Three weeks ago, I took down my exhibition, Myth. Nothing sold. I tell myself that I don't care, but I would like the money in exchange for my work. Money, ultimately, is a form of recognition. I created the work without the expectation of money. But it still hurts, a little bit actually quite a lot financially.
I've often questioned how much more, or less joy I would have had if I just invested the money instead of buying creative tools and chasing the stories that swirl in my mind.
In fact, this exhibition, Myth cost me quite a lot to put on. Opportunity cost -From buying photographic gear, lighting, to conceptual mind time, organising people, transport, printing, framing, marketing, more transport, and countless hours of talking to people about it. Hundreds of hours, if not thousands, over a period of six years.
For months, for years, to the very moment I type this, it is the single greatest, and single most vulnerable thing I've ever done in my art practice - I can't help but think how little it meant to others, while it meant everything to me. The gulf between the importance to me, and the importance to others is something I struggle to articulate.
I can never be in their shoes, and they, never in mine. My anatomical feet are too big. My professional feet wear shoes far too large for the occasion, not finding the edges, the toe box, or the heel. Perhaps I am wearing clown shoes in a professional photographic and artistic context.
Yet here I am again, tapping my thoughts out.
My images tell stories that I myself struggle to read. Complicated, hidden symbolism layered in colour theory, composition and delicately posed hands. My stories use words that I sometimes struggle to write. There's a lack of confidence in the act, and a certain suspicion which arises when along comes praise. Yet, that is ultimately what I want from work. Praise.
But praise isn't always about money, it isn't a simple "good job buddy" or "your work is amazing". Praise is a conversation about the work. Praise is giving me sources for further reading, images to observe, or stories and influences to explore in more depth. Of discussing esoteric things like evocation (but not in a magical, mystical sense) of thought.
The pictures may have hung on the walls of a public space, but alongside them, and all around them unseen, lingered my calls for conversation and education about the chain of influence, consequence and inspiration that cascaded into the image over years as they unfurled. This was not the only stench around the work. There was also a desire for monetary recognition of the work.
I can, and will continue to bemoan the fact that creatives do not get paid a living wage. Lots of professions do not, but the median artist is a lot less well off than the median person who works a shift at the local fast food factory, or scoots about doing menial tasks for someone else. In fact, they're often the same person.
And even when you aggregate those things together - it isn't enough - because art, artists, and creators are not given the time or the spaces to engage more broadly with their work, the work of others, and the community.
As we enter a new era where people will likely soon have robotic assistants in their houses doing their menial tasks for them, paying a corporation a subscription fee for the pleasure of extra time, traded, most likely for increased competition at a job with fewer hours, as that home-assistant robot will no doubt be ubiquitous in the workforce - what the fuck are we going to do with our selves, with our time, with increased competition for a decreased slice of the capital pie?
We are approaching a rapid phase of economic development and destruction. In order to develop something, you must first destroy whatever was there before.
Will we see the Neo-Luddites?
Will a robot want to buy my Art? Will a robot come to your concert and listen to your song? Perhaps as creatives we need to get our recognition from robotic appreciators who appreciate on behalf of their monstrous, mortal custodians.
No. In that direction, madness lies, lurking and sinister, dehumanising and lacking authenticity.
That is not what an Art exhibition that now sits back in the very boxes to which it was returned, and from which it once emerged, needs. Art only flourishes when it is seen. Photography, in particular, only has meaning when it is observed.
Mine sits in boxes, waiting for the chance to be lied to again. A price placed by its side, a hook in its back, a label on the frame. It waits to be transmuted to money, and all I want from it is a conversation. To eavesdrop on the discussion, be it formal, and informed, or unsophisticated and crude.
The one feedback that I got about the work was "They would look amazing larger." Yes they would, but almost certainly, then - with the decreasing amount of wall space in people's homes, and the decreasing amount of wall space in venues, galleries and public spaces that isn't plastered with a moving montage of advertising, they also wouldn't sell.
People don't make a place or a space for Art. People don't open their wallets for Art. But in times of distress, uncertainty or discomfort, Art is the first place they often visit, be it a song, cinema, visual, literary, or the mere architecture of an asylum's hallway.
My art is my own locked asylum, and I don't know where the keys are.
Have you ever considered renting out the gear you own? If there's a large sum of in-demand lights and lenses for example. Given how expensive all of this stuff is, and how slow it can be to make it all back, the first thing I'd have in mind is how to pay it off or at least breakeven using it beyond my own personal use.
I always appreciated the productions I'd work on that knowingly pissed their money away on creating something, knowing that the recognition would be received but absolutely none of that money would return. In some ways it was more for the accolades that could come and potentially push them forward with other productions.
I don't think it would be all that viable to rent out my gear long term, I'm too risk averse, too far away from the big "events", and people who need my stuff probably already have it, or would buy it anyway.
I have a wedding to photograph in ~20 days, and I may reconsider my thoughts about camera ownership again after that - but deep down, having that available as an outlet for creativity is something that I will be sure to appreciate when / after starting my new job next week.
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I'm really sorry it ended this way. I keep thinking... You know I'm a regular at exhibitions of any kind and keep thinking if choosing the wrong place to exhibit is the reason. I'm not sure why you choose a café, maybe you thought it's the best place or because that was available, I don't know. Maybe the idea behind it was that people would go there to have a cup of coffee and also have a chat about art or life in general. I keep thinking you might have targeted the wrong crowd or the crowd in the wrong place. Don't bite my head off please.
I'll tell you something else. There's a photo club in my city. Don't ask me what are the requirements to become a member as I have no clue, but I suppose you would qualify for a photo club in your city. These photographers have regular exhibitions in dedicated exhibition rooms, where people go to, to see art of any kind. Have you tried to pursue this route? Being independent is great but being part of a club would give you some advantages you need to get started.
Again, don't bite my head off. Just an idea from someone who has some experience in this field. There's a place, a café in my city that is hosting small exhibitions, or maybe I should say they are exhibiting art on the wall, but that doesn't mean they can attract the appropriate crowd as people go there for a cup of coffee in the first place. I rarely visit the place because it makes me feel awkward.
The venue wasn't really my choice, its where the festival put me! So nothing lost from that, Im not going to bite anyone's head off! :p
Regarding photo clubs: yes, they do exist. There's a few of them. Now please dont bite my head off when I say (with confidence!) that my skill and technical abilities far exceed the typical fare found in those clubs.
They do not have regular exhibitions, and and they even more rarely hire a professional model to teach their members the most basics of portraiture. I consider myself above and beyond them from a mastery standpoint.
I may rerun the show in a proper gallery space - but I am going to guess that I won't make back the cost of putting on a show - but I want to do it all the same.
If I can sell this body of work, I break even on all my camera gear - but it isn't always about the money, its about that well of creativity that I keep throwing buckets of hope down into.
I won't. That's your assessment, why would I bite your head off for expressing what you feel?
Looks like photo club means different things in the world. The one we have here is participating in international exhibitions and the members have won several awards each year, not to mention the exhibitions all the time.
Anyway, good luck, I hope you can achieve your goals, whatever they are.
I have no real goals when it comes to my photography and I think I just realised thay now :p (I'm being serious!)
I think I just enjoy the "magic" of light and try to share that with others. Try to make them think a little.more deeply about the image as an object.
Thank you, you sparked off a trail of thought I can explore. :)
I was just trying to see if the place has the "blame". Obviously you have to find your niche in this industry, which is not easy.
Anyway, good luck and don't let the outcome beat you. If you know a bit of art history, you know the majority of the artists have been in your shoes, some all their life and had become famous only post mortem. Not that this is going to make you feel better.
Ok, going now before I upset you 😬
My eventual death motivates me to create, my thesis (which is now on peakd as a collection) was about how death was represented in Art, so I am no stranger to the topic of dead artists and death! :)
I start my new job on Monday, so I will have less time to think, which some would say is a good thing :D
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I empathize with your disappointment. I once persuaded a gallery to exhibit my work, not exclusively, just a corner where my drawings, of interesting faces, people doing interesting things, and some interesting and beautiful species of local moths with a brief description, their range and habits, species names, etc., were available for sale. They liked my stuff, kept it on display for a year. Nothing sold. Eventually they had to reclaim their shelf space and now some of these pieces hang on my walls. I enjoy them, at least.
Sorry, bro.
When they say "Create the work you want to see" as the ultimate form of creativity, the monuments to (commercial) failure hang on our own walls as a reminder of our latent avarice.
Not only only to hope for capital, but the certain greed each and every creative (or at least, me) has to send bucket after bucket into the well, in the hopes that something sublime, something perfect, something ideal will emerge from the watery depths.
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In these economic times people also aren't splurging on art. Sadly. I'm sorry for your disappointment. Don't hate me, but they'd also look great on greeting cards or notebooks. Not online, but perhaps alongside the exhibit or in local stores. The Oracle would look lovely on a notebook. But then you don't get the conversation you want, the other forms of recognition you crave.
A UBI for artists would be amazing. I can just hear the online naysayer trolls now. Australia would never accept such a thing. They barely accept art.
A UBI for everyone would be great. Imagine how much happier and healthier we'd be as a society! It must come from somewhere, though. Until then, existence is all just a pain in the neck!
I think UBI is slavery. I will not accept it. I just worked 20 hours in two days, and as long as I can do that, I will live. When I can no longer carry my weight, I will prefer to die free than be kept as a pet.
That's just me, though.
Is there any fiction that has explored a world with UBI?
So much (and I've been reading a lot of Dick lately) is dystopia - but I am almost afraid of reading the utopian side of the coin - because dripping behind that facade will undoubtedly be the blood of those who couldn't wouldn't and refused to function.
I think we're conditioned to forever need and want - and your subsistence based on your value (work:life) feels to me like a form of slavery onto itself.
To whom, or what? A frog subsists on it's acquisition of prey no less or more than I do, and everybody does. However, society has developed specialists that raise prey species, produce electricity, roof houses, etc. We have further developed mechanisms of exchange - money - that enable us to predate, build, and empower vicariously by exchanging our specialty work for that of others.
When I earn my pay, to whom am I enslaved?
When I do not, I am enslaved to my paymasters, and will do as they prefer to keep receiving my pay, just as I do the work the community requires to receive my pay for working. This is the danger of UBI, that them dependent on it - and through inflation, everyone will become dependent on it - must grovel to the demands of the paymasters to get it.
That is slavery.
Edit:
https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/mouse-heaven-or-mouse-hell/
I recently finished VALIS by our mutual PKD - It influenced me in a small way, if we are just machinations of the universe, perhaps the monster of reality itself is a slave.
This then turns my thoughts back to whether the universe is deterministic or a place of free will.
A slave has no choice, they must do their master's bidding, and I ask myself, are our minds slaves to our bodies, or the other way round? What sort of strange symbiotic or parasitic relationship do we have with the calorific content we consume, the energy we borrow, and return back into the void?
Perhaps here, not the place for such a discussion, but that video yoy shared of Dick's speech really did give me a different perspective on the nature of reality as he described it. A more open philosophical approach than my prior nihilism / atheistic / scientific approach to the cosmos and all being, and something instead more charged with energy and mystique.
I have also been influenced by PKD, and many other authors of Golden Age scifi, as well. I have considered consciousness much in the recent decade, and research showing how little and poorly we understand it. For example, when we're 'unconscious', such as sedated or sleeping, it has been shown that we're just unresponsive, but our minds are very active. Anyone that has remembered dreaming has realized their minds were working hard when they were sleeping. Calling that state 'unconscious' shows we don't have words in English (or any language AFAIK) that really are able to discuss consciousness, or our minds, spirit, soul, or etc.
We just have no idea, really, what we're actually talking about. Another thing is that we can't detect consciousness directly. There's no rays, fields, or forces that consciousness is we can measure. The only way we can detect consciousness is for animate creatures capable of making conscious decisions, such as learning a maze, taking actions that show they are making conscious decisions. We experience our consciousness ourselves, but that's anecdotal, not scientifically useful data.
What was really interesting to me is the finding that slime molds are shown to make conscious decisions, the above referenced learning to get through a maze, and they are single celled creatures. They only have one cell nucleus. They don't - can't - have brains, which are multicellular organs. This proves that brains aren't the source of consciousness, because single celled creatures are shown to make conscious decisions without having brains. I think we use our brains like calculators, and brains are useful to conscious beings and that is why they have evolved.
Here are some relevant physics to this issue. First, the No Hiding theorem shows that no information can be lost to the universe. This regards the state information of particles falling into black holes, but applies equally to our conscious minds and the death of our bodies. It means our persons, spirits, souls, or whatever you want to call what we are (we aren't meat, as hangnails prove) aren't lost to the universe when we die. Then there's the Principle of Least Action, which is a very weird fact that particles and forces always take the route that requires the least amount of action potential between a starting point and an end point. What's been shown to be happening is that every particle and wave actually take every route, and what is expressed in the physical universe is that one that required the least action potential out of all possible routes. Extraordinary and not what I would have anticipated, but, when you think about it, is the only way that forces can always take the route requiring the least action potential. But that leads to the Many Worlds/Multiverse hypothesis. Every single possible divergence from the universe we experience is taken, and every single universe that is possible, that results from each of those divergences, exists.
Perhaps that will blow your mind up, like it did mine.
Here's a cartoon I found that expresses the consequences of UBI, too.
IMG source - Malone.news
When we depend on income, we must do what it takes to get that income. In a couple hours I'm going to go work on a neighbor's house for which the neighbor will compensate me. That is the income I depend on for my survival, and what I do to get it.
UBI is income handed out by government. When money is handed out to everybody it causes inflation. If everybody has $50 that can be spent on hamburgers, will any hamburger vendors charge less than $50 for a hamburger? This inflation will force people to take UBI to survive by this inflationary means. I am also sure that everyone, without exception, considers government(s) to be corrupt. That will be the source of UBI. Just as my neighbor has certain requirements for providing me compensation, there will be requirements to receive UBI, and these requirements will be set by corrupt government.
I have a very derogatory view of government, and I am 100% confident that I do not want to meet their requirements to receive UBI.
I will prefer to hold corrupt government to account, as the Dutch did their Prime Minister in the 17th Century when they revolted and ate his liver, and that will require that I am able to support myself independently of UBI. If I must have UBI to live, how can I hold the provider of UBI to account for crimes without killing myself in the process? That is how UBI will enable the most horrific tyranny that is conceivable, and that is why I won't accept it, and will prefer to die free than be kept as a pet by the monsters that have corrupted government today.
It's really good work.
Thanks mate, just wish it made me some coin!
I totally relate to that.
I almost went to see them Wednesday. My wife's job being taken my a machine forced me to reconsider. I literally had the browser window open and a ticket in cart!
Never been to one of their shows, and my wife's been to many, so it's always, "Nah..."
"Nah-thing else matters"?
Ba da bing!
Oh honey, yolo!
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The delicious irony here. Those who advocate for a UBI while robots do the physical labour often say we can turn to doing the creative things we enjoy, yet much of this can also now be done by AI and where is the point if it doesn't feel like it's even contributing much to the lives of others. One might suggest that it's meant to just be about whether it makes you happy, but the fact that we are communal animals inevitably means that other's enjoyment or need for our contributions in life also affect that happiness. Besides, why do so many people think no-one enjoys doing manual labour and want robots to do that for them? I actually enjoy making a difference with my hands and the physical activity that comes with it.
Art is an interesting conundrum. Not only is beauty in the eye of the beholder the concept of the importance of that beauty will also vary from person to person. For example I love to see art that I find attractive or drawn to, but I find it hard to justify paying out for something if it doesn't serve a purpose. I'll enjoy it displayed somewhere else, but not need to take it home. Our crockery has been chosen because we liked it's appearance, but we have few pictures on the walls and next to no ornaments because they would require dusting and shelves to display them and clutter gets stressful. Yet other's practically collect ornaments and other artwork to the point where there's so much on display it's just noise to me at this point and no one item can be singled out for full enjoyment. A client's fiance recently moved in with him and brought her display cases with her collections of collections. So many things are broken, furniture included, but they still hold value for her, even a glued back together pottery toilet roll holder with chunks missing. I think that even if you bought her new, intact things to replace them she'd still keep hold of the damaged ones and just add the new things in. The house is now so full they've moved the mattress into the living room to sleep and all 3 bedrooms are veritable storage rooms. There are pictures stacked against the walls in the passageway waiting to find places on the walls and the display cases are so chock-a-block with ornaments it's hard to see anything individually. I don't understand it at all, but she loves each and every piece and will happily tell anyone who'll listen (or not listen) all about it. I accidentally broke one of her glasses one day, so I offered to replace it with some Coca Cola glasses we had from someone else. We didn't really like the design of them, so it was an opportunity to get rid of them. My client accepted the offer saying that his fiance collects Coke glasses. These glasses are now in a display cabinet not even being used like the glass I broke. She hadn't even noticed that glass had gone missing, but I think she'd notice if anything went missing from her collections.
I'm not even sure where I was going with this ...