[spectre] Looking back to a situation in '94

[helen varley jamieson]

one way around it is what we did with the CyPosium
(http://www.cyposium.net/); this event had a zero budget. we decided not
to waste our time & energies trying to find funding for a totally online
globally distributed symposium about cyberformance, & instead just got
on with it. all of the organisers and presenters volunteered their time
and resources, and it was free to attend (also no travel or
accommodation costs for anyone!). certainly it would have been nice to
be paid for our work, we all have to eat & pay bills; but this was a
situation where enough people wanted something to happen & just did it.
i think that everyone who participated felt it was very worthwhile to
them in myriad ways.

as an independent artist who is not attached to any institution, i often
have to decide whether to participate in conferences or not because of
the costs. every situation is different. i wouldn't pay to present my
work at an academic conference or an event that's got good funding, but
i often contribute at smaller self-organised events (which i tend to
enjoy much more than the bigger ones anyway) because it's something that
i want to support & the fees are usually realistic & flexible in terms
of participants' financial situations. for academic conferences, mostly
i have found that organisers do appreciate independent artists'
situation & if they really want you to be a part of it they will find a
way to make it work.

it is really important that artists & non-institutional participants are
included in conferences - usually more so for the academics than the
artists; the academics i've worked with recently certainly have regarded
participating artists as invaluable assets. attending conferences will
always have some degree of cost (even when i do get a fee, it's nowhere
near compensation for the time spent preparing, travelling, etc) but
good ones are an opportunity to exchange & network & learn. it's a
matter of chosing which ones are worth it & not being afraid to say no
to those that aren't.

h : )

On 16/04/15 9:17 23AM, John Hopkins wrote:
> Hei Mathias!
>
>> It was not so long ago when artist and non-institutional participants
>> were
>> considered an asset for festivals and conferences.
>
> Halcyon days indeed.
>
>> I remember that the group of invited artists to 1994 ISEA in Helsinki
>> threatened
>> the organizers with a boycott, in case we were forced to pay
>> conference fees.
>> Our argument was that we 1) did not have the money to pay for
>> conferences, 2)
>> that our supporting institutions, the arts councils and embassies
>> would not
>> understand that we have to pay for delivering artistic work and 3)
>> that these
>> festivals and conferences create income based on the participants'
>> input.
>> In the end, none of us paid.
>
> I also remember that instance there in Helsinki, long on 21 years ago.
> It would be interesting to see how a similar situation would unfold
> these days. Would the artists resist (*resistance if futile*)? Or
> would there not even be a mention of it. "You were lucky to be
> selected to be a part of our august event." ...
>
>> Today?
>
> Speaking from very recent conference experience, I became a bit of a
> pariah for trying to make a tiny re-adjustment of the system (all
> presenters had to register for the whole conference, although this
> wasn't stated explicitly until I got an email a week before after I
> had made a query as to why some sessions had individual registration
> possibilities and others not. I was told that those were only to allow
> the public to attend single sessions, that option wasn't meant for
> presenters.) I'm presently unemployed in that careerist sense, but
> submitted a paper and was also asked by a Canadian colleague to join
> in a panel. I felt bad about asking for a variance on the accepted
> protocol, but then, I was presenting content and bringing my own
> network and experience to the gathering at the same time as living on
> savings.
>
> The economic pressure on organizers from the wider institutional
> setting was such that in the end I was asked to pay for a day's
> registration, about 3x what I had hoped to spend (and about 3-4 weeks
> worth of food).
>
> I don't think the argument can be made in the US that a conference
> makes money directly for the organizers, although indirectly, the
> ultimate 'success' of a conference bolsters the university's prestige.
> The local community makes some profit on hotels and restaurants,
> airline flights, and this further reflects back on the university's
> status as an income generator. Money is made for someone, somewhere.
>
> These days, I thing a higher percentage of 'artists' have been
> absorbed into academic contexts, where there is funding (though
> certainly not in abundance) that is earmarked for conference
> attendance. This is a core element working to bolster the university's
> wider social status. (At the same time noting that few conferences
> actually interface with the wider social milieu!) Faculty *have* to
> present at conferences. The 'publish-or-perish' paradigm also
> drives/maintains/strengthens the hierarchic structure of the
> university itself. Conferences in the arts organized in the US, of
> which there are few, I suspect probably have extremely low numbers of
> non-academics. This is also a result of there being *zero* public
> funding for an artist to attend such things. It would have to be fully
> out-of-pocket for the artist. This provides an exclusionary result
> that threatens to keep the Ivory Towers completely ivory, outsiders
> need not knock.
>
> I can't really think of a way around this: it is a consequence of the
> socio-economics of academic institutions and the wider dis-interest
> and even hostility in the US towards education, culture, and the arts.
> It is also a consequence of larger forces at work by those who control
> system-wide flows of power.
>
> In Europe, where cultural funding is one order of magnitude greater
> than the US in a typical situation, things are a bit different, with
> many more non-academic funding options. Of course, it's been getting
> squeezed in the last years, but at least there is something!
>
> I think that all of these micro-stresses are manifestations of the
> fact that there are too many people on the planet all who are
> competing for limited resources.
>
> so it goes.
>
> jh
>
>

-- 
helen varley jamieson
helen at creative-catalyst.com <mailto:helen at creative-catalyst.com>
http://www.creative-catalyst.com
http://www.talesfromthetowpath.net
http://www.upstage.org.nz
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