i have alot of conversations with various of my circle who do the artist thing about the problems with getting funding for projects and the simple reality that if you are able to do the art thing full time chances are good that much of that full time is spent chasing other grants. but the logic of the funding system overall is that artwork is good but that enabling the people who make that work to live and/or have a decent life for making that work is really not a priority. the result is that being-an-artist is either an aristocratic game or its a patronage game. same as it ever was. but to suggest that a labor market which makes space of more artists without providing them anything remotely like a way to live is disengenuous.
but you read alot about some alternative notion of art making as an aspect of what the "new creative class" does inside this thing they call the "new creative economy.."which seems mostly something that allows art-related non-profits/mediating institutions to talk back and forth to each other and to generate more grant revenues for themselves. not a whole lot seems to get through them to actual working artists. the relatively few that do support actual art-making end up being inundated with applications.
the other main patronage system was academic institutions, but there are problems there as well over the past few years in particular.
so it means nothing to say this stuff. it's really another sector of maybe-economic activity that could be made into something really interesting and productive and positive that is none of those things at the moment and is unlikely to be any time soon so long as conservative views of state funding have any credibility. we really need a whole lot more social democracy.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|