Category Archives : Valuing Labor in the Arts – April 2014


Valuing Labor in the Arts: Renee Rhodes

Ok, so I have been working on a project with a friend and I am thinking about ways to get heavier on purpose, un-interface my need for collectivity, and to settle endless desiring and the pursuing precariousness.

I wrote a little shortie poem, related-ish…
part of desire and want and longing are done for survival
right, like if we didn’t hungrily want our mothers milk no calcium would get to our young baby bones and we would die

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Valuing Labor in the Arts: Beth Grossman

I appreciated that this conference had plenty of artists leading the workshops….and I trust that they were all paid, well. I know how much work it is to prepare for these workshops. I appreciated and enjoyed that Cassie Thornton used her persona for parts of our workshop, Big Soft (BS) Contract, and I think it gave people some space to get in touch with their feelings about debt.

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Valuing Labor in the Arts: Katherine Mezur

I participated in two workshops. The first: Collective Actions, Moving Thought lead by Sara Wookey and the second: The Exchange Archive led by Caroline Woolard. When I first walked into the registration area I was excited to see a real mix of people, and I later found out that they artists from different disciplines, established artists, new artists, curators, and scholars, but mostly a diverse array of visual artists. I was impressed by the interest and drive of these artists to take on the deep problems of artwork value and compensation.

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Valuing Labor in the Arts: Eleanor Hanson-Wise

This post is by Eleanor Hanson, co-founder of The Present Group, a creative studio working at the intersection of art and technology. Much of her creative practice has been focused on developing proposals-in-practice for new funding models in the arts. Projects of The Present Group include an art subscription service, a web hosting service that funds an intermittent arts prize, Art Micro Patronage – an experimental exhibition platform showcasing and funding artwork online, The People’s E-book – a free online tool to build e-books, and Compensation Foundation – an online database for gathering and displaying how cultural producers are compensated.

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Valuing Labor in the Arts: Gibson Cuyler

Well, it is a sunny May Day today and I sit here at my computer and I am filled with thoughts and excitement for the possibilities for the future of labor and the arts. It is especially appropriate to think of these issues today, as May 1st…is the international day for Labor Awareness. I have always considered the delicate dance between Art and Commerce to be a fine art in itself.

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Valuing Labor in the Arts: Maria Billings

I attended Lise Soskolne’s session on “Defining Value, Labor and the Arts”. W.A.G.E. was founded 2008 in New York to research artists fees, or lack thereof, and to create a minimum fee schedule for artistic services provided to non-profit organizations. The whole area is so complex that I found the restricted scope very useful.

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Valuing Labor in the Arts: Chelsea Wills

I came home thinking about was risk and the number of ways that we as artists deciding (or being pushed) to take on risk with our work. All kinds of work include risk, and I relish some kinds of risk in my creative work. Artists work play many roles, some of its purposes are that our world is interpreted and re-interpreted to create newness , it bring attention to things unseen, it offers and enacts space where intersections are possible in previously unimagined or forgotten ways.

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Valuing Labor in the Arts: Sarah Wilbur

As a cross-sector dance maker and scholar who writes about dance makers and institutional dependency, I appreciate how Helena and Lauren’s slippery “Grey Matter” quiz resists tidy “yes-no” answers. The very structure of a quiz mandates self-reflection. By hailing artists who attempt to fashion careers through the nomadic practice of “gig dependency”, the Grey Matter quiz should constantly be retaken.

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Valuing Labor in the Arts: Todd Gilens

Thank you for a delightful and energizing conference; the positive effects of considering common difficulties in community should not be underestimated, and I wonder how to translate some of the exercises into accessible, ongoing form. Where could I find a dozen practitioners to reflect together on professional dilemmas? How often, in a year, in a career, would such a gathering be useful? Who are my ideal respondents?

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