Aims of todays lecture: To analyse the conditions in which contemporary art is produced To (re) evaluate your function as an artist within a broad context Address making a living in the current climate of instability and enforced austerity Consider issues of free labour, particularly internships, in the cultural sector

1. SelfOrganise
Week 3

2. Aims:
• To analyse the conditions in
which contemporary art is
produced
• To (re) evaluate your function as
an artist within a broad context
• Address making a living in the
current climate of instability and
enforced austerity
• Consider issues of free labour,
particularly internships, in the
cultural sector

5. Institutionalised Precarity

6. “For the large numbers of
students enrolled on art courses,
conviction in their vocation is
contradicted by the lack of
official acknowledgement for
the occupation on the world
outside education.”
(Naomi Siderfin Occupational Hazard. P.30)

7. • Despite its rarefied status,
there is very little money to be
made from contemporary art,
when compared to average
income levels, at least not for
artists
• Individual artists and ARIs
function with some proportion
of income coming from
patronage, be it state,
commercial or private

8. I know what you did last summer

9. The romanticised view
of privileged artists in
search of a precarious
existence and artists
complicity in the
reproduction of their
precarious conditions

11. The Rise of the Volunteer

12. Addressing this situation is
complicated because our desire to
produce culture and to be free
and creative is entangled in the
manipulations of unpaid work.

14. Collective Cultural Action
Collective action solves some of
the problems of navigating the
market-driven cultural economy
by allowing the individual to
escape the skewed power
relationships with the institution.

15. Re-activate: art as creative
collaboration