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30/11/2000

Cultural Capital/Cultural Labor

New York University, New York

Conference on cultural work.

This conference will focus on the labor conditions in the arts and culture sphere. These include the means by which institutions in this sphere determine how artists are valued, enable artistic career paths or offer other means for artists to practice their art or other kinds of work in museums, galleries, streets, stages, public, private and non-profit arts organizations, educational institutions, etc. Conference participants will discuss organization among artists, recognizing that in some disciplines (e.g., the visual arts) the very act of organizing has often led to an erosion of prestige, while it is accepted in other professional venues like orchestras, television and filmmaking.

Panelists will consider how artists and cultural workers more generally do not receive full compensation for the value that they provide to the above mentioned institutions. As communities have become a point of reference in the way artistic value is created, panelists will discuss what this means for the compensation that artists may receive while local participants in "community-based" projects most often get little more than "enrichment".

If "communities" engage in cultural activity (e.g., street or neighborhood musicians), as per the anthropological understanding of many foundations, then why are they not accorded the same terms of remuneration as the artists whose work is indebted to those communities? Other issues to be discussed include the entrepreneurialism that new initiatives (e.g., Creative Capital) promote among the artists to whom they give grants, as well as the self-subsidy that artists often provide by taking "day jobs," whether in arts-related fields or not.

The conference will generate discussion across the whole spectrum of the arts sector-artists, curators, museum and gallery personnel, public and private institutions such as arts councils and foundations, distribution enterprises, community spokespersons, and academics-in order to help understand how systems of support and valuation are structured.

We are both interested in how these systems of support operate for recognized visual artists, performing artists, writers, and professionals in the cultural industries (film, tv, video) and concerned about the criteria by which these systems certify artists and not others (e.g., amateurs and "vernacular" cultural workers, often belonging to minority communities, such as healers or street musicians). Although culture and creativity are not the province only of sanctioned artists, they are overwhelmingly recognized as the only "cultural workers" who merit compensation, as inadequate as that may be.

The panels will include artists and cultural workers who can speak to the following models of labor: (1) the entrepreneurial; (2) the academic; (3) nonmarket venues, such as those provided by nonprofits, community-based work, and service work for nonartistic institutions (banks, sanitation departments, etc.); (4) unions and other labor oriented associations; (5) self-subsidized. Additionally, the panels will include curators; funders from foundations, arts councils, corporations, artist spaces, etc., as well as scholars who have researched artists' career paths and other cultural labor issues. FRIDAY DECEMBER 1, 2000.

New York University - 34 Stuyvesant Street - New York - Tel. 2129983725

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