Arts in Bushwick Panel Discussion "Unpaid Labor in the Arts"
Opening Remarks
Thank you for inviting me to participate in this event - I think unpaid labor in and outside the arts is a crucial issue for us to understand and rally behind. I'm here today as an activist, but also as an artist who has held a variety of unpaid, underpaid, uncredited and otherwise unappreciated positions in the art world. But the truth is that I'm mostly looking forward to when this panel becomes more of an open discussion, because I know there are others in the audience here who can speak to this issue with depth and urgency. In fact, I think the very format of this discussion obscures our need for immediate, collective action.
I will tell a story from a recent action Occupy Museums did at the Guggenheim museum in collaboration with MTL, Gulf Labor, and NYU students, to shed light on the terrible slave-like conditions for migrant workers building the structures on the ultra-luxury Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi - structures that include a new Louvre, NYU campus, and of course, Guggenheim museum. Our action was extremely visible and disruptive, and included a series of banner drops, mic checks, and leaflets distributed to explain the issue to museum patrons. These actions usually end with us negotiating with police or security guards, and they were both there that night. As these things usually go, no one was arrested, but we did learn a lot from one conversation we had with a security guard, who told us that he generally supports the work we are doing, but that he’s worried that he’ll now have to explain this to his higher-ups. At one point he basically said: “You’re fighting for workers rights in some other country, but now these guards right here, paid $10/hour, will have to clean up your mess.” $10/hour is poverty wages, and at one of the fanciest cultural institutions in the country, we should all expect better.
We brought up this new information in a press release directed at Richard Armstrong, the Guggenheim Foundation’s executive director, who responded with a statement that, in trying to obscure issues and avoid responsibilities, revealed something significant about institutional logic today. He said that the new Guggenheim building is being constructed by an independent construction firm, and it’s labor conditions are being monitored by an independent monitoring fim. Security guards at the Guggenheim museum in New York are also supplied by an independent company. If you have a problem with pay and conditions, bring it up with those other guys - the Guggenheim cannot take responsibility.
Should this surprise us? You hear the same claims from Shell Oil when it spills millions of tons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, or from every company laying off thousands of workers, every university hiking up tuition… that there’s nothing we can do about it. Because these institutions operate within a neoliberal logic that puts the accumulation of wealth above the public welfare or any other moral obligation. We live in such overwhelmingly ideological times that this logic even predetermines actions taken by non-profits like museums and universities, and of course, governments. This is the logic of exploitation, and yes, it impacts artists, just as it impacts collegiate football players, dairy farmers in upstate new york, fast food workers, workers abroad, and the billions suffering every day from corruption and forced austerity. This is the logic that is concentrating capital in the hands of the very, very few, and leaving the rest of us to compete desperately for the scraps.
I believe we are in a unique position as artists and art workers for a few reasons. The first, is that the nature of our exploitation is unique. We are often distracted by the fantasy-value of cultural capital, and by that I mean that we believe that some how, some day, all this cultural capital we have accumulated will pay off in real capital. And this encourages us to take unpaid or underpaid positions in institutions we respect, institutions that themselves are being squeezed by the ideology of neoliberalism. We have been caught in a trap of over-identification with aspirational fantasies and under-recognition of the actual material of our conditions, because in reality, the odds for any sort of “successful” art career (as defined by the market) are so extremely slim. Make no mistake: I’m not advocating some pessimistic outlook. I’m saying that if we want things to get better, we have to take stock of where we really are, and recognize that the only people who will get us out of this trap are ourselves.
As artists we are also in a unique position in that we are trained to communicate, and also, I believe, to place value in the moral and emotional universe that makes us human. These are our strengths. We need to use those strengths to take more responsibility for the arts, to take control from the banks and real estate magnates that sit as trustees at our top “gate-keeper” museums, and we need to own the arenas of our activity. We need to work collectively and make demands, because instead of competing for scraps left to us, we will all have more when we share. Alongside making demands and operating within institutions, we can also recognize that as artists, we can widen our sphere of influence beyond the arts and operate independently of the path that, in fantasy, takes you from MFA to MoMA. I think that’s the real strength of projects like Maureen’s Institute for Wishful Thinking, and other initiatives that help us see our strengths as artists and as a community, and new paths forward.
I will tell a story from a recent action Occupy Museums did at the Guggenheim museum in collaboration with MTL, Gulf Labor, and NYU students, to shed light on the terrible slave-like conditions for migrant workers building the structures on the ultra-luxury Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi - structures that include a new Louvre, NYU campus, and of course, Guggenheim museum. Our action was extremely visible and disruptive, and included a series of banner drops, mic checks, and leaflets distributed to explain the issue to museum patrons. These actions usually end with us negotiating with police or security guards, and they were both there that night. As these things usually go, no one was arrested, but we did learn a lot from one conversation we had with a security guard, who told us that he generally supports the work we are doing, but that he’s worried that he’ll now have to explain this to his higher-ups. At one point he basically said: “You’re fighting for workers rights in some other country, but now these guards right here, paid $10/hour, will have to clean up your mess.” $10/hour is poverty wages, and at one of the fanciest cultural institutions in the country, we should all expect better.
We brought up this new information in a press release directed at Richard Armstrong, the Guggenheim Foundation’s executive director, who responded with a statement that, in trying to obscure issues and avoid responsibilities, revealed something significant about institutional logic today. He said that the new Guggenheim building is being constructed by an independent construction firm, and it’s labor conditions are being monitored by an independent monitoring fim. Security guards at the Guggenheim museum in New York are also supplied by an independent company. If you have a problem with pay and conditions, bring it up with those other guys - the Guggenheim cannot take responsibility.
Should this surprise us? You hear the same claims from Shell Oil when it spills millions of tons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, or from every company laying off thousands of workers, every university hiking up tuition… that there’s nothing we can do about it. Because these institutions operate within a neoliberal logic that puts the accumulation of wealth above the public welfare or any other moral obligation. We live in such overwhelmingly ideological times that this logic even predetermines actions taken by non-profits like museums and universities, and of course, governments. This is the logic of exploitation, and yes, it impacts artists, just as it impacts collegiate football players, dairy farmers in upstate new york, fast food workers, workers abroad, and the billions suffering every day from corruption and forced austerity. This is the logic that is concentrating capital in the hands of the very, very few, and leaving the rest of us to compete desperately for the scraps.
I believe we are in a unique position as artists and art workers for a few reasons. The first, is that the nature of our exploitation is unique. We are often distracted by the fantasy-value of cultural capital, and by that I mean that we believe that some how, some day, all this cultural capital we have accumulated will pay off in real capital. And this encourages us to take unpaid or underpaid positions in institutions we respect, institutions that themselves are being squeezed by the ideology of neoliberalism. We have been caught in a trap of over-identification with aspirational fantasies and under-recognition of the actual material of our conditions, because in reality, the odds for any sort of “successful” art career (as defined by the market) are so extremely slim. Make no mistake: I’m not advocating some pessimistic outlook. I’m saying that if we want things to get better, we have to take stock of where we really are, and recognize that the only people who will get us out of this trap are ourselves.
As artists we are also in a unique position in that we are trained to communicate, and also, I believe, to place value in the moral and emotional universe that makes us human. These are our strengths. We need to use those strengths to take more responsibility for the arts, to take control from the banks and real estate magnates that sit as trustees at our top “gate-keeper” museums, and we need to own the arenas of our activity. We need to work collectively and make demands, because instead of competing for scraps left to us, we will all have more when we share. Alongside making demands and operating within institutions, we can also recognize that as artists, we can widen our sphere of influence beyond the arts and operate independently of the path that, in fantasy, takes you from MFA to MoMA. I think that’s the real strength of projects like Maureen’s Institute for Wishful Thinking, and other initiatives that help us see our strengths as artists and as a community, and new paths forward.
