very happy if you would participate. The episode could stay unpublished and serve as a mockup / draft for a potential real show, and would only be heard by professors of the University of the Arts London or could be published to the public on Spotify or could also be agreed to be available for listening at the gallery.)

Script episode 1 and 2 introduction

Episode 1

“The exhibition’s title is derived from the Einsteinian notion of a time wrap – the distortion of space/ time. Rather than traveling radically up or down the longitudinal axis of time, this exhibition examines the latitudinal notion of the weft (weave’s past tense), which, in textile production, continually doubles back in itself. IN this manner the exhibition explores recurrence – the way, to extend the metaphor, a wefting thread, transversing through the wrap, may over the course of a life realign with aspects of itself, years on; the way, in a tapestry, this same phenomena creates an image or pattern. The new paintings function as repairs or weaves or sutures in the failure of language, just as the prose-poems in the exhibitions’ titular book repair the failures of image. Like the metaphorical fabric referenced in the title. It is in the interplay between these two disciplines that an auto- portrait or auto-analysis begins to emerge, For instance how does desire conveyed in language differ from image, where affect circumvents denotation?”

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The previously read text is a recent press release from a commercial art gallery in London from the year 2023. It starts with an academic reference including scientist Albert Einstein and talks about abstract themes such as space, time, language, phenomena, and life. The text mentions metaphors and the difficulty to translate visual material into text. This press release presented a perfect example of any other press release or gallery text that one finds in contemporary gallery spaces in London. 

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This project wants to question is this the best way of communicating the information of an exhibition, as well as the artist, and their works? Are there better ways of informing gallery visitors, collectors and journalists about an exhibition?

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Welcome to the first episode of CCCg or conversations on curating commercial galleries” this is an introduction into the podcast.

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My name is Antonia Scharr and this podcast is part of my final degree project in my Bachelor’s from Central Saint Martins College in Culture, Criticism and Curation. 

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s part of the submission asks to plan a project that closely links the research, themes of our past three years of study and engages with London’s communities I chose to focus on a frustration I have felt within galleries, art fairs in London. The inspiration of this project came from a lecture from November 2022 by our tutor Elliott Burns who talked about Fax Bak Service. Fax Bak was a collective in London invented during the 1980s that collected press releases of commercial galleries in London. Fax Bak used sharpies and markers to highlight and critices press releases based on the inaccessibility and phrasing of the text. They focused specifically on the snobbish and “art jagon” language of such texts. Art Jagon since then has been characterised as terms that are only used within art writing in reviews, articles but especially press releases.

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A graduate project composed as part of BA (Hons) Culture Criticism and Curation at Central Saint Martins by Antonia Scharr. The focus of each episode will be on one singular exhibition. The pursuit behind each episode will be an investigative discussion on the artist and gallery collaboration discussing in detail the way each person works and what they have learned from their practice. The exhibition will present the perspective of everyone involved in the gallery, from the artist to the director and hopefully listeners and visitors. This podcast will be in depth interviews centring on one gallery show and can serve as a counteract to reading the hard-to-understand press release. The length would be dependent on how much inside each artist is willing to share about their, research, the process, personhood et cetera. Central to the purpose of this project is the use of conversational tone and standard English as opposed to International Art English “Art Jagon” used in Press Releases.

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A QR-code is presented at the entry of the exhibition so listeners will be able to choose if they want to scan and listen to the interview after, or while walking through the show. The inspiration of this project came from Fax Bak Service which was a collective of London artists invented during the 1990s that collected press releases of commercial galleries in London. Fax Bak Service used sharpies and markers to highlight and critique press releases based on the inaccessibility and phrasing of the text and faxed the marked text back to the gallery.

Following to the podcast episode there will be a “response” episode that will be a reading of responses to the show that can be send in over a WhatsApp number either as audio files or text. I believe that this project has the potential to make exhibitions much more tangible, exciting, and personal, avoiding the often inaccessible “art-language” of press releases and fostering a direct dialogue between artist and viewer as well as hopefully offering access to students interested in art.

A transcript of the entire episode can be found in the description of each episode together with other visual extra materials

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Script

Episode 2:

‘Mingling Currents’ is the second solo exhibition by Brazilian painter Gabriela Giroletti at the Norwegian contemporary art gallery Kristin Hjellegjerde in London. Gabriela’s work is a mix of miniature and large-scale abstract paintings with shiny, thin and thick layers of oil paint spread on the canvas. The current show continues Gabriela’s exploration with biological elements and the textures of water and air and how they are interchangeable with so many of nature’s processes and textures.

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The second part of this episode is a discussion with Hedvig Listøl, Director at Kristin Hjellegjerde’s London Bridge space. The episode is an in depth discussion with both artist and gallery representative about their work, collaboration, thoughts about the works, thoughts and experiences in the art world laying open certain work dynamics, myths about working in the arts and the overall feelings about the show.  You are listening to a podcast created by Antonia Scharr as part of Ba (Hons) Culture, Criticism and Curation’s graduate project at Central Saint Martins in London.

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This project sets out to be a timely conversation about what it’s like to work in London’s art scene and a closer look into the development of a gallery show. The pursuit for investigative and forrow looks at artists and exhibitions is the main narrative behind this show, centering on the artist and their feelings and path into the arts. This format supports open communication, accessible language without academic terminology to filter through the pretentiousness of other similar formats.

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Editing and Producing was by Antonia Scharr, Sound Design was by artist Peter Spanjer. Sound assistance was by Maja Renfer.

 Thank you to artist Gabriela Giroletti, gallery director of Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery Hedvig Listøl for speaking to us and all their support and kindness towards this project. I also reached out to art collector for an interview Pamela Hornik but were not able to arrange a time.

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Hedvig Listol, is the director of Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery in London Bridge. Kristin Hjellegjerde was founded in London, Wandsworth in 2012 and since then has expanded two a second location in London Bridge, third permanent space in Berlin, Germany and will open its 4th permanent space in west palm beach , Florida in October 2023. The gallery focuses on representing contemporary artists mostly painting, textile work and sculpture with a strong technical and theoretical background to their work..

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Artist Gabriela Giroletti was born in 1982 in Brazil. She currently lives and works in London. In 2015, Gabriela finished her Bachelors in Fine Arts from the Middlesex University in London. Afterwards she moved on to continue studying a Masters degree in painting from UCL – university college London at slade school of fine art where she also held a position as honorary research fellow from 2019 to 2020. Gabriela Giroletti’s art explores the relationship between theoretical research and material presence in the painting recently focusing on biological transformations and nature’s elements.

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You have been listening to a podcast produced by Antonia Scharr as part of BA Culture, Criticism and Curation at Central Saint Martins.

Background about Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery

Established in 2012, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery has fast gained a reputation for exhibiting a diverse roster of innovative, international artists, both emerging and established, with strong theoretical and aesthetic bases.

Since its inception the gallery has embraced a collaborative, multicultural curatorial approach, maintaining a deep devotion to the artists it represents while fostering close relationships with museums and curators worldwide.

Drawing on her own international background, Kristin Hjellegjerde seeks to nurture new talent by offering artists a dynamic, inclusive platform through which they can be introduced to local and global clients. She works closely with other curators and collectors as well as developers and architects to develop unique and exciting exhibition concepts. In 2019, she curated ‘Kubatana’, a museum exhibition focused on African artists at Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium, Norway. In October 2021, Kristin Hjellegjerde was featured in Monocle Magazine’s Top 25 Global Entrepreneurs of 2021.

In April 2018, the gallery opened a space in Berlin, which was shortly followed by the launch of a second location in London, occupying a two-storey building in the vibrant neighbourhood of London Bridge. In June 2020, the gallery opened its first annual summer space in a converted shrimp factory in the beautiful coastal town of Nevlunghavn, Norway. Following its success, a second summer space launched in 2021 in an 18th century German castle forty minutes outside of Berlin at Schloss Görne. In October 2023 the gallery will expand its presence in the US with the opening of a permanent space in Palm Beach.

Background about Hedvig LISTOL

Director at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery

Oct 2014 – Present 8 years 6 months

London, United Kingdom

Kingston University  Media and Cultural Studies + Creative Writing First w/ Honours  
2013 – 2016  Activities and Societies:
President of the Movies, Art & Design Society   Kulturakademiet
i Roma  Ex.phil, Ex.fac & Ideology History  2012 – 2015/16

research Kristin Hjellegjerde gallery

Delphian Podcast

Episode 11: Between Kristin Hjellegjerde and Nick

Exhibiting innovative, international artist with a strong theoretical and aesthetic base.
Why did you decide to start the gallery?
Started looking for art internationally
Studied acting in LA and NYC
Moved back to NYC
Did real estate on the upper westside
Important to know how it is to be the artist
Really tough to present your own work
Writing a blog about art
Husband architect had job in London and opened gallery in 2012
Transition from real estate to art
Wanted to sell something that she was passionate about, support people she liked
Curation aspect: sometimes really want to show one artist, wants to dry out artist with Group show how committed they are to create; artists that curatorial fit together
Focus on one artist: really gonna take in one artist
Think about the title gives the artist direction
Be openminded about the curation of the show, ask artists about what they see for the show
How do you about selecting artists?
Go to graduate showcases

Unlimited space, time and money what project would you want to do?

Hotel residency and gallery space somewhere warm

Artists working towards a solo show at the residency

I am not seeing myself as a curator, I am seeing myself as someone that helps artist show their work

QUESTIONS FOR DIRECTOR OF THE GALLERY

Listen to the week in art podcast how they answer questions

Check out pauline’s interviews

Re-listen to Kristin’s interview with the Delphian Gallery

What is it that attracts you to art ?
What does it mean to be a gallery director in an age of of image excess in such a highly competitive industry of artists wanting to make it?
What is the most valuable skill you required from working with the gallery?
What was your route into working as a gallery director?
What is the most memorable exhibition you have seen?
What is the most memorable exhibition you worked on in in the gallery’s history?
What constitutes responsibility in working as a gallery director?
What is the myth that you would like to dispel around working in a commercial gallery?
What advice would you give other galleries that are just starting out? / What advice would you give your younger self about the work you do now?
Do you have a very tactical and selected form of selecting artists for the gallery programme?
Do you remember seeing Gabriela’s work for the first time? What was your first impression of the work?
What are key things that an artist has to have for this gallery? What values do they have to align?
How was it meeting Gabriela for the first time? How has the relationship been working with Gabriela?
What is Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery contributing in the London gallery scene? what are these particular desires that Kristin Hjelllegjerde Gallery wants to fulfill as a gallery?

Sound consent of PETER SPANJER SOUND ARTIST

ONLINE AND LIBRARY RESEARCH TOOLS

Research: What FAK BAK Service revealed about English art writing in 1990s London art scene

link: https://artreading.org/2021/06/16/the-bank-fax-bak-service/

link: https://lenz.press/products/bank-complete-fax-backs

The Bank Fax-Bak Service

Between 1998 and 1999, more than 300 press releases produced by galleries in London and New York are proof-read and copy-edited by the members of BANK, the London-based collective composed at the time of Simon Bedwell, John Russell and Milly Thompson. It’s all there! The theoretical verbiage, historical approximations, typographical, syntactical and grammatical errors that flood these texts are pointed out by the sarcastic comments of the bad guys of the English art scene, before being sent back by fax to their respective galleries… A reading of the Fax-Baks reveals a globalized art world constructed as a legitimizing enterprise that reduces its production to clumsy, hypocritical and absurd communication strategies – like any other commodity sector within the capitalist system.

Link: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bank-fax-back-london-the-approach-t13920

Tate about Fax-Bak service

Fax-Back (London: The Approach) 1998 is a sheet of A4 paper with printed text and handwritten additions, red rubber stamping and correction fluid.The text is a press release for the exhibition Emma Kay held at The Approach, London in the late 1990s. This is one of a number of Fax-Backs which resulted from the ‘BANK Fax-Back Service’ of 1998–9 for which the then three members of the BANK group of artists (Simon Bedwell, John Russell and Milly Thompson) edited and corrected art gallery exhibition press releases and faxed them back to the gallery complete with critical and occasionally encouraging comments, suggestions for improvement and a mark out of ten. The contributions of the three BANK artists can be identified through their different handwriting and different pens. The earliest Fax-Backs, dating from the early summer of 1998, are embellished with a hand drawn ‘stamp’ which by the early autumn was replaced by a rubber stamp impression to the same design in an official-looking red ink. For other examples of the Lo

Link: https://thequietus.com/articles/31232-bank-fax-baks-neu-galerie-berlin-review

The Quietus Making Bank: Art Galleries Get Their Home Work Marked John Quin, 5th March 2022

Bank formed in 1991, London based collective

Core members Milly Thompson, Simon Bedwell, John Russell

Research: What FAK BAK Service revealed about English art writing in 1990s London art scene

1998 project called Fak-Bak Service

Visullay remebering the markings of school children’s homework

BANK thought they could be helpful/rude to the galleries and so set themselves up as a ‘free advice’ outlet. They did this with a deliberately ‘holier-than-thou tone’ and a knowing ‘hypocritical undercurrent’

The scribbled comments BANK made are often juvenile and funny, albeit occasionally offensive – even hurtful at times, particularly if you were on the receiving end and/or had a sense of humour bypass. Here are some examples:

“BANAL, ILLITERATE AND UNADVENTUROUS. SHOULD GO FAR AS A CURATOR 2/10”

This appended to a release issued by the Royal College of Art. Note the underlining and caps for extra emphasis on that one. Or how about:

”You’re making the exhibition sound REALLY BORING 0.25/10”

BANK seem to really have it in for Time Out magazine as with:

”Too much like a Time Out review, all over-careful. Keep trying though!”

And then there’s:

“‘Compelling’ is a Time Out mannerism, don’t use it.”

“Must try harder” or “read more books”. Then there are scare words that leap out, biting criticisms such as “meaningless”, “verbiage”, “wooly”, “dull”, and “prissy”. Easy to imagine gallery faces reddening with rage when they encountered a fax with that kind of abuse.

Research: What FAK BAK Service revealed about English art writing in 1990s London art scene

Only a handful pass: one gets 10/10 but that’s in irony at the show’s title: “Eliminate the Negative”. The worst gets 0.002/10. Don’t go there.

Modern French philosophers crop up again and again as with:

“A heady mixture of O level Baudrillard and twee, flowery breathless prose. Makes me feel sick.”

Being a fellow pedant I’m forced to point out that this should be ‘O’ level. Another scold warns the writer should “try not to be so in love with sounding clever”. Best not to take that too personally. The insults pile up:

“There’s really no excuse for this slack, vacuous journalese”

“This is a press release not estate agent selling pitch”

“You keep telling us things are important: I’m becoming suspicious”

“I fully expect to be bored shitless”

“Wake me up before you finish will you – I’m almost asleep.”

The majority of BANK’s London-centric Fax-Bak’s avoid making comments about other artists but they are quite rude about Dame Rachel Whiteread calling her work “vacuous”. But there is pathos at work here too. The sheer number of artists listed in these press releases makes you question: “Who?” or “Where are they now?” Whatever happened to that berserker you met one night down at the Pride of Spitalfields? And that guy telling you so-and-so is the next big thing because they’re “totally bonkers”? So many artists long forgotten, un-shown. Many of the galleries are now long gone too. What exactly do we have here? A work of ‘art’ that features writing about art writing. Brad Haylock and Megan Patty have recently co-edited a book called Art Writing in Crisis. In it Dan Fox says “many of the new-breed curators were terrible writers” and goes on: “it became common to joke about not understanding what the press release meant”. Fox could be talking about BANK’s targets, the “art-speak drones who reviewed shows in a plod-plod of deathly exsanguinated language. (Why use one word when you could use three neologisms and a tautology instead?)” Fox prefers those “writers who had cut their teeth on music, literature, or movies”. Right on, brother.

One shudders at the idea of submitting text to BANK for review. Imagine a fact checker from hell at the New Yorker crossed with a dire English teacher – the one who threw a duster at your skull for getting your semi-colons all wrong. Ironically this show is pretty useful for the freelance writer. BANK gives hard lessons in how not to write. You could view the Fax-Bak’s as playful: but be careful. BANK insists that “playfulness” as a word is “banned”. Maybe they’d prefer to use the word “ludic”. Joke! Given all the above I’ve gone through this review a hundred times or more and hope, at the risk of being ingratiating, that there’s not too many mistakes. Mark for the show 6/10. Proleptic score for this review 4/10. Ever the optimist.

Research: WHAT ‘THE WHITE PUBE’ revealed about THE GALLERY SPACE

links:

https://thewhitepube.co.uk/art-thoughts/why-i-hate-the-white-cube-zarina-rants/

Why I Hate The White Cube

01/11/2015 ZM (Zarina Muhammad)

Have had issues with going to galleries since a-level. Not feeling welcomed in the space and would rather want to look at the art from the comfort of her own computer.

“There is a massive problem with the white cube gallery format and accessibility (in my mind this is a huge problem, but I am not really sure how much curators, gallerists, and gallery owners care about this).”

Demographic issue in the white cube space “the notion of ‘symbolic baggage’” by stepping into an art space dependent on class, gender, race.

“neutrality is code for social and cultural capital. White as an abstract just means the privilege of being ‘raceless’: not having a hyphenated identity like black-British or Asian-American and no visible signifiers of Otherness”

Otherness from a very specific image the gallery space sets out to be at least upper middle class, white, male.

The white cube space is specifically designed to be be “neutral” but isnt actually contextless

Nirmal Puwar’s book ‘SPACE INVADERS’

“If I felt like this wasn’t the privatisation of cultural production or capitalist scum perpetuating a system of understanding art as intrinsically connected to money”

“I don’t hate galleries, my problem is that I think galleries hate me. I’m not going to buy the work. I’m not going to write an article about it in Time Out (or Art Review haha). I’m just going to look at it. And that should be enough, but I don’t think it is.”

links: https://thewhitepube.co.uk/art-thoughts/ihatethewhitecube2/

Why I Hate the white cube 2

05/07/2020 ZM (Zarina Muhammad)

Previous text was the first one ever published on the white pube and really resonated with its readership as she says “for the longest time it was in top 5 most read texts” people felt seen by the description of frustations with the white cube format.

After 5 years revisiting the format Muhammad had this to add.  The White Cube by Zarina’s definition: The white cube in art describes a kind of ideal situation and space to view art in. It’s the belief that dictates the terms upon which we best view “real” art.

Research: WHAT ‘THE WHITE PUBE’ revealed about THE GALLERY SPACE

As Muhammad describes, “The white cube works as convention, it says art is best viewed in a room with 4 white walls, clean, neutral uninterrupted by the messy banality of everyday life. It says ‘leave ur shit at the door, we don’t do things like that round here pal’. That life and its messy contextual complication can even be externalised or held at a distance in that way is, obviously, hugely contested.”

Brian O’Doherty, who was an Irish-American art critic, artist and academic defined the white cube space in his essay “Inside the White Cube- The Ideology of the Gallery Space” (link: https://arts.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/arc-of-life-ODoherty_Brian_Inside_the_White_Cube_The_Ideology_of_the_Gallery_Space.pdf Lapis Press- Santa Monica – San Franciso – USA, 1976) as… about the press release he wrote …

“claim something is this neutral bland non-existent thing, when actually it obviously comes from a historical context because it just popped right out of ~modernism~ and that whole mess, so like… there’s that! He also (I think) said that the white cube’s lack of context was a kind of context AND CONTENT of its own; that there’s NO SUCH THING AS NORMAL OR NOTHING BABE, it was all just made up to position artworks and art itself as ~haughty and timeless~, a highbrow thing for boujie uptown ppl. It basically intellectualised itself by creating an aura, a myth and a lore that said ‘i’m special’, it just kinda declared itself Of Value.” when those essays were published, people were like ‘ye that’s true and not something that’s deeply shocking to us’, so this is a thing people have been thinking for quite some time. Still, I don’t think we can talk about the white cube and its relevance as a convention (or dogma) that influences the way we make, display, talk about, view art in the past tense like there’s a wholly unrelated way of doing things now. It’s still predominantly The Norm, it’s the base point from which other practices and models deviate; it’s still mainstream and therefore still relevant for me to stand opposed to is to construct and preserve the monetary value of contemporary art. As a construct, it is tightly bound to the way capitalism and its requirements have become a foundational logic to art – in its making and display. If you can put it on a wall, you can sell it; if it’s an object, or if it’s a thing that’s objectified, you can sell it; if it’s made by a singular author-as-solitary-genius, you can sell it and hike the prices depending on how believable that singular author’s genius is. The logic of the white cube says that this art thing, its objects are special, investable, they’re commodities to be traded, speculated upon. Gross. Galleries are fancy shops, they set the scene for us to understand art and its surrounding objects as of value, but not of use.

Hito Steyerl quotes essay about art as commodity and market place: “You Don’t Have Bread, Eat Art!: Contemporary Art and Derivative Fascisms” (link: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/76/69732/if-you-don-t-have-bread-eat-art-contemporary-art-and-derivative-fascisms/) e-flux October 2016 issue 76

“This capitalist logic then guts the radical possibility of art; its revolutionary, emancipatory critical potential, whether that’s real or imagined. Art has the potential to transform, beyond girl-boss neoliberal self-care affirmation; it has the potential to act as primer to overhaul, act as salve and balm to our communality despite the world as it rages on. Art is a solid category and practice that has the capacity to shape and expand our revolutionary imaginations;”

Lola Olufemi writes in her book “ Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power” (link: https://www.plutobooks.com/9781786805935/feminism-interrupted/) (2020) Published by Pluto Press. ‚Creativity is at the heart of any new world we seek to build… Art is threatening because when produced under the right conditions, it cannot be controlled’.

“then the white cube, as a convention, equally represents the system through which that radicality is systematically eradicated and co-opted by the very same state entities it is meant to oppose. I hate the white cube because it represents an inertia, a static same-ness.”

“If the system is the same, despite the fact that we all individually think it fucking sucks, then why do we just let it continue? We can just rob the unacceptably fancy soap for ourselves. And they can’t really stop all of us.” Muhammad’s solution or conclusion to this post offers this position.”

Same feelings positionality of studying art criticism and working in a contemporary art gallery: The only barrier that’s been broken is a personal and psychological one, it’s my own insecurities and validity in these spaces, it’s me planting my feet when I meet the resistance of a push, rather than going limp and falling out

Research: WHAT ‘THE WHITE PUBE’ revealed about THE GALLERY SPACE

Why museums are bad vibes
17/11/2019 GDLP Gabrielle de la Puente

maybe check if relevant for this.. (link: https://thewhitepube.co.uk/art-thoughts/why-museums-are-bad-vibes/)

link: https://thewhitepube.co.uk/art-thoughts/why-i-dont-read-the-press-release/

Why I don’t read the press release

29/07/2018 GDLP Gabrielle de la Puente

“All i wanted was clarity between Art and Meaning, but press releases were nearly always written so badly, { boring and wordy they wouldn’t make me feel any better } that instead of a tool to make art more accessible, they held me at arms length and spoke rushed and intricate so that i could not make out what they were sayin. That or they were describing an experience of the art that very rarely matched my own.”

RESEARCH INTO ART LANGUAGE

link: https://studentnewspaper.org/a-language-guerrilla-on-art-writing/

The Student newspaper

A Language Guerrilla on Art Writing 19/09/2021 Sofia Cotrona 

Introduction the irony that image, drawings and painting being the most ancient form of lnaguage made so inaccesible by the way we now describe it. Turin it on its head and make the communication about images entirely as inaccesible as possible…Eventually, I found myself able to navigate this secret language, this codified, guarded knowledge that claims to ‘translate’ art: originally one of the most ancient and accessible forms of communication.

“I hope that by knowing you are not alone you will be able to challenge the necessity to conform and adopt an inaccessible language that serves a discriminatory art world. I hope you will discover early on how dangerous it is to erect language barriers to guard artistic knowledge as it keeps its ownership in the hand of a privileged few”.   “It is through our shared humanity that art can make us feel connected. Keep holding this ‘imperfect’ space, as your refusal to fit in and use ‘inappropriate’ language to talk about art could be a revolutionary act for you and for those who will come next.”

link: https://bmoreart.com/2019/04/artspeak-and-audience-art-writing-as-bridge-or-barrier.html

Artspeak and Audience: Art Writing as Bridge or Barrier

International Art English has enforced a hermeticism of contemporary art that is not particularly healthy

01/04/2019

Cara Ober
“Truly, contemporary art and artists have the potential to foster a sense of wonder, to expand one’s understanding of self and the world, and to present effective alternatives to the way we live our lives, but without the proper invitation, a huge segment of the population is missing out.”

“It’s an uphill battle and I blame the elitist class divisions that have always been a part of the art world for turning away a majority of the population, communicating very clearly that this world is not for them.”

“I blame “Artspeak,” also known as International Art English or IAE, which reflects the insular snobbery of the top tier of the art world and reinforces class barriers to the detriment of contemporary art and most living artists who would benefit from a growing network of fans and patrons.”

“The writers acknowledged later to The Guardian that, “Art English is something that everyone in the art world bitches about all the time, but we all use it.” Rule took it a step further, admitting that, “This language has enforced a hermeticism of contemporary art… that is not particularly healthy. IAE has made art harder for non-professionals.” They said that the MFA graduates and art professionals fluent in Artspeak feel oppressed by it and there is widespread use of it among the galleries, academic institutions, and museums in order to be taken seriously by other art world insiders. Levine claimed a direct correlation between a flood of new money into the art market and the widespread usage of IAE, employed to make art seem less commercial and more subversive and intellectual. “The more you can muddy the waters around the meaning of a work, the more you can keep the value high,” said Levine.”

“The best art is never merely decorative; it achieves market value through cultural capital. Regardless of market, art functions politically and socially to change our ideas about identity, race, sex, history, human behavior, and other issues significant to living a meaningful and engaged life. Some contemporary art is heavily theoretical and influenced by academic text, and relevant only to a small, highly educated and elite audience, but most is not.

I believe it is disingenuous to use such language to discuss most current art-making, especially in educational contexts, and backwards for an art publication to intentionally narrow its audience to a select few, assuming that 99 percent of the population is too dumb or undereducated to understand it or deeming them an undesirable audience because they cannot afford to buy blue chip art. This seems unhelpful to artists as well, who would benefit from an expanding audience that includes people of diverse backgrounds and not just the one percent of the one percent, a group that continues to shrink in size but grow in the concentration of money and power.

The widespread use of International Art English is all about consolidating power, conferring insider status, and raising sales records, so it’s no surprise that this language is also responsible for keeping “undesirable” audiences at bay. The top museum curators, collectors, and gallery directors of the art world take this language seriously and those on lower rungs must become fluent in the lingo to achieve promotion. In a post-modern art world, verbose rhetoric translates to seriousness and intelligence, and those of us who write about art in conversational, accessible language are viewed with suspicion, even though I would argue that it’s intellectually lazy to rely on absurd insider jargon to convey complex meaning.

“The overly academic, classist, and pretentious language of many arts publications is designed to attract academic, rich, and pretentious readers and to reinforce the illusion of superiority in a market based upon scarcity and perception of value. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the elite individuals that IAE caters to serve on the decision-making boards for museums, collect blue-chip art, and have an interest in keeping power in a few hands rather than sharing it. Despite the hand-wringing that museums and art colleges engage in about declining attendance, it’s possible that the wealthy individuals on their boards have little interest in making contemporary art accessible and available to people like me, my parents, or my students—and institutions rely on consolidated financial support from just a few wealthy persons for survival, rather than a flood of small donations from the many.”

“However, the central issue for me as an art writer, editor, and artist myself, is realizing that people without college degrees can benefit from a relationship with contemporary art. Engaging with the art (and artists) of your time and place is exciting, challenging, spiritual, political, egalitarian, and fascinatingly weird. Art has the power to confront and delight us to our very core with ingenious materials and concepts, and this enriches our lives, individually and collectively. Art writing doesn’t need to function like cultural broccoli; it should challenge the reader to grow and learn, whereas IAE’s purpose is to make its readers self-satisfied members of an elite and vapid club.”

“Contemporary artists also benefit from skilled and empathetic arts writers, who can translate idiosyncratic and abstract ideas succinctly to an expanding audience. As humans whose great passion is spending time alone in a non-verbal state making things with no practical purpose in their studios, many artists are not comfortable talking about their work to non-artists because their art is its own visual language requiring a complex and nuanced translation. Art writers can play an essential role in connecting audience directly to the makers of art and their output through a vocabulary that translates and captures the essence of the art clearly, even if acknowledging questions that have no answers or offering critical feedback.”

“Developing a vocabulary in literary, conversational, or creative diction is an opportunity for empathy and connection within cultural communities and spaces.”

RESEARCH INTO ART LANGUAGE

link: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jan/27/users-guide-international-art-english

Andy Beckett

27 January 2013

A user’s guide to artspeak

The Simon Lee Gallery in Mayfair is currently showing work by the veteran American artist Sherrie Levine. A dozen small pink skulls in glass cases face the door. A dozen small bronze mirrors, blandly framed but precisely arranged, wink from the walls. In the deep, quiet space of the London gallery, shut away from Mayfair’s millionaire traffic jams, all is minimal, tasteful and oddly calming.

Until you read the exhibition hand-out. “The artist brings the viewer face to face with their own preconceived hierarchy of cultural values and assumptions of artistic worth,” it says. “Each mirror imaginatively propels its viewer forward into the seemingly infinite progression of possible reproductions that the artist’s practice engenders, whilst simultaneously pulling them backwards in a quest for the ‘original’ source or referent that underlines Levine’s oeuvre.”

If you’ve been to see contemporary art in the last three decades, you will probably be familiar with the feelings of bafflement, exhaustion or irritation that such gallery prose provokes. You may well have got used to ignoring it. As Polly Staple, art writer and director of the Chisenhale Gallery in London, puts it: “There are so many people who come to our shows who don’t even look at the programme sheet. They don’t want to look at any writing about art.”

With its pompous paradoxes and its plagues of adverbs, its endless sentences and its strained rebellious poses, much of this promotional writing serves mainly, it seems, as ammunition for those who still insist contemporary art is a fraud. Surely no one sensible takes this jargon seriously?

David Levine and Alix Rule do. “Art English is something that everyone in the art world bitches about all the time,” says Levine, a 42-year-old American artist based in New York and Berlin. “But we all use it.” Three years ago, Levine and his friend Rule, a 29-year-old critic and sociology PhD student at Columbia university in New York, decided to try to anatomise it. “We wanted to map it out,” says Levine, “to describe its contours, rather than just complain about it.”

They christened it International Art English, or IAE, and concluded that its purest form was the gallery press release, which – in today’s increasingly globalised, internet-widened art world – has a greater audience than ever. “We spent hours just printing them out and reading them to each other,” says Levine. “We’d find some super-outrageous sentence and crack up about it. Then we’d try to understand the reality conveyed by that sentence.”

Next, they collated thousands of exhibition announcements published since 1999 by e-flux, a powerful New York-based subscriber network for art-world professionals. Then they used some language-analysing software called Sketch Engine, developed by a company in Brighton, to discover what, if anything, lay behind IAE’s great clouds of verbiage. Their findings were published last year as an essay in the voguish American art journal Triple Canopy; it has since become one of the most widely and excitedly circulated pieces of online cultural criticism. It is easy to see why. Levine and Rule write about IAE in a droll, largely jargon-free style. They call it “a unique language” that has “everything to do with English, but is emphatically not English. [It] is oddly pornographic: we know it when we see it.”

He doesn’t, however, think this complexity is a wholly bad thing. “If you read catalogue essays from the 50s and 60s, and I have some, there are these sweeping claims about what artists do – and what they do to you.” A 1961 catalogue essay for a Rothko exhibition in New York declared that the famously doomy painter was “celebrating the death of civilisation … The door to the tomb opens for the artist in search of his muse.” Levine says: “That style of art writing has been overturned, and rightly so. It was politically chauvinistic, authoritarian. IAE is about trying to create a more sensitive language, acknowledging the realities of how things [made by artists] work.”

Rule is a little less forgiving towards IAE. “This language has enforced a hermeticism of contemporary art,” she says, slipping (as Levine also frequently does) into a spoken version of the jargon even as she criticises it, “that is not particularly healthy. IAE has made art harder for non-professionals.” In fact, even art professionals can feel oppressed by it. The artists who’ve responded most positively to the essay, says Rule, “are the ones who have been through master of fine arts programmes” where IAE is pervasive.

How has the broader art world reacted? “I’ve been a little baffled by the volume of positive response,” says Rule, “and the almost complete absence of critical response.” Levine adds: “There have not been any complaints that we know of. Obviously, we may be blacklisted and not know it.”

The essay’s tone – knowing, insiderish, never polemical, and constantly shifting between mockery and studied neutrality – probably accounts for some of its warm reception. “We didn’t want to be nasty,” says Rule. In 2011, she and Levine presented an early draft of their critique as a lecture at an Italian art fair. Levine hints that some of the audience were less than delighted. “If you’re an art practitioner and you experience our analysis live, you feel a bit called out.”

The two are keen to admit they are both guilty of IAE use. Indeed, Levine relishes the fact: “Complicity is what makes things interesting. Just this morning, I was writing a little essay for a newspaper and I caught myself using the word ‘articulation'”. Rule adds: “In one draft of our IAE piece, I had quoted my own use of IAE. It becomes extremely hard not to speak in the language in which you are being spoken to.”

The flood of new money into art in recent years may have helped swell the IAE bubble. “The more overheated the market gets, the more overheated the language gets,” says Levine. IAE often “insists on art’s subversive potential”.

Where IAE may be different is in its ubiquity, thanks to the internet, and thanks to the heavily theoretical and text-influenced nature of much current art-making and education. Rule and Levine are cautious about IAE’s precise effect on artists; they haven’t researched it. But Rule does say: “It would be naive to say artists are not influenced.”

“Sometimes,” says Rule, “I read these IAE press releases and find them completely joyless, but sometimes I feel this exuberance coming through. For people who hold assistantships in galleries, writing press releases is kind of fun. Certainly more fun than billing!”

link: https://hyperallergic.com/66348/when-artspeak-masks-oppression/

Hyperallergic

When Artspeak Masks Oppression

Mostafa Heddaya

March 6, 2013

“Without its special language, would art need to submit to the scrutiny of broader audiences and local ones? Would it hold up?” So asks online art publication Triple Canopy’s widely circulated essay “International Art English,” in which the authors catalogued the death of meaning in the language of contemporary art. It’s a perceptive study, though after offering a half-alternative (“the elite … will opt for something like conventional highbrow English”), the article ends in media res with a sarcastic shrug: an evocative morsel of IAE — a press release — reformatted into a prose poem.

By so abstracting their position into parody, the authors misread the most significant consequence of this new language, loosed upon a world in which prisoners of conscience languish in the jails of the world’s emerging contemporary art superpowers. The unsurprising reality is that a specialized language fraught with euphemism and obfuscation is better known as propaganda.

This omission came to a head at an event last week at the Guggenheim, in which Reem Fadda, an associate curator of Middle Eastern art at the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, endeavored to “delve into the history” of the UAE art scene. This consisted of a 40-minute lecture describing the history and major figures of the Emirati contemporary art world followed by a conversation with Mohammed Kazem, “a leading conceptual artist,” and culminated in a brief Q&A. More generally, it was a spectacle in International Art English as a subtle instrument of human rights abuse apologetics.

At the beginning of her talk, Fadda was sure to frame the history of the UAE in terms familiar to the audience that filled most of the 280 seats in the Peter B. Lewis Theatre: “If you compare Dubai and New York in the 1970s, you’ll see a desert and a booming city.” She continued:

There is always this question of comparison with other cities. For example, if you want to compare the scene in New York to the scene in any city in the UAE, you find that there is a misbalance, and I think it’s because the tools that we look at in terms of gauging the development of this art practice is this kind of misbalance. Our understandings of modernity and our shaping of modernity is what causes this kind of balance.

In short, though one might be tempted to make the comparison between places — don’t. The UAE emerged from a period of inexcusable British colonialism and “gushed” forward into the late 20th century, and so our current “approach should be way different, it’s about a different kind of development.” According to Fadda, this was a people “constantly being rammed in” by the buffers of colonial oppression, and that consequently must be held accountable to no Western yardstick. Pre-empting the growing international condemnation of the UAE’s human rights record, Fadda alluded throughout to the homegrown criticism that Mohammed Kazem and other contemporary artists in the UAE have ostensibly undertaken against their government. At one point, she showed a photo taken by Kazem (whose previous career was in the military) of a laborer’s shoe amid construction rubble.

Although she never directly named it, Fadda’s comments about self-criticism and workers’ rights toed a neat periphery around the recent controversy arising from the labor being used to construct the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi on Saadiyat (“Happiness”) Island. When a younger audience member directly raised the question at the end of the session, framing the abuse of laborers as neocolonialism in its own right, Fadda’s answer revealed what her earlier comments only suggested:

Regardless of the way other artists from the outside world view what is happening within the UAE, the UAE itself has these questions … And I think that is something we also have to ask ourselves, that kind of ethical positionality, about what is the society itself looking and introspecting and commenting and criticizing on its own. Criticism is not imposed. Let’s look at labor here in New York … (1:06–1:08 here, emphasis added

A brazen comment to make in front of an audience at the Guggenheim. Such insinuations of ill-meaning on the part of foreign critics are familiar to anyone who followed the Chinese state’s defamation of Ai Weiwei:

t is reckless collision against China’s basic political framework and ignorance of China’s judicial sovereignty to exaggerate a specific case in China and attack China with fierce comments before finding out the truth. The West’s behavior aims at disrupting the attention of Chinese society and attempts to modify the value system of the Chinese people.

The passage above is excerpted from the CCP’s English-language newspaper Global Times, but the cultural organs of the Chinese state are versed in IAE, as Triple Canopy points out in their essay. Tackling the Chinese state’s convincing adoption of the IAE lexicon, the authors cite a passage promoting the 2006 Guangzhou Triennial and weirdly dismiss the Chinese state’s wielding of the language as an English-acquisition problem: “This is fairly symptomatic of a state of affairs in which the unwitting emulators of Bataille in translation might well be interns in the Chinese Ministry of Culture — but then again might not.”

China’s smearing of Ai Weiwei’s defenders, though executed in a more transparently propagandistic style, isn’t far from Fadda’s “ethical positionality” response: Even in matters of universal human rights, we need to take an approach that rejects the non-native critic.

With “outside” activists like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch summarily dismissed, the field of possible subversives is narrowed. But we’re still left with the threat that arrived at the Gulf’s doorstep two years ago in the form of the Arab Spring. There, too, we see a similar acrobatics. Take, for instance, this “Tahrir Square” installation from UBIK, an expatriate artist living in Dubai, which he describes as follows:

“Tahrir Square,” at a glance, could be a simple interpretation of the whole Egyptian revolution, but the piece deals with a lot more than the political face-value of the situation. On some levels I’m trying to explore the urban symbolism of the Square itself; the idea that whoever controls the square controls the State. Also, by creating the installation as a game, whoever controls the centre of the board has more advantage than their opponent. The square has become an official place to gather and protest now, but will this trend continue in to the future, even after democracy has been achieved in Egypt ? If it does, how will people relate to the Square then? On some levels, the politics of the installation questions the pros and cons of this newfound freedom. The transition to democracy has become a spectator sport with the whole world watching closely.

Thus UBIK glibly neuters the bloodshed of Tahrir Square and the sacrifices of Egyptian activists, a genuflection to the Emirati state’s political agenda. The installation, though cloaked in ostensibly subversive language, is an indifferent, art-lingo-inflected scopophilia (“spectator sport”) masquerading as concern, a pantomime of support for human freedom in which UBIK strokes his hosts while goading an uncritical audience into dismissing emancipatory movements. As if auditioning for one of the many ethically suspect K Street lobbyists facilitating the UAE’s capture of liberal culture, UBIK asks, is democracy even worthwhile? What are the “pros and cons” of freedom?

The payload is delivered. And thanks to International Art English, the artist can still appear vaguely subversive and the host state committed to openness, a mutual saving of face. The genius of IAE is that the propagandists can sit back and watch the hits roll in. Reem Fadda also commented on the UAE’s artistic solidarity with the Arab world, at one point in her lecture likening the Gulf states to a “postwar New York” for Arab artists. A suspect claim historically, and one flatly denied by the recent cancellation of a pan-Arab academic conference in Dubai. An Egyptian education rights activist, Motaz Attalla of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, was quoted on this Emirati hypocrisy: “The Emirates is claiming for itself a lot of credit for being a beacon of higher education in the region. It’s highly problematic to claim that credit and position in light of its non-compliance with a fundamental aspect of one of the requirements of being an actual center of knowledge production, and that’s academic freedom.”

It wasn’t always so — and not everyone in the art world is willing to play ball with tyrants. In fact, few have made the case for cultural activism as a bulwark against oppression as passionately as Reem Fadda once did. A PhD candidate at Cornell and a Fulbright scholar, Fadda was previously a Palestinian arts activist who, in defending her support of the academic and cultural boycott of Israel at a 2009 Art in General event in New York, unambiguously made the case for the type of wholesale takedown that has been directed at the UAE by members of the Arab and international art community. The exchange is illustrative:

Audience member: The individual [Israeli] artist is giving their work to the center, so it’s their work, it’s not like it’s the [Israeli] state’s work.

Reem Fadda: But what you’re doing is you’re giving it to the state, so the money that you’re giving them is toward supporting an institute [sic] that is basically killing people [and is] in violation of international law.

Fadda’s erstwhile boycott of any cultural or academic institution associated with a state in violation of international law makes her current stance patently hypocritical, but that would still be better than the alternative. Namely, that the curatorial task, full of the increasingly foggy abstractions of international art language, has clouded the instincts of an otherwise conscientious person.

Criticism of the UAE’s commitment to liberal and humanitarian values is hardly absent (see, for instance, this recent editorial in the New York Observer). What’s troubling is the ease with which the institutions of global art have appeared open to capture, lubricated by a mono-tongue amenable to a repugnant smoothing over of rights abuses. The triumph of International Art English is that it is now possible, on some of contemporary art’s most hallowed stages, to hold forth with arguments so yellow they make Pat Buchanan look like George Orwell.

And speaking of George Orwell, this art-language exegesis is hardly groundbreaking. More than a half-century ago he famously warned, in “Politics and the English Language,” of the dangers presented by a degraded language, a smokescreen through which even the most offensive political strategies can be made palatable. Ai Weiwei may yet pay with his life for his artistic subversion, as prisoners of conscience have and will in the UAE, China, and the world over. International Art English is not a cute inside joke, or merely a specialist’s dialect impenetrable to laymen. It is, as demonstrated last Tuesday, a real language spoken by real people who use it to sanctify oppression.

link: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/76/69732/if-you-don-t-have-bread-eat-art-contemporary-art-and-derivative-fascisms/

E-flux Journal:

If You Don’t Have Bread, Eat Art!: Contemporary Art and Deriitaitve Fascisms

Hito Steyerl Issue #76

October 2016

Is art a currency? Investor Stefan Simchowitz thinks so. He wrote with uncompromising clarity about the post-Brexit era: “Art will effectively continue its structural function as an alternative currency that hedges against inflation and currency depreciation.”1 Have silver paintings become a proxy gold standard?2 How did it come to this? During the ongoing crisis, investors were showered with tax money, which then went into freeport collections, tower mansions, and shell companies. Quantitative easing eroded currency stability and depleted common resources, entrenching a precarious service economy with dismal wages, if any, eternal gigs, eternal debt, permanent doubt, and now increasing violence. This destabilization is one reason the value of art looks more stable than the prospects of many national GDPs. In the EU this takes place against a backdrop of mass evictions, austerity, arson attacks, Daesh run amok, and Deutsche scams. Results include child poverty, debt blackmail, rigged economies, and the fascist scapegoating of others for widely self-inflicted failed policies. Art is an “alternative currency” of this historical moment.3 It seems to trade against a lot of misery.

Meanwhile, reactionary extremism intensifies in many places. I won’t bore you with specifics. There’s always another attack, election, coup, or someone who ups the ante in terms of violence, misogyny, snuff, or infamy. Derivative fascisms4 continue to grow, wherever disenfranchised middle classes fear (and face) global competition—and choose to both punch down and suck up to reactionary oligarchies.5 Ever more self-tribalized formations pop up that prefer not to abolish neoliberal competition—but instead eliminate competitors personally. Derivative fascisms try to fuse all-out free trade economics with (for example) white nationalism[6] by promoting survival of the fittest for everyone except themselves. Authoritarian neoliberalism segues into just authoritarianism.

A permanent fog of war is fanned by permanent fakes on Facebook. Already deregulated ideas of truth are destabilized even further. Emergency rules. Critique is a troll fest. Crisis commodified as entertainment. The age of neoliberal globalization seems exhausted and a period of contraction, fragmentation, and autocratic rule has set in.

The growth of the global auction market from 2005 to 2015, according to data from Auction House, ArtNet, and AMMA

Alternative Currency

Art markets seem not overly concerned. In times in which financial institutions and even whole political entities may just dissolve into fluffy glitter, investment in art seems somehow more real. Moreover, as alternative currency, art seems to fulfill what Ethereum and Bitcoin have hitherto only promised.6 Rather than money issued by a nation and administrated by central banks, art is a networked, decentralized, widespread system of value.7 It gains stability because it calibrates credit or disgrace across competing institutions or cliques. There are markets, collectors, museums, publications, and the academy asynchonously registering (or mostly failing to do so) exhibitions, scandals, likes and prices. As with cryptocurrencies, there is no central institution to guarantee value; instead there is a jumble of sponsors, censors, bloggers, developers, producers, hipsters, handlers, patrons, privateers, collectors, and way more confusing characters. Value arises from gossip-cum-spin and insider information. Fraudsters and con artists mix helter-skelter with pontificating professors, anxious gallerists, and couch-surfing students. This informal ecology is eminently hackable, but since everyone does it, it sometimes evens out—even though at highly manipulated levels. It is at once highly malleable and inert, sublime, dopey, opaque, bizarre, and blatant: a game in which the most transcendental phenomena are on collectors’ waiting lists. Further down the food chain, media art, like Bitcoin, tries to manage the contradictions of digital scarcity by limiting the illimitable. But for all its pretense to technological infallibility, Bitcoin is potentially just as dependent on group power8 as art-market values are dependent on consent, collusion, and coincidence. What looks like incorruptible tech in practice hinges on people’s actions. As to the encryption part in art: art is often encrypted to the point of sometimes being undecryptable. Encryption is routinely applied, even or especially if there is no meaning whatsoever. Art is encryption as such, regardless of the existence of a message with a multitude of conflicting and often useless keys.9 Its reputational economy is randomly quantified, ranked by bullshit algorithms that convert artists and academics into ranked positions, but it also includes more traditionally clannish social hierarchies. It is a fully ridiculous, crooked, and toothless congregation and yet, like civilization as a whole, art would be a great idea.

In practice though, art industries trigger trickle-up effects which are then flushed sideways into tax havens. Art’s economies divert investments from sustainable job creation, education, and research and externalize social cost and risk. They bleach neighborhoods, underpay, overrate, and peddle excruciating baloney.

Alternative Currency

his does not only apply to art’s investor and manager classes. The lifestyles of many art workers also support a corporate technological (and antisocial) infrastructure that whisks off profits into fiscal banana republics. Apple, Google, Uber, Airbnb, Ryanair, Facebook, and other hipster providers pay hardly any taxes in Ireland, Jersey, or other semisecret jurisdictions. They don’t contribute to local services like schools or hospitals and their idea of sharing is to make sure they get their share.

But let’s face it—in relation to the scale of other industries, the art sector is just a blip. Contemporary art is just a hash for all that’s opaque, unintelligible, and unfair, for top-down class war and all-out inequality. It’s the tip of an iceberg acting as a spear.

Degenerate Art

Predictably, this leads to resentment and outright anger. Art is increasingly labeled as a decadent, rootless, out-of-touch, cosmopolitan urban elite activity. In one sense, this is a perfectly honest and partly pertinent description.10 Contemporary art belongs to a time in which everything goes and nothing goes anywhere, a time of stagnant escalation, of serial novelty as deadlock. Many are itching for major changes, some because the system is pointless, harmful, 1 percent-ish, and exclusive, and many more because they finally want in.

On the other hand, talk of “rootless cosmopolitans” is clearly reminiscent of both Nazi and Stalinist propaganda, who relished in branding dissenting intellectuals as “parasites” within “healthy national bodies.” In both regimes this kind of jargon was used to get rid of minority intelligentsia, formal experiments and progressive agendas; not to improve access for locals or improve or broaden the appeal of art. The “anti-elitist” discourse in culture is at present mainly deployed by conservative elites, who hope to deflect attention from their own economic privileges by relaunching of stereotypes of “degenerate art.”

So if you are hoping for new opportunities with the authoritarians, you might find yourself disappointed.

Authoritarian right-wing regimes will not get rid of art-fair VIP lists or make art more relevant or accessible to different groups of people. In no way will they abolish elites or even art. They will only accelerate inequalities, beyond the fiscal-material to the existential-material. This transformation is not about accountability, criteria, access, or transparency. It will not prevent tax fraud, doctored markets, the Daesh antiquities trade, or systemic underpay. It will be more of the same, just much worse: less pay for workers, less exchange, fewer perspectives, less circulation, and even less regulation, if such a thing is even possible. Inconvenient art will fly out the window—anything non-flat, non-huge, or remotely complex or challenging. Intellectual perspectives, expanded canons, nontraditional histories will be axed—anything that requires an investment of time and effort instead of conspicuous money. Public support swapped for Instagram metrics. Art fully floated on some kind of Arsedaq. More fairs, longer yachts for more violent assholes, oil paintings of booty blondes, abstract stock-chart calligraphy. Yummy organic superfoods. Accelerationist designer breeding. Personalized one-on-one performances for tax evaders. Male masters, more male masters, and repeat. Art will take its place next to big-game hunting, armed paragliding, and adventure slumming.

Yay for expensive craft and anything vacuous that works in a chain-hotel lobby. Plastiglomerate marble, welded by corporate characters banging on about natural selection. Kits for biological “self-improvement.” Crapstraction, algostraction, personalized installations incorporating Krav Maga lessons. Religious nailpaint will slay in all seasons, especially with a Louis Vuitton logo. Hedge-fund mandalas. Modest fashion. Immodest fashion. Nativist mumbo jumbo. Genetically engineered caviar in well-behaved ethnic pottery. Conceptual plastic surgery. Racial plastic surgery. Bespoke ivory gun handles. Murals on border walls. Good luck with this. You will be my mortal enemy.

Just like institutional critique was overtaken by a neoliberal Right that went ahead and simply abolished art institutions, the critique of contemporary art and claims for an exit from this paradigm are dwarfed by their reactionary counterparts. The reactionary exit—or acceleration of stagnation—is already well underway. Algorithmic and analogue market manipulation, alongside the defunding, dismantling, and hollowing-out of the public and post-public sector,11 transforms what sometimes worked as a forum for shared ideas, judgment, and experimentation into HNWI interior design. Art will be firewalled within isolationist unlinked canons, which can easily be marketed as national, religious, and fully biased histories.

An Alternative Alternative Currency?

Now what? Where does one go from here?

Let’s put the next paragraph into brackets. It just indicates a hypothetical possibility.

If art is an alternative currency, its circulation also outlines an operational infrastructure. Could these structures be repossessed to work differently? How much value would the alternative currency of art lose if its most corrupt aspects were to be regulated or restructured to benefit art’s larger communities? How about even a minimum of rules in the market—gallery contracts, resale-time minimums, artist fees,12 remunerated internships? Introducing blockchain public records for the production, transaction, and locating of artworks in order to reign in tax fraud and money laundering?13 Declining the most mortifying sponsor and patron relationships instead of artwashing fossil extraction, weapons manufacturing, and banks bailed out with former cultural funding? How about asking for fees on resales similar to those asked on photocopies to pay for art workers’ health insurance? Or on any offshore art-related transaction? Could art as alternative currency not only circulate within existing systems but even launch not-yet-existing economies (publics, institutions, markets, parallel art worlds, etc.)?

But to expect any kind of progressive transformation to happen by itself—just because the infrastructure or technology exists—would be like expecting the internet to create socialism or automation to evenly benefit all humankind. The internet spawned Uber and Amazon, not the Paris Commune. The results may be called “the sharing economy,” but this mostly means that the poor share with the rich, not vice versa. Should any less unilateral sharing be suggested, the bulk of capital will decamp immediately.14 One of the first steps towards parallel art sectors would thus be to organize even partial sustainability in the absence of bubble liquidity and barely limited amounts of free labor. Whatever emerges will be a new version of art-affiliated autonomy

In contrast to the modernist autonomy of art schemes, this autonomy is not solitary, unlinked, or isolated. Nor will it come about by some fantasy of progress in-built into technology. On the contrary it can only emerge through both a conscious effort and exchange among diverse entities. It’s an autonomy that works through circulation, transformation, and alchemy. The links it could build on exist as weak links (aka, air-kiss links) and reshaping them would need to happen within a compromised mess of contradictory activities. But simultaneously people can try to synch with the art-related undercommons15 by building partial networked autonomy via all means necessary. If art is a currency, can it be an undercurrent? Could it work like an Unter, not an Uber?

How to do this? People are used to perceiving the art world as sponsored by states, foundations, patrons, and corporations. But the contrary applies at least equally well. Throughout history it has been artists and artworkers, more than any other actors, who have subsidized art production.16 Most do so by concocting mixed-income schemes in which, simply speaking, some form of wage labor (or other income) funds art-making. But more generally, everyone involved also contributes in all sorts of other ways to art’s circulation, thus making it stronger as currency. Even artists who live “off their work” subsidize the market by way of enormous commissions in relation to other industries. But why should one sponsor VIP prepreviews, bespoke museum extensions without any means to fill them, art-fair arms races, institutional franchises built under penal-colony conditions, and other baffling bubbles? This bloated, entitled, fully superfluous, embarrassing, and most of all politically toxic overhead is subsidized by means of free labor and life time, but also by paying attention to blingstraction and circulating its spinoffs, thus creating reach and legitimacy. Even the majority of artists that cannot afford saying no to any offer of income could save time not doing this.17 Refusing sponsorship of this sort might be the first step towards shaking the unsustainable and mortifying dependency on speculative operations that indirectly increase authoritarian violence and division. Spend free time assisting colleagues,18 not working for free for bank foundations. Don’t “share” corporate crap on monopolist platforms. Ask yourself: Do you want global capitalism with a fascist face? Do you want to artwash more insane weather, insane leaders, poisonous and rising water, crumbling infrastructure, and brand-new walls? How can people genuinely share what they need?19 How much speed is necessary? How can artistic (and art-related) autonomy evolve from haughty sovereignty to modest networked devolution?20 How can platform cooperatives contribute to this? Can art institutions follow the lead of new municipalist networks and alliances of “rebel cities”?21 In the face of derivative fascisms, can local forms of life be reimagined beyond blood, soil, nation, and corporation, as networks of neighborhoods, publics, layered audiences?22 Can art keep local imaginaries curious, open-minded, and spirited? How to make tangible the idea that belonging is in becoming—not in having been?23 What is art’s scale, perspective, and challenge in de-growing constituencies? Can one transform art’s currency into art’s confluence? Replace speculation with overflow?24

Art’s organizing role in the value-process—long overlooked, downplayed, worshipped, or fucked—is at last becoming clear enough to approach, if not rationally, than perhaps realistically. Art as alternative currency shows that art sectors already constitute a maze of overlapping systems in which good-old gossip, greed, lofty ideals, inebriation, and ruthless competition form countless networked cliques. The core of its value is generated less by transaction than by endless negotiation, via gossip, criticism, hearsay, haggling, heckling, peer reviews, small talk, and shade. The result is a solid tangle of feudal loyalties and glowing enmity, rejected love and fervent envy, pooling striving, longing, and vital energies. In short, the value is not in the product but in the network; not in gaming or predicting the market25 but in creating exchange.26 Most importantly, art is one of the few exchanges that derivative fascists don’t control—yet.

But as a reserve system for dumb, mean, and greedy money, art’s social value (auto)destructs and turns into a shell operation that ultimately just shields more empty shells and amplifies fragmentation and division. Similarly, arts venues are already shifting into bonded warehouses and overdesigned bank vaults inside gilded, gated compounds designed by seemingly the same three architects worldwide.

It’s easy to imagine what the motto for art as the reserve currency of a fully rigged system might be. Just envision a posh PR lieutenant policing the entrance of a big art fair, gingerly declaring to anyone pushed aside, displaced, exploited, and ignored: “If you don’t have bread, just eat art!”

Proposal participation of Schools / Art classes in LondON

I would love to invite the students from —- focusing their A-levels on Art as a subject to come for a visit at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery and have a walk through the gallery space engage with an audio format of a podcast that engages with the collaborators behind the exhibition. Transcripts of the podcast are provided for students with listening impairment. After walking through the space I would stand in for questions about the exhibition and the space, as well as other colleagues working in the gallery. As part of this invitation I would love to include voices, opinions of the students, teachers on both podcast and the works in a recorded format that would be included in a response episode of the show . The response episode will be a collection of responses to the show send in online by people who have listened to the interview and / or seen the exhibition.

I believe that it would be great for the students of —- and valuable to gain an inside into the workplace of a commercial gallery and early on in their interest make them aware of the engagement and structure of a gallery.

Students and parents would have to agree to the recording prior to visiting the exhibition to make sure that each party is happy with the participation in the response episode. I believe it would be a fantastic and valuable visit for all art interested students to engage with the local art scene, gain inside into a possible future work environment, strengthen their interest in arts education.

Attached is the complete podcast episode for the exhibition I am inviting — school too.

All the best,

Antonia Scharr

Do the agreement form for parents for the recording

AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT -> RESEARCH INTO ARTS EDUCATION AND FUNDING

FUTURE PLANS OF THE PODCAST

During my last years of secondary school in Germany I was able to to learn from an art teacher that focused on conceptual artists, graphic artists, and architects such as Zaha Hadid and her conceptual approach to architecture and how she worked around structure, creativity, functionality, material and use of the space. This education was based on a fascination with intricate research into the work. The presentations and essays I had to prepare and write for her class were some of the deepest immersive discussions I have had about art. I am sure that much of my passion for art came from this approach. It made the work accessible, I learned so many details, we spend weeks analysing, discussing one artist and their work and medium. Sadly now in London, I feel trying to immerse myself in the contemporary art scene through gallery shows and fairs the passion and interest that is evoked through research is often not thought about enough which is obviously depended on the commercialisation and the fact that the art world is a market space. It is a disservice to everyone and first of all to the artist to spend one second looking at the work and make its value or interest dependent on popularity, market value or attention, which is what the reality of any commercial show is. Its especially sad cause so much of the work is so fascinating, the paths taken, the themes discussed within the work deserve more attention and more time then just a quick glance. It’s especially a disservice to all these artists who have spend years working on their craft and education searching for their concepts, inspirations and who have spend ours creating the work. Especially in times where identity politics, cancel culture, accountability rule who is represented in art and has led to most museums and many galleries to become very political within the themes of their shows I find it the more frustrating that the actual research and background of the work seems to be such a vital factor to deeming the work prevalent, but at the same time only on a representational level, and not to actually think deeply on these works. The questions, future perspectives or calls-to-action the art addresses could serve as inspiration, manifestos, symbols for positive change but what we are missing is attention and time.

ENGAGEMENT -> RESEARCH INTO ARTS EDUCATION AND FUNDING

FUTURE PLANS OF THE PODCAST

During one of the tutorials at university I talked to other tutors, amongst them Hannah Kemp-Welch who is independently working on audience engagement project who critically questioned access in terms of voices represented within the podcast to provide accessible languages and positions. As the persons representing London galleries, collectors, journalists and many artists are speaking from a higher position of someone that has accumulated a lot of cultural and more than often come from a higher social and financial capital or come from wealth and has been part of the art scene. In that sense the voices representing such exhibitions might not always have the most accessible language. The responsibility seems to lay in my personal phrasing and choosing of the questions and the way the interview is led and edited. Furthermore, Hannah mentioned the idea to talk to pupils, community groups about the work. Which lead me to the idea of a review/ response exchange.

This idea came from multiple tv shows, comedy channels, Youtube videos that film a project and a response video. I am hoping the include this idea in my draft but might be short in time. I would love to have a response episode for each exhibition that would feed of voices of listeners sending in their interpretations about the interviews, podcast, the exhibition if they were able to check it out online or in person and the work itself. These responses could be send to a WhatsApp number as audio files or written text.

After having this conversation with Hannah Kemp-Welch I wanted to think about the future of this project as I felt like there were many overarching themes with my concept, reason for pursuing this project based on my own experience with arts education and based on the fact that my audience certainly would be people my age who are current students in creative studies. I have had previous experience in art galleries inviting art students to take tours, ask questions and get an inside into the art world. The experience was always extremely rewarding and exciting for all participants. This further strengthens my belief to incorporate arts education into this project in the future.

For a while, I also was considering writing my contextual essay about arts education / arts funding cuts. Since I am deeply fascinated with the perception of creative work in politics and the wider financial and political landscape. However, I did realise that this topic is a new progression from this project and the topic rather reflecting my concept and reason for this project was Language and communication of art.

The proposal email set out here is a look into the future of my London project and how to broadened my idea linked to the research. If I would continue this project, I would definitely include response episodes after each show.

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Research arts education and art funding in the UK

Sources: (filtered after most recent..)

Link: https://gal-dem.com/arts-sector-cuts/

Gal-dem culture longreads The arts are in crisis The UK’s arts sector is currently sitting on a knife’s edge. Speaking to those facing the worst and fighting back, Katie Goh investigates

Katie Goh

30 MAR 2023

The UK’s arts sector is currently sitting on a knife’s edge. At the end of 2022, Arts Council England (ACE) announced it was cutting £50 million a year from London-based arts organisations in its 2023-2026 plans, fulfilling government instruction to distribute money away from the capital. This plan to spread arts funding thinner was met with protests and frustration, as well as London-based arts organisations scrambling to move cities. The message was clear: under this Tory government, arts organisations will be forced to fight over crumbs.

Meanwhile, in Scotland, 2023 began with a proposed 10% cut to Creative Scotland, who warned that reduced funding would impact 50% of the national arts funding body’s organisations. Thanks to pressure from campaigners and unions, this proposal was abandoned in February, but throughout the UK, the arts are struggling to survive.

In my own city of Edinburgh, host to the world’s largest arts festival every August, this winter has already brought blow after blow to the cultural landscape. Over a single month, I watched three of Scotland’s landmark arts institutions close or partially close. Edinburgh’s beloved independent cinema, the Filmhouse, and the Edinburgh International Film Festival collapsed when their parent company, Centre for Moving Image, went into administration – also resulting in the closure of Aberdeen’s Belmont Filmhouse. Scotland’s National Centre for Dance announced staff redundancies, “mothballed” half its studio spaces and scaled back its programming. The National Galleries of Scotland shut one of its galleries, Modern Two, for the winter, with the National Galleries’ director-general John Leighton saying, “I have never experienced a crisis like this in my career.”

“Over a single month, I watched three of Scotland’s landmark arts institutions close or partially close”

Each of these physical arts venues in Edinburgh pointed to some combination of rising energy bills, reduced trade, the cost of living crisis and the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic as their reasons for closures and staff redundancies. But this seemingly recent and sudden threat to the arts – not just in Edinburgh, but UK-wide – has been escalating for far longer than since 2020. Adjacent sectors which intersect with the arts, have similarly been decimated. For example, the music industry is a currently a third smaller now than it was pre-pandemic. And at least 1,000 journalism jobs cut in January of 2023 alone.

There are many factors creating a difficult landscape for creatives. Rising energy bills and the cost of living crisis have been the final, financially devastating, nail in the coffin for the arts – but they’re not the root of the problem.

The Tory government hates the arts
The Tory government has been on a hell-bent mission to defund, devalue and dismantle the UK’s arts and culture sector since the party came to power in 2010. George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer between 2010 and 2016, and current chairman of the British Museum, oversaw a 30% cut to Arts Council England funding. A 2007-2018 analysis of the health of England’s arts sector recorded that local government funding for the arts has fallen 43% from 2008 and overall funding has fallen more than a third since 2010.

In 2021, the Tories reformed the government’s funding stream to higher education, by cutting arts subjects by 50% and redirecting that money to STEM subjects. Last year, Roehampton University, Wolverhampton University, and Sheffield Hallam University each drastically reduced their humanities courses. In their 2019 manifesto, the Tories proposed £110 million towards an “arts premium” to help secondary schools fund arts programmes. This was then reduced to £90 million to Rishi Sunak’s 2020 budget. As reported in the Guardian, despite a deadline of September 2021, this money has never materialised.

“In six years of working at Arts Emergency, this is the most bleak I’ve seen the arts,” says Korantema Anyimadu, who works as Youth Voice Lead at Arts Emergency, a mentoring charity for young people who are underrepresented in the arts. “Just last week I had a message from a young person who’s decided not to stay in the arts because it seems so unreliable and not well paid. It’s like a leaky pipe. We’re losing people. That young person has decided to go into STEM instead.”

“In six years of working at Arts Emergency, this is the most bleak I’ve seen the arts”

Korantema Anyimadu

Arts Emergency was founded by Neil Griffiths and Josie Long in 2010, in direct response to the Tory government’s cuts to the arts sector. “The idea was that in 10 years time, Arts Emergency wouldn’t be needed anymore,” explains Anyimadu. “Either the Tory government would be voted out or there would be more support for the arts. But it’s just gotten worse. The passion of people in the arts hasn’t changed or the talent, but the reality of working in the arts has gotten less and less welcoming.”

With funding cuts comes a loss of jobs. The creative sector is a precarious industry to work in at the best of times, either as an artist or as an arts worker. Increasingly, only those with a safety net can afford to pursue a career in the arts. As a result, and unsurprisingly, the industry’s workforce is overwhelmingly white and middle class. A 2018 report found that 2.7% of workers in the museums, galleries and libraries sector are BAME, while that figure is 4.8% for BAME workers in music, performing and visual arts. More recently, a 2022 report by the Office for National Statistics revealed that the numbers of working-class actors, musicians and writers has halved since the 1970s. In journalism, over 92% of the workforce is white.

“Cultural institutions themselves have been very slow and unwilling to change,” says Anyimadu. “A lot of promises were made in 2020 which no one has followed up on. And there has been no relative class mobility in the last 20 years. Nothing’s actually changed.”

Anyimadu doesn’t believe that the arts sector’s elitism and gate-keeping is accidental either.

In 2020, the UK’s creative industries contributed almost £13 million to the UK economy every hour and yet, as Anyimadu points out, the Tory government is constantly devaluing the arts, removing arts from state schools and encouraging artists to retrain. “A part of me feels like if you have more Black and Brown people, more disabled people making things with their own voices and producing art that goes against the status quo, it’s not going to reflect well on the people in power.”

Organisations are losing their lifelines

When arts organisations’ funding shrinks, so too does experimental, radical and far-reaching art. The independent publisher Tilted Axis Press was founded in 2015 through an Arts Council England grant. Over the last eight years, the team has operated with “a particular consciousness of present and historical imperialism and its impact on publishing, the hierarchisation of languages, fair pay and the distribution of labour,” Managing Director, Kristen Vida Alfaro, tells me.

Tilted Axis publishes books in translation from across Asia and Africa, many of which have become major success stories in the UK, like Tomb of Sand (written by Geetanjali Shree and translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell) which won the 2022 International Booker Prize – the first South Asian book to do so.

“I think our publishing aims have always been different from the publishing industry in the UK,” says Vida Alfaro. “We explore alternatives in literature, translation and labour – things that might be more of a ‘risk’ to other publishers. Community and collaboration are also integral to our publishing aims. I don’t see them as separate but rather feeding into each other.”

Although book sales have increasingly financially supported Tilted Axis, the publisher has been consistently supported by ACE grants – a “lifeline for a lot of independent presses,” says Vida Alfaro. The cost of producing books in the UK has increased at an alarming rate, with paper costs rising by 40% in 2022, and a change in post-Brexit VAT rules in 2021 has meant that many independent publishers haven’t been able to sell or ship physical books to the EU for two years.

During the pandemic, UK publisher sales rose and large publishers are reporting record-breaking profits, yet independent publishers, industry workers and authors are seeing little of this money. At the end of 2022, a new report commissioned by the UK Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) and carried out by the UK Copyright and Creative Economy Research Centre (CREATe), published a devastating figure: that professional authors, including journalists, are earning a median wage of £7,000 a year in the UK. This statistic marks a fall of 33% since 2018. The report also found that Black, Asian and mixed race authors, as well as women, earn a median wage far below £7,000.

“The current cultural ecosystem that wasn’t created for marginalised communities, particularly immigrants or people of colour”

Kristen Vida Alfaro

A 2022 Bookseller survey reported a similarly grim reality for workers within publishing, with 37% of those surveyed saying that their current salary is not enough to cover their cost of living and 69% saying they are not paid appropriately for their work.

“Who can afford to live with a low income and/or the precarity of freelance creative work?” says Vida Alfaro. “This not only impacts the type of stories that are published but also the mental health of those that pursue creative work. The current cultural ecosystem doesn’t allow ample time to deal with health issues, grief, family crises. It’s a system that wasn’t created for marginalised communities, particularly immigrants or people of colour.”

‘The culture will lack because diversity is the culture‘

While publicly funded arts organisations have been hit hard by funding cuts, other independent and privately funded organisations are similarly struggling to survive the UK’s current economic crisis. Ronan Mckenzie founded the London arts space HOME in 2020, to “make more space for Black and artists who are people of colour (POC) to show, share and create work, connect and also to find my own community.”

HOME began life as a physical space – one of very few Black-owned galleries in London – and was predominantly funded by Mckenzie’s own pocket, as well as brand partnerships. After two years of HOME, the physical London space closed its doors at the end of 2022. HOME has now migrated to be online or in hired exhibition spaces, but its mission remains the same: to create more space and more opportunities for Black and POC artists.

“I’m so proud of everything that we did in the space,” says Mckenzie. “But I’m not proud of how much I personally sacrificed and how much of a precarious position I put myself in and how much I had to invest to upkeep it. We were able to achieve some of the goals we had: like making more space and more opportunities through residencies and grant offerings, and shows in spaces in and outside of HOME.”

Mckenzie’s feelings about the current state of the arts are mixed. While she emphasises that support and funding has been taken away, she also points out that there has been an increase in opportunities for artists. “I think there are more opportunities to show and see artwork than there ever have been, in small galleries, cafes and spaces – and even bigger institutions are showing artwork of different types of artists who they weren’t prioritising before. But I think working in the arts and staying in the arts is really difficult because the pay is so little and the money is low.” HOME is partially funded by commercial partnerships, and Mckenzie says that brands are becoming more risk-averse in the UK’s current economic crisis. “I think, before Covid, brands were more willing to put money into small projects, community projects and arts projects just because it’s good to do. Naturally

with the recession, there’s a resurgence of the mindset that everything must have a sales pay off. Even going to Frieze [Art Fair] at the end of last year, the artwork all felt more commercial and less experimental, and fewer galleries are willing to give different artists a try.”

As Anyimadu and Vida Alfaro emphasised throughout our conversations, Mckenzie also highlights that we all lose when the arts are devalued and shrunk. “Everything is drab! We need diversity and exposure to a mix of cultures, lifestyles, languages, food, faces, textures and stories. I think people are moving out of London and out of the UK which makes complete sense. But it means the culture will lack because diversity is the culture.”

Rallying a national movement to fight back

As I was finishing writing this story, news broke that the Scottish government had decided to reverse its proposal to reduce more than 10% of Creative Scotland’s budget; a loss of £7 million that would have impacted half of its regularly-funded organisations. This decision came after 15,000 people signed a last-minute petition organised by the charity Campaign for the Arts, as well as the work of Culture Counts, the Scottish Trade Union Congress and the sector unions, including Equity, Society of Authors and the Scottish Artists Union.

“If [the Scottish government] didn’t change course, the damage would have been irreversible,” says Campaign for the Arts’ Director, Jack Gamble, speaking a few days after the proposal was abandoned. “We would have been looking at devastating consequences to Scotland’s culture.”

He is also quick to highlight that while the Scottish government’s decision to restore Creative Scotland’s funding should be celebrated, it doesn’t increase an already limited pot of money for the country’s arts sector. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but this only brings Creative Scotland funding to standstill levels with last year during a time of rocketing inflation. They have listened to us and acted and we are thankful for that, but we’re not out of the woods. The campaign goes on.”

Gamble began Campaign for the Arts during the pandemic while he was working at a community theatre in Hackney, London. The aim was to unite sector bodies during times of crisis for the UK’s arts industries, and present accessible information to the public. In just two weeks after the Campaign began, 150,000 people had joined the campaign and then the UK government announced the Culture Recovery Fund. “At that point, we thought this was an amazing groundswell of support for the cultural sector,” says Gamble. “I thought we need to keep going with this and do more.”

Three years on, the organisation has run successful campaigns in Nottingham in 2021, working with workers and cultural organisers to significantly reduce a cut in council funding for the arts, and in Windsor and Maidenhead in 2022, when a 100% cut to arts funding was proposed. “We not only managed to stop the 100% cut, but we actually got a 17% increase in arts funding,” says Gamble. Other campaigns have been around arts and education, responding to cuts to arts courses in higher education and “the fact that over the last decade, access to creative subjects in state schools has been decimated.”

Now, Campaign for the Arts has 250,000+ supporters across the UK and representation in every one of the country’s 650 parliamentary constituencies. The mission is to create a network, so that when local arts organisations are threatened by funding cuts and closure, Campaign for the Arts can step in to offer their support and spread the news. “We don’t have limitless resources,” says Gamble. “But we are trying to develop a nationwide alliance which means that when there are these crunch moments, like with Creative Scotland, we can let people know about them and support campaigns to protect arts provision and opportunities.”

“Supporting the arts isn’t just about supporting arts industry workers, it’s also about supporting the cultural life of the country and the world”

Jack Gamble

After a bleak winter of closing arts venues, the effort from Campaign for the Arts and Scotland’s arts sector unions to push back against the government’s proposed funding cuts to the industry has offered some necessary hope. While, as Gamble highlights, there is still much work to be done to push for more arts funding, not just less, the public rallying around the arts has also proven that it’s not just artists or industry workers who want and benefit from a sustainable and healthy cultural landscape – it’s everyone.

“I work in this industry because for all my life I’ve loved arts and culture,” says Gamble. “Supporting the arts isn’t just about supporting arts industry workers, it’s also about supporting the cultural life of the country and the world. This is about the kind of society we want to live in and the kind of lives we want to lead.”

You can find out more about Arts Emergency’s work and support their work by visiting their website. Visit Tilted Axis Press’ website and HOME’s website. Join Campaign for the Arts as a supporter and find out more about their work by visiting their website.

Link: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/22/britain-arts-institutions-cuts

Britain’s art institutions face death by a thousand cuts. Why are they just putting up with it?

Charlotte Higgins,

Life-changing organisations are left bloodied and bowed – and all to save sums that are dwarfed by bailouts to other sectors

Wed 22 Mar 2023 14.22 GMT

In the 1960s, two American psychologists coined the phrase “learned helplessness”. They had found that if you repeatedly gave an animal an electric shock from which there was no means of escape, the unfortunate creature would simply lie there and whimper – even if you later changed the parameters, and gave it a shock it could evade. The effect was also discernible in humans. “Like the dog, cat, rat, and fish, when a human being is faced with noxious events that it cannot control, its motivation to respond seems to be reduced,” they wrote.

The learned helplessness hypothesis comes to mind when I consider what is happening to the arts, particularly classical music, in England. Those who should know better at the supposedly politically independent Arts Council England (ACE) have come to consider it tolerable, even desirable, for organisations such as English National Opera and Britten Sinfonia – both leaders in their field – to have their regular funding withdrawn, their business models upended and their survival put in jeopardy because of the Conservatives’ levelling-up agenda.

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Indeed, all of these figures pale into insignificance compared with the £4.4bn of public money paid to British banks to cover default and fraud on the state-guaranteed loans made to businesses during the Covid lockdowns. And yet, despite all of these costly misspends, or Tory interventions in the market (delete as you feel appropriate), the arts are regularly sneered at or attacked for their so-called reliance on the public purse. This is despite the fact that money spent on the arts is money spent on something useful: making life-changing cultural experiences available to children and young people; transforming towns and cities; boosting local economies and local pride; nurturing the kind of British talent that becomes the nation’s calling card overseas.

Watching these wounds being inflicted is painful. People who work in culture and the arts in this country are exhausted. The 30% cut to Arts Council England in 2010, when the now chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, was culture secretary, has done huge and long-term damage; so have repeated blows to local-authority income. The pandemic has brought cultural organisations to the edge. The only credible rescue mission at this point will come from an incoming Labour government. That mission must not be flunked.

Charlotte Higgins is the Guardian’s chief culture writer

Link: https://cherwell.org/2023/02/25/opera-funding-cuts-what-is-the-future-of-the-art-form/

Opera funding cuts: What is the future of the art form?

By Stephanie Nourse 25th February 2023

Opera in the UK is in crisis. In the latest round of government funding allocated by The Arts Council England (ACE), many of the country’s largest opera institutions have had their budgets slashed. Receiving sufficient funding is crucial to the running of arts institutions in the UK, and ACE has faced immediate backlash since a pattern was identified in the most recent allocations towards the end of last year.

Sir Nick Serota, chair of Arts Council England, announced on a livestream: “The position was made relatively clear when the Secretary of State instructed us to take money out of London… and encouraged us to take money from central London to some parts of the city that haven’t previously had funding. It was almost inevitable that we would have to take some money away from some of the main theatres in London. We’ve simply had to make some very invidious choices.”

Following advice to prioritise financial backing to organisations outside the capital, ACE has begun to provide more funding to opera institutions in the North. While it is no secret that the UK’s capital dominates the cultural sector by a long shot, the redistribution has failed to strike a sensible balance. This has left several London-based organisations suddenly depleted of monetary support, among them many of the country’s major opera organisations.

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Opera is also increasingly adopting new, more modern initiatives to tackle these allegations of elitism while also helping to raise vital funds. The Royal Opera House offers streaming subscriptions from £9.99 a month, starting with a 14-day free trial and offering unlimited access to a library of over 45 ballets and operas including behind-the-scenes features, interviews with the artists and creative insights. The company Rogue Opera aims to improve accessibility to operatic theatre by bringing performances to audiences to unexpected places – namely to pub gardens across the UK.

Opera organisations are also changing how they advertise, namely through taking advantage of the exposure offered by social media platforms. ENO now has a profile on TikTok as well as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, and the hashtag #operaisopen features heavily across social media to entice new audiences.

In Oxford, there are several ways for students to engage with and support the local opera scene. New Theatre Oxford, located on George Street, offers locals the chance to see top-class opera productions. The theatre will put on performances of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly on the 3rd of March 2023, and of Verdi’s Aida on the 4th of March. Both shows are produced by Ellen Kent and feature international soloists, highly-praised choruses and a full orchestra. The operas will be sung in Italian with English subtitles and tickets are available from £13.00.

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Moreover, it seems that the impact of the Arts Council cuts has been felt across the city, too. “Despite our positive outlook for Oxford, we are devastated in solidarity with the English National Opera and other major companies who have suffered in the recent round of Arts Council cuts. We believe that it is an extremely short-sighted approach, because without their high-quality productions, smaller groups like ours have nothing to look up to,” the society said. “The new generations of artists are fleeing the UK, and the decision only serves to entrench the misguided stereotype that opera is only for the rich”.

The society’s advice for the bigger opera companies in the UK is “to resist the temptation to follow a policy of austerity, and focus on a few quality productions, rather than trying to churn out the same number of shows while stripping them down to their bare bones. “As an industry we need to double down on persuading the public and the government that opera is an art form worth saving”, it said.

While the future of opera in the UK remains uncertain, what is nonetheless clear is the nationwide dedication to creative initiatives for the development of operatic theatre, and to driving up engagement with new audiences. It is vital that government funding providers such as ACE realise that in defunding opera, the art form will only become more and more inaccessible and, in turn, “elitist”. If the continual work carried out by both major opera companies like ENO and Glyndebourne as well as smaller, grassroots organisations such as Oxford Opera Society can be better recognised and supported, then there is hope that opera might be able to overcome its current crisis.

Link: https://www.dazeddigital.com/art-photography/article/55275/1/why-the-tories-hate-the-arts

Dazed, The Tory ‚Art panic‘: Why the Conservatives have always hated creativity Opinion piece 21st January 2022, Beth Ashley 

It’s an understatement to say the arts industry has been severely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. Art has taken a serious beating from cuts issued by the Conservative party: from slashes to funding for art teachers, to the Department for Education releasing a list of postgraduate training bursaries for 2021 which included no arts subjects at all.

The government’s lack of appreciation for the arts has also negatively impacted wider creative scenes. Vice and Music Venue Trust last year reported that 390 music venues are currently at risk of closing due to a lack of government support during the pandemic, while Art Review revealed 25 per cent of art businesses were left not trading at all because of restrictions without support. The government has never been subtle about their disdain for artists, but things came to a head during the pandemic when 2019 adverts suggesting that artists retrain (in “cyber”) resurfaced online.

Furlough schemes and employment resources have been offered to the majority of workers in traditional industries, yet next to no support has been provided for artists. Most artists are also self-employed sole traders, who received little support during the pandemic and couldn’t access financial aid at all if they’d been working for less than three years.

The cherry on a truly awful cake is that universities are now under pressure from the government to analyse their art courses to see whether they’re successful in getting students into jobs that help the environment or contribute to UK culture. Courses that are deemed “low-value” face being cut. An entire industry has been discarded by a government unable to recognise its worth – but why is that?

It seems that the Tories are in an ‘art panic’. They’ve made it clear that, when it comes to careers, they only conflate value with direct, high economical contributions. In layman’s terms, the government wants Brits to make shedloads of money, and prioritise stable, conventional jobs over ad-hoc, unreliable work – which art, admittedly, can be a lot of the time. Tories have long prioritised money over, well, everything, and there’s a long-held idea that artists can’t make money easily (we’ve all heard of the ‘struggling artist’ trope). When running a country whose economy is in free-fall, it’s understandable that they’d look for weak links and try to eliminate them.

But this idea about art being an unemployable industry is a myth. Back in February 2020, before the shit hit the fan, the government revealed that the UK’s creative industries were growing more than five times faster than the national economy, contributing almost £13 million every hour. In reality, one third of creative arts graduates are working in arts, design and media professions – all areas directly related to their degree, according to a survey by Prospects Luminate. Overall, 50.2 per cent of respondents were in full-time employment, with an additional 20.6 per cent in part-time employment.

The Conservatives not appreciating the importance of the arts is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Artists aren’t contributing as much to the economy because their platforms and resources have been taken away. The dent in the art world’s contributions – which only dropped from £10.8 billion to £8.5 billion by the way – was down to the cuts themselves. Their disregard of the arts’ importance also means that fewer well-paid traineeships, entry-level jobs and internships are on offer, and the ones that are available are more competitive than ever. This is deepening racial and economic disparities, as only middle to upper-class students can afford to take on these low-paid, entry-level jobs.

So if it’s not about economics – and we’re assuming the Tories did do the maths before whipping their scissors out and making cuts left, right and centre – their hatred of the arts could be down to something more sinister. Art does, after all, have a unique ability to give power to people from minority backgrounds: research has found that art is a powerful tool to promote equality, health, wellbeing and inspire cultural awareness, social connection and change. “[Art] can help people imagine what it’s like to be someone else, and understand the issues around gender inequality,” the report reads. Many artists have gained notoriety by challenging social norms and even calling out the government directly – we’ve seen this many times: from the anarchic punk rock scene in the 70s, to Act Up’s Aids awareness campaigns, to Emory Douglas’s work for the Black Panthers – and that’s not exactly in the government’s best interest.

Whether the attack on the arts is about money, power, or both, the government is not justified in their means. The financial case to save the arts is clearly there, but what about the emotional case? The cultural case? It would be laughable (if it wasn’t so sad) that the government is assessing art degrees for ‘cultural value’ when art defines culture.

Art has a value that goes beyond the realms of capitalism – something right-wing politicians will likely always fail to understand. Not one of us could have survived without music, TV, films or art during the pandemic. Art is what keeps us sane, happy, and thriving. It inspires us to be more sensitive, provides escapism, and creates pathways for subversion, for political understanding and solidarity. Art teaches us that lives other than our own have value – and this is a lesson the Tories will never learn.

Link: https://www.varsity.co.uk/theatre/23364

Varsity, Why cutting funding for the arts is not just an economic matter Lewos Andres, March 12, 2022

Culture secretary Nadine Dorris announced just over a week ago that, as part of the ‘levelling-up’ scheme, the Tories will cut more than 70m in arts funding for the capital and distribute it more widely across the country. Whilst a “huge historical imbalance” in funds for different parts of the nation is cause for deep concern, it is telling that the government must generate the money through cuts to our cultural institutions rather than additional investment. Sadiq Khan also emphasised in his response to the decision that it will “not only deliver a devastating blow to our city’s creative sector, but also damage the UK’s recovery from this pandemic… London has some of the most deprived communities in the country. Cutting arts funding for these communities is the opposite of levelling up.”

“The Conservatives have overseen a halving of local spending on the arts”

Whilst the Tories save themselves money in their strategy, i.e. being able to advertise an achievement but only whilst raising the money through cuts elsewhere, a more cynical eye may also suggest that the policy disseminates the funds into insignificance. Local spending on the arts should receive widespread funding injections, not made to share what is already meagre. If one were to accuse me of living in dreamland, where tubs of money are given to all small art clubs, it is not as if things were always as underfunded as now. Since the election in 2010, in what is a somewhat disturbing revelation, the Conservatives have overseen a halving of local spending on the arts. It recalls former education secretary Gavin Williams’ decision to begin “one of the biggest attacks on arts and entertainment in English universities in living memory”, by cutting funds for creative subjects and focusing on other priorities (Williams also enjoyed the offer of a knighthood this week, after only being fired twice). Who too could forget the 2019 advertisement campaign encouraging artists to retrain for jobs ‘in cyber’?

“Art will be maintained only for the group who can afford to generate its production themselves”

Whilst in a crisis, it may seem wise to focus on employment that will stimulate economic recovery. But the stigma of art as a luxury cannot be deemed accurate when, back in February 2020, official UK government statistics revealed that the UK’s artistic industries were growing over five times faster than the national economy. And yet Dominic Cummings, according to multiple sources, dismissively cried that “the f***ing ballerinas can get to the back of the queue”. It is from here that I will leave the economics aside, to ask why this continued attack occurs from an ideological standpoint? Permit me to wildly speculate…

Without significant support, art will be maintained only for the group who can afford to generate its production themselves. Conserving is predicated on already understanding the world, reconfirming and protecting its view. It follows that art which would confuse these borders, scatter normalcy and resist habitual tools of interpretation, is a matter of punching up at their authority. The discovery that Alexander de Pfeffel Johnson, or ‘Boris’ as he is known, has been writing a Shakespeare biography is not so much a love for art, but an insistence that the best theatre has already been created. It is why the old masters have to be re-sharpened, the possibility of an energising spark recaptured and made anew.

I, no doubt, am a victim of hyperbole; the problems with money in the wider artistic industry are not few, and it is far from some tranquil paradise. I will not break into a Percy Shelley-esque insistence that poets are the “legislators of the world”, but I will insist on the passionate need for active communication, creativity and questioning things as they are. This is what local funding does in communities. It cultivates an understanding of why every voice should matter in a democracy, and why a rich culture of artistic expression is essential to this process. Given too that it helps uncover the absurdity and cruelty of these decisions, perhaps it is no wonder its funding is being cut.

Link: https://www.nme.com/features/opinion/arts-funding-cuts-cambridge-footlights-chewing-gum-michaela-coel-2935010

NME, The Tories’ funding cuts threaten to make the arts (even more of a) playground for the rich The Government plans to halve financial resources for art and design courses in higher education. Where will the Michaela Coels of the future come from?

Alexandra Haddow,

6th May 2021 

I think back to times when people at university told me they’d gone travelling for a year before they started their degree, or written a play before they were 21, or gone up to the Edinburgh Fringe festival and acted in a play for a month. I would gawp and ask them, doe-eyed, ‘But HOW? I’m working all the time I’m not at university! Squandering my father’s dreams for my education on £1 WKDs and somehow scraping through with a decent degree!’

I’m sure I seemed facetious. Nobody ever once said, ‘Because my parents gave me the the cash’. I wasn’t trying to embarrass these people. I was almost unbelievably naive about wealth and class, and truly believed I must be rubbish with money. Then again, I defy anyone to manage to do much with the wages the ASDA checkout was paying.

My point here is that those people got a headstart in the arts, or indeed anything they wanted to spend time on, because they could. There’s nothing wrong with having money, of course, but the point is: if there’s a way to get funding if you don’t have wads of cash and someone in your family doesn’t own a moat or married a Mitford sister, then the playing field is at least levelled somewhat

With the Government having announced plans to halve the funding to arts students (the organisation Public Campaign for the Arts launched a petition demanding the Government to promise “proper funding for higher education providers to continue to deliver world-leading arts courses”), we can all look forward to the next 50 years of the arts being dominated by jokes about butlers and hilarious slapstick set at debutante balls. OK, I might be exaggerating here, but you get my point.

The Edinburgh Fringe is dominated every year by white, middle-class performers who can afford to potentially throw five to 10 grand at the wall and have a laugh. When I went up to perform for a week in 2019, I documented the costs for myself and my show partner Rich to go up and do shows for a week, with mostly free accommodation and customers paying after every show, plus taking a week off work (which for myself, as a freelancer, means taking a week off money). We lost £40. This is considered a success in Fringe terms; not so much in terms of my bank account.

I’m a huge fan of the Cambridge Footlights lot and their surrounding contemporaries – Stephen Fry, Hugh Lawrie, Emma Thompson, Rowan Atkinson and crew – who for a time, mainly in the ’90s, dominated British comedy. There’s no doubt whatsoever that these people are extremely talented. But they’re all very much from similar upper middle-class backgrounds, with similar stories to tell, and with a certain sense of humour. It’s only when money is ploughed into the arts that you start enabling those with different stories to tell.

Michaela Coel’s 2015 TV show Chewing Gum – adapted from her 2012 play – was something we’d barely seen on screen: a slightly (wonderfully) strange comedy with a black female writer and lead. Of course, Coel then went on to create the absolutely incomparable I May Destroy You, the likes of which we’d never seen before. When you cut funding to those studying the arts, who need funding, you essentially create a bottle-neck for those whose stories get to be heard. Not only that – it’s boring seeing the same things and the same faces. Faces who probably resemble those in the Government.

There’s been a huge outpouring of anger in the way the Tories have treated the arts in general, which has only intensified since the start of the pandemic. A right wing leadership is never going to favour the arts – firstly because they don’t perceive it to make money (their absolute favourite thing) and secondly because a lot of art is created by those on the left; by the marginalised, by those who have nowhere else to get their message across. In other words: the arts, traditionally, goes against authority.

There’s something to be said for the way that a lot of people seem to view the arts as pointless, as self-indulgent, frivolous and created to serve the ego. This is all true. But alongside that, they mean everything. You don’t play your favourite facts on your headphones every day. A Maths lesson has never challenged your beliefs on love. A Physics lecture has never made you laugh until you cried.

The arts are at once pointless and absolutely necessary. Imagine the last year without great television, good music, podcasts, performances, books, or art. If you take away the funding at an educational level for these things, those stories that are important to hear – those protests, that satire, that constant struggle– and resistance to those in power will disappear. And think about who that might serve.

Link: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/08/how-creative-of-the-tories-to-invent-a-culture-war-to-disguise-arts-cuts

The Guardian, How creative of the Tories to invent a culture war to disguise arts cuts — Everyone is the poorer when scientists are pitted against artists my morally bankrupt

Barbara Ellen

8 May 2021

The arts are being screwed over. Again. If we keep allowing this to happen, there will be an atrophying of the national soul the like of which the UK has never seen. The added insult is that this latest round of cultural vandalism is being wreaked under the guise of a bogus battle between the arts on one side and science, medicine and technology on the other.

A consultation by the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, and the Office for Students (which distributes funding) proposes almost halving a stream of higher education funding (£36m to £19m), meaning universities will lose millions for subjects such as music, drama, dance and art and design, as well as media studies and archaeology.

The Department for Education says the cuts relate to additional funding and will only affect some subjects. It says that arts subjects aren’t “strategic priorities” and that reforms will benefit “scientific/medical subjects”, targeting “taxpayers’ money towards the subjects which support the skills this country needs to build back better… those that support the NHS, high-cost STEM subjects”. In other words, the government is trying to turn this into a cultural cage fight, of (valid, crucial) scientists, computer students, nurses and the like versus (self-indulgent, feckless, elitist) drama students, artists and archaeologists. Not only that, a cage fight without end; Williamson said that he would “potentially seek further reductions” to funding such courses in future years.

Understandably, there’s uproar from the artistic community, with Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker saying that the proposed cuts made art education seem “expendable” and unimportant, when it isn’t. Certainly, it’s confusing to see one of this nation’s greatest assets – its powerful international cultural appeal (music alone generates billions) – chopped off at the ankles. Right now (after Brexit and the pandemic), the arts scene cannot sustain such major blows, especially when they mostly affect disadvantaged students. For years, there’s been a systemic erosion of working-class participation in the arts and this represents another big chunk off a crumbling cliff. Then there are the consumers. These kinds of cuts might first affect those involved in the arts, but ultimately they make everyone’s lives culturally poorer.

The government knows this and that’s why it’s emotively and cynically dragging the NHS into it. That’s why separate vocations/skill sets such as acting and medicine are being pitted against each other as an either/or deal. Perhaps there are scientists who feel engaged in a funding grudge match against dancers, just as there may be sculptors who feel in competition with nurses, but I doubt it.

It seems clear that arts subjects are being placed in false competition with these other valuable areas in order to reframe an outrage as practicality and necessity. In truth, the arts have always stood alone and should always stand alone. When it comes to the arts versus medicine, science or computing, it’s not a question of what do you choose or even how do you choose. Rather, it’s: why are we being asked to do so?

Novaramedia, Attacks on the Arts Are Part of the Tories Culture War

Chardine Taylor-Stone

18 May 2021

Earlier this month the government announced plans for a 50% cut to arts subjects at universities, arguing that taxpayers’ money should instead be put towards “subjects which support the skills this country needs to build back better”. Attacks on the arts are nothing new, of course: more than £860m has been stripped out of annual council spending on arts and culture over the last decade, while the Tories have also waged direct assaults on public-facing institutions such as galleries, museums and theatres. By turning their fire towards the institutions that nurture the creative talent of the future, however, the Tories could be about to immiserate Britain’s arts and culture industry for a generation.

There are a number of things driving the Tories’ attacks on the arts. First is the belief that – bar some exceptions for ‘high culture’ – the arts aren’t valuable because they don’t contribute to the economy (as illustrated by a now infamous government ad from last year which encouraged people working in the arts to reskill). Second is the fact that the sector is associated with liberal intellectuals and creatives who have long been critical of the Tories, and thus attacks on the arts are an ideologically-driven attempt to marginalise and undermine this threat to their power.

I guess Fatima’s next job *could* be in cyber – but imagine if we had a government that wasn’t led by a circus of Tories? Maybe then she wouldn’t need a ‘next’ job at all. pic.twitter.com/SnHlmMU9T5

— Liam Young (@liamyoung) October 12, 2020

Together, these beliefs and associations feed into another commonly held stereotype about artists that the Tories are now using to their advantage: that they’re middle-class layabouts who don’t contribute anything useful to society. This is a stereotype that, if we’re honest, resonates with a great many people irrespective of their class or politics. Hit songs, comedy sketches and more have been made about the hipster from a wealthy background, slumming it whilst at art school. Whereas these figures are predominantly depicted by left-leaning creatives, frustrated at the exclusivity and snobbishness of the arts, the Tories have taken this script, flipped it, and are now calling those same creatives the ‘metropolitan elite’. In short, attacks on the arts are now part of the Tories’ culture war. One the one side, we have ‘real’ working-class people: salt-of-the-earth folk with ‘proper’ jobs that contribute to the economy. On the other we have middle-class artists and the world of the ‘woke’: over-educated intellectuals who waste

taxpayers’ money and curtail the freedom of speech of ‘normal’ people. By exploiting Britain’s obsession with class and its cultural signifiers, the Tories are transforming their reputation from defenders of capitalist interests to Robin Hood figures, robbing the privileges of metropolitan elites (alongside immigrants, benefit claimants, and other constituents of the ‘undeserving poor’), and redistributing them to the ‘common man’.

These narratives are so ingrained within society that they can be easy to succumb to. But the left needs to be wary of falling into the ‘culture war’ trap the government has created – and is becoming extremely sophisticated at deploying.

For all their other benefits, we first need to refute the idea that the arts don’t contribute to the economy. Take Hull, one of the most deprived local authorities in the country, which became the UK City of Culture in 2017. Over the course of that year, 800 jobs were created, local businesses experienced higher turnover, and an estimated £11-17m was added to the local economy. The long-term legacy of the project saw a hopeful future for Hull, with better funded arts institutions drawing in more visitors and creating a sense of pride amongst city residents. Investment in the arts has created similar legacies in other deprived areas of the country, such as Margate, Folkestone and Stoke-on-Trent. What’s more, a report from the Arts Council in 2019 showed that productivity in the sector between 2009 and 2016 was greater than that of the economy as a whole, with the industry contributing £10.8bn a year to the economy by the end of this period and 363,700 jobs. The fact is that in their proposed cuts to arts education, the Tories are yet again choosing to prioritise waging their culture war over creating jobs in a successful sector.

Second, we need to tackle the Tories’ culture war head on, and refute the idea that the arts aren’t the realm of the working class. In doing so, we first need to make sure we don’t fall into the trap of buying into stereotypes about ‘middle class’ and ‘working class’ forms of art. Yes, it’s significant that the Tories are exempting courses that train classical musicians from their proposed funding cuts: classical music is an area that is still, despite the efforts of many, the preserve of the wealthy in that requires investment and training from a young age. But if the left buys into this logic, it can quite easily be spun into accusations of “woke” lefties stereotyping working class children by saying they don’t like or want to perform classical music. It also undermines those whose life’s work has been to bring under-represented groups into the classical world and push back against these stereotypes. We therefore need to reject these terms of their debate, and challenge the idea that some art forms are more valuable than others. At the same time, we need to do this in a way that isn’t patronising or presumptuous about working class tastes and interests.

Rather than getting caught up in the language of ‘privilege’, which often ends up dividing the working class, the left should focus on championing all forms of arts education – regardless of whether someone wants to be a classical pianist, a painter, a fashion designer or a grime artist. But this means going further than just defending arts education as it already exists, or even expanding the range of arts courses on offer to prospective students. The left shouldn’t simply settle for a system that leaves students in debt and forces universities to act like corporations rather than places of learning, but rather fight for free education for all.

Solving problems of access also requires a step-change in the culture of the arts sector itself, however. A university arts education shouldn’t be the only avenue into the sector, but right now degrees and postgraduate degrees are required to work in certain professions, whereas in the past paid apprenticeships were commonplace. What does it say about how the sector views ‘the Other’ when those who have not been through formal arts education – including huge figures such as the Pittman Painters or Cornish fisherman Alfred Wallis – are sometimes referred to as ‘outsider artists’? Time and time again, reports have shown that at senior levels in the arts, there’s a lack of career progression, a lack of diversity, and poor wages. But resisting the immiseration of the sector will require more than just fighting to retain what we’ve had over the last 11 years – or even what we had under the last Labour government. It’s only by uprooting widely-held beliefs about the value (or lack thereof) of the arts to society, who the arts are for, and who can become an artist that we can ensure the arts remain a vital part of the cultural life of Britain for current and future generations.

Link: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/07/22/uk-government-approves-50percent-funding-cut-for-arts-and-design-courses

The Art Newspaper “UK government approves 50% funding cut for arts and design courses” written by Gareth Harrus, 22 July 2021

 Education secretary Gavin Williamson says money will be directed towards Stem subjects

The UK government is moving ahead with plans to cut funding for art and design courses by 50% across higher education institutions in England. The Office for Students (Ofs)—the independent regulator of higher education—confirmed that the subsidy for each full-time student on an arts course will be cut from £243 to £121.50 next academic year (2021/22). The move will save around £20m, says the education secretary Gavin Williamson.

The University and Colleges Union says that students across 13 subject areas would be affected including art, design, music, drama, dance, media studies and journalism. “These courses face a 50% cut to their studies, which will make many unviable, forcing them to close,” the union wrote on Twitter.

A spokesman for the University of the Arts London says that in the long term, creative education in the UK as a whole will suffer a decline in quality as a result of these cuts. “This undermines the government’s commitment to the creative industries. Vulnerable institutions are therefore likely to be forced to reduce investment in high-cost technology and technical support. This will affect student preparedness for the workplace,” he adds.

“Devaluing the arts disempowers us as a society leaving us poorer, both culturally and economically. Arts education provides not only a place for teaching, but also essential centres of research,” says the artist Sarah Kogan on Instagram. The artist Bob and Roberta Smith previously told The Art Newspaper that these are “truly appalling cuts to arts subjects which will further divide society”.

In a statutory “guidance” letter to the Ofs, published in January, the education secretary Gavin Williamson said that “the Ofs should reprioritise funding towards the provision of high-cost, high-value subjects that support the NHS… high-cost STEM subjects [science, technology, engineering and mathematics]”.

The advocacy organisation Public Campaign for the Arts subsequently launched a petition calling for the government to commit to “proper funding for higher education providers to continue to deliver world-leading arts courses”; so far it has garnered more than 166,000 signatures.

A spokesman for the Ofs confirmed the 50% decrease in funding but adds that “this reduction is equivalent to around one per cent of the combined course fee [tuition fee of £9,250 and top-up grant] and OfS funding. There is no change to how these subjects are treated for other Ofs funding streams, such as the additional premiums awarded to universities and colleges to support disadvantaged students.”

Funding for specialist institutions will increase by £10m to £53m, he adds, with additional grants allocated to a number of institutions such as the Royal College of Art in London and the Courtauld Institute of Art.

Royal Academy: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/art-teaching-in-decline-in-our-schools

Art under threat: why teaching’s in deadline in our schools  by Amy Sherlock 20 March 2019

Amy Sherlock addresses the slump in art teaching in Britain’s schools, and the effect this has on the art education ecosystem.

From the Spring 2019 issue of RA Magazine, issued quarterly to Friends of the RA. This issue is an arts education special, to mark the 250th anniversary of the RA Schools.

It is a miserable morning. The windows fog with condensation as the packed bus crawls through rush-hour traffic. Not for the first time in my life, I am running late for school.  I’m on my way to Eltham Hill School, in Greenwich, south London, to sit in on a life-drawing workshop run by the Royal Academy for a group of GSCE and A-level art and design students. Today’s session will be directed by the artist Paul Brandford, an RA Schools alumnus of the 1980s, who has been leading workshops since the RA’s outreach programme was in its infancy (its school workshops began in 1989.) Joining Brandford is his regular co-conspirator, Anna Bird, who is modelling. She enters the school’s dance room, where the workshop is taking place, wrapped in a bathrobe. As there will be students under the age of 16 in the session, Bird wears a thin leotard rather than posing naked. Technicians unroll mats in the centre of the room and bring extra heaters to make sure she doesn’t get cold.  The students file in and Brandford directs them to sit in a circle around the mats. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, in brightly stockinged feet, he cuts a distinctly non-teacherly figure. He addresses the students with a sense of putting them at ease, explaining that the day is not a life-drawing ‘class’ but, rather, ‘a series of problems to be answered through drawings’. The students are set a number of tasks to work through. After each task is completed, work – including his own – will be shown and discussed. There is no right or wrong, only learning through doing.  Everyone grabs a piece of paper and a stick of charcoal for the first exercise. In the interests of research, I do likewise. Bird sits with one leg folded and one knee raised, resting her chin on her clenched fist. Brandford gives us 10 minutes to get something down. I start with a stick-figure outline of Anna’s sinuous limbs, but I keep getting the proportions wrong. I smudge out and try again. And again. I end up with a figure with the drastically foreshortened arms of a tyrannosaurus rex. I give up.  The students, however, must persevere – which is part of the point. As Brandford explains, “what I want the kids to take away from this is confidence: the courage to try and deal with failure and learn from things that don’t quite go their way.” It’s about, he says, “creating an atmosphere in which people feel a freedom to try something out.”  The students feel this, too. Towards the end of the workshop one of the Year 12 students tells me, “I was quite scared to do it, because I’m not very good at drawing from life. But it has been useful: it’s not just about the drawing, it’s about trying to get out of the mindset that if you draw something and you think it’s bad, you should just leave it. Normally I would just avoid something I wasn’t good at, but here we have to stick with something we might find challenging.”

The RA organises about 75 of these workshops each year. They are open to all schools, in all parts of the country for the same fee (£360, reduced from £560 by a subsidy from the RA), which covers the artist-facilitator and the model, and their travel expenses. Brandford tells me that he has been to schools as far apart as London and Edinburgh and from a wide range of socioeconomic contexts. Some schools have been booking workshops since the scheme began; this is the first one to have taken place at Eltham Hill.

Alice Pascual, the Eltham Hill art teacher who arranged the RA’s visit, hopes that the workshop will build students’ confidence with observational skills and perhaps produce drawings that can be used as part of their GCSE and A-level coursework. But, she says, “money is a problem: we just don’t have any”. The cost of the workshop was covered by passing on the fee to attending students, while the school provided the materials used. According to Pascual, budgets have been cut across the school’s art departments for the past five years, although the number of pupils taking the subject for GCSE has increased slightly in that time. She is not the only one feeling the pinch. In late September 2018, an estimated 2,000 headteachers and senior school leaders marched on Downing Street to protest against the effects of seven years of budget cuts to their institutions. Chancellor Philip Hammond’s ill-judged comments about October’s Budget including an additional £400 million to allow schools to buy “the little extras they need” – a drop in the ocean, according to many in the profession – raised hackles further. Despite the Department for Education’s claim that funding will be at its “highest- ever level”, reaching £43.5bn by 2020, a report published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Nuffield Trust in September shows a drop in spending per pupil in England by about 8% between 2009/10 and 2017/18 (about £500 per pupil). This reflects a 55% decrease in school spending by decimated local authorities. The report shows that secondary class sizes are larger and teachers are working longer hours. Capital expenditure (long-term investments such as building work or modernising equipment) has decreased dramatically, too – around 41% in real terms since 2010, says a Labour analysis of the report. To say that austerity is not over for many schools would be an understatement.

In this context, headteachers have difficult decisions to make about where to direct their resources. Often, the arts are the first things to go. In 2017, the Association of School and College Leaders surveyed their members and found that 72% reported having cut GCSE courses, with those cuts falling disproportionally on creative subjects. The vulnerability of arts courses has been exacerbated by their exclusion from the English Baccalaureate, one of the flagship measures of Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education from 2010 to 2014. The EBacc is a performance indicator measuring the percentage of students in state schools achieving grades 5–9 (formerly C–A*) in a range of traditional ‘academic’ subjects at GSCE level: English language and literature, maths, the sciences, geography or history and an ancient or modern foreign language.

The EBacc was introduced with the intention of ensuring that more pupils achieved a handful of core subjects that would allow them to stay in education to A-level or beyond, and to improve their employment opportunities. (The Russell Group, which represents 24 leading universities, followed suit by listing these as ‘facilitating subjects’ in its Informed Choices guides to prospective students.) It is the Government’s aim that 75% of pupils will be studying EBacc subjects by 2022, rising to 90% by 2025. This is, in itself, is not an unworthy aim, given the abundance of research indicating the negative impacts – on the individual and on the workforce – of dropping out of school at 16. It might shock people to learn that in 2010, only 21.8% of pupils studied a portfolio of subjects equivalent to the EBacc. However, many argue that the narrow curriculum is not suited to all learners. Moreover, it has effectively created a two-tier system in which non-EBacc subjects, the arts included, are deemed second-rate: both by schools under pressure to improve their positions in the league tables and by parents (understandably) eager for their children to conform to the latest guidelines.

We are on the brink of deskilling our students on a massive scale… I can see from the work I do in my school that the arts are a lifeline.

Andria Zafirakou, winner of the 2018 Global Teacher Award

https://baccforthefuture.com

The English Baccalaureate, or EBacc, excludes creative, artistic and technical subjects from counting in school league tables.

It is undermining creativity in schools and we need your help.

Bacc for the Future is a campaign to save creative subjects in secondary schools across England. It is supported by more than 200 creative businesses, education bodies, and organisations as well as more than 100,000 individuals.

Founded by the Incorporated Society of Musicians (ISM), the UK’s professional body for musicians, it successfully fought against the original arts-excluding EBacc in 2013. Since 2015, it has been fighting against the new EBacc with the aim of saving creative subjects in secondary schools across England.

Why is the EBacc a cause for concern?

Put simply: the EBacc excludes creative subjects.
The EBacc does not measure achievement in creative, artistic and technical subjects such as Music, Drama and Design and Technology which means schools are less likely to offer creative, artistic and technical GCSEs. In turn this is making it much less likely that pupils will study these subjects later, or participate in extra-curricular activities related to them.
Figures from the Joint Council for Qualifications show there has been a 34% decline in the number of state pupils taking arts and creative subjects at GCSE since 2010.
Studies by the University of Sussex, King’s College London, the Education Policy Institute and the BBC have shown a clear link to the EBacc.
The EBacc threatens the skills pipeline for creative industries in the UK, with severe consequences for their ability to recruit future talent. Without action by the sector to change the Government’s mind, the UK risks losing our USP as a global centre for the creative industries.
Why is the EBacc a failure on its own terms?
The Government’s target is for 75% of pupils to be sitting the EBacc by 2022 and 90% by 2025.
By contrast, in 2018, only 38% of state pupils in England sat the EBacc, and just 21% passed it. These figures have been almost static for years.
Even as it damages creative and artistic education in our schools, the EBacc is failing on its own terms. There is no justification for keeping it in its current form or for retaining unreachable targets.
link: https://epigram.org.uk/2020/10/21/the-arts-are-important/
Opinion | The Arts are important. Don’t let the Tories tell you otherwise
Published 21 Oct 2020 2 min read
By Alice clarke
It is the opinion of many that arts are an expendable hobby, incomprehensible as a ‘proper career’. The Arts are understatedly important and should be celebrated, not pushed aside
It is the opinion of many that arts are an expendable hobby, incomprehensible as a ‘proper career’. The Arts are understatedly important and should be celebrated, not pushed aside.
Last week, ITV reported that Rishi Sunak had suggested ‘musicians and others in the arts should retrain and find other jobs’. He later clarified that he had been talking about ‘all’ types of employment facing cuts and losses due to the pandemic.
However, not many callings face the same uncertainty and support that the Arts do; the Conservatives have failed to acknowledge and act on this and this is symptomatic of how the Arts are treated as a whole.
The Arts are understatedly important and should be celebrated, not pushed aside.
‘Fatima’s next job could be in cyber (she just doesn’t know it yet)’ declares government’s ‘Cyber First’ recruitment campaign, set to the backdrop of a ballerina lacing her slippers.
This campaign was originally launched in October of 2019. But the patronising sentiment of the campaign is too familiar. Indeed, it was met by the outrage of well-known creatives.
The Arts are not an indulgence or an afterthought. They are the livelihood and career of many, where one equates their importance to a career in STEM or not.

The London Project Proposal C-C-C-G Conversations on Curating Commercial Galleries

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