There
was a plan that Paula and I would publish this writing
simultaneously: her on the terrific blog Show Me the Money connected
to her performance of the same name, all of which I explain further
down, and me here (which isn't as obvious as it might seem), but on
the day she posted I was on a very delayed train home from Norwich
and time has been running away with itself ever since. I'm as
grateful to Paula for the lengthy email conversation we had about the
ethics of me doing this writing (some of which extracted below) as I
was for the commission. Writing this made me aware of just how much
of a stranglehold certain capitalist beliefs have over my brain: I
have so much work to do to sort myself out.
The
quandary
18/12/2015:
From Paula
I
have been thinking it would be really great to have some critical
writing on this preview I have in March: a genuine critical
reflection from someone well-versed in the forms and content I am
exploring. I haven't budgeted for this but could afford 100-200
pounds. Would that be fair?
30/12/2015:
From Maddy
I've
been involved in quite a few conversations over the past year to do
with the ethics of artists asking/paying for writers to write about
their work. Most people I encounter have a much bigger problem with
it than I do - !!! - and yet, my initial reaction to your email was:
for you to pay me to review your work would be inethical. So that was
weird. I think I might feel most comfortable doing [something
interview-based], rather than a review. And, at the risk of sounding
greedy, is £200 OK?
31/12/2015:
From Paula
To
be honest, before I first contacted you I would not have considered
approaching anyone in this way. But I was advised that it was
important for the future of the show to have some critical writing on
it, and as a one-off preview of a work by an emerging artist this was
very unlikely to happen. Finding a mid-point that seems ethical for
both of us is a good idea. Maybe an interview-based work is that. As
the money would be coming out of my own pocket, it would help me a
lot for it to be 150.
3/1/2016:
From Maddy
Your
email was super useful: that thing about how bloody hard it is for
emerging artists to get their work written about – or even seen –
is so true, and usually I'm the first to advocate the culture shift
that makes critical dialogue possible within the making (as I type
this, I realise how far removed I am from my own idealism). In terms
of actual cash, I'm really fine with £150. I don't know if you've
had a thought about where it should be published. Will talk to Exeunt
about publishing there.
4/1/2016:
From Paula
The
Exeunt thing was a bit of a trigger, as much as I would love to be
featured in Exeunt, paying for it really didn't feel right. I need
the writing, there is not a market for reviewing a one-off preview by
an emerging artist, I am making a piece against unpaid work, I don't
want you to work for free. My idea is to pay you to write something
to be published on both of our blogs that explores this quandary.
The
'review'
My
first encounter with Paula Varjack is in spring 2015, at an industry
gathering at Ovalhouse in London dedicated to questions of artist
development. Paula's presentation is one of the high points: it gets
across everything dubious about scratch culture (the expectation that
artists show work in an early stage, for little or no pay),
juxtaposing criticism and provocation with a witty powerpoint display
that brings laughs with its lightness of touch. In that 15 minutes, I
decide Paula is **interesting**. Translation: next time she's
performing, I want to be there.
That
impulse is confirmed when I start reading the companion blog to her
new work, Show Me the Money. Part-diary, part-resources log,
part-political commentary, it uses newspaper articles, photographs
and links to other people's writing (there's some spitfire material
from Scottee) to contextualise and open up Paula's argument: that art
is work, graft and craft, and the people who make it should be paid
accordingly. In doing so, the blog transforms the show from a single
event to an ongoing, far-reaching discussion. This, I like.
So
I arrive at Rich Mix for the preview performance of the show itself
with heightened anticipation. But whatever I'm expecting, I'm soon
surprised, and charmed, by two things: firstly, Paula's framing
confession that most of the choices she has made in life have been
guided by money and a desire for security, because I've done that too
(and loathe myself for it). Secondly, it turns out she's not 24 or
28, as I'd thought, but 37. 37! If you don't appreciate how
delightful this is, then clearly you're not yet the wrong side of 35.
I'm so far the wrong side I'm almost 41.
Age
is a subtle strand in Show Me the Money, as it might be coming from
an “emerging”, “early career” artist who confutes the
simplistic assumptions attached to that labels. When making it, Paula
travelled the UK interviewing other artists about their relationships
to money, security, ambition and place; people at various stages of a
career, working across multiple disciplines, some of whom are
comfortable, some surviving, some barely scraping by. Their voices
are useful: what could feel self-absorbed, as Paula describes her
shift from behind-the-scenes producer to on-the-stage performance
artist, becomes instead a portrait of an industry. And she uses the
film footage conscientiously, not to confirm everything she thinks
but to interrogate it, complicate it and expand it. There's a piquant
section in which she intercuts Scottee, fulminating on the lack of
transparency in theatre-venue finances, with some candid quotes from
Annabel Turpin, chief executive at ARC in Stockton-on-Tees,
explaining why that lack of transparency might be necessary.
This
conversation with the film footage gives the show a documentary feel,
but Paula's deftness with multimedia disrupts that easy
classification, and introduces a whole lot of fun. The dread inspired
by Arts Council England is cheerfully conveyed through a youtube
montage of office scenes and an electro-pop funding application. She
adopts Iggy Pop as her alternative god, paying worship by paying
royalties. But while all this activity gives the show brightness,
sadness prickles beneath its surface, that to work from a place of
love should also be so difficult and limiting. Among Paula's pantheon
of inspirations is an uncle who carves wooden birds: she always
admired him for following his passion, but eventually noticed the
sacrifices he made for the sake of art. What will that sacrifice mean
for her? Not having children? Having to leave London, her home?
Following
the argument, I'm intermittently torn. Part of me is sympathetic;
part of me wonders whether these questions about sacrifice are
indulgent. One of the people Paula interviews is Dennis, who works as
a cleaner at Rich Mix, and in another building: between the two, he
has a 70-hour week with one day off. He does this because he hates
the insecurity of not having a regular paycheck and not having
savings in the bank for every eventuality. On the blog, Paula points
out that the dichotomy between “cleaner” and “artist” is a
false one: many people she knows finance their art work through
cleaning jobs. But is making art arduous in the same way that
cleaning is arduous? Why worry about artists' survival when so many
people are barely getting by? (And that's just thinking about the
working classes of the UK, who are thriving compared with refugees
attempting to live here.) Might the access to making art and the
platform it brings be privilege enough?
The
'interview'
The
word privilege crops up a lot in Show Me the Money, and Paula is
upfront about her own. Background, education and a modicum of
financial security made her decision to become an artist possible:
she owns her flat in London, having bought it back when she was a
salaried employee and prices weren't astronomical; her parents
enabled her to study at university; even now, her family could help
her if she were ever desperate. She shares this information
willingly, and would gladly give more: during a Q&A section,
we're invited to ask for any further detail we want. This leads
straight into what is, for me, the highpoint of the show: a
ferociously delivered, meticulous breakdown of the costs of making
it. Every penny is accounted for, including what she's paying for
this piece. I love it, because no one publicises their finances in
this way, and that secrecy creates the conditions for pay disparity
and prevents the general public knowing what it actually takes to get
a performance work on the stage.
And
yet, at the end of the budget breakdown, Paula glares at the audience
confrontationally, as though affronted that we've had the temerity to
want to know this stuff. It confirms a nagging sensation I've had
throughout the show, of being in some way chastised. If artists have
a problematic relationship with money, she says, it's down to three
things: precarity, anxiety, and in particular, a lack of
transparency. It's easy to get the impression that everyone working
as an artist in the UK is supporting themselves fine – but dig
deeper and all the hidden support systems emerge. This person is
financed by their partner, that person has savings backed up, this
person owns their own home, that person supplements their art career
with other jobs. But I'm confused: not all of these are privileges,
and even if they are, how blameful are they?
It's
the main thing I want to talk to her about when we meet a few days
after the performance. The note of confrontation at the end of the
budget breakdown was, she admits, a mistake: “While I was in it, I
was thinking that energy doesn't make sense. It came out of the fact
that when I did a scratch at Battersea Arts Centre, one guy was
really angry and gave me a feedback form that was all black spiky
capital letters; on the back he had a whole list of questions, like
how much was your grant, how much did you pay for dah dah dah. To be
honest, I was kind of traumatised by it, because his main attack was
that the show hadn't been developed enough – but it was a scratch!”
As
for the things I'm hearing her classify as privileges, there's
something I'm misunderstanding. “I know a lot of people that seem
to just be surviving on this, and I was really upset about that: what
am I doing wrong? But then when people admit, oh, of course I'm not
surviving on it either, that's not really about privilege: that's
about people not being honest about having other income streams. The
fact that we as a community are not being honest enough makes me feel
really angry, and that's something I think is bigger than the
artistic community.
“If
I'm really crude and reductive about it, there's a thing that's
ironic looking at the American ideal, the Dream, and English
cynicism. One side basically says: everything is a meritocracy, it
doesn't matter where you come from, you just have to work hard enough
and you can fulfil the dream. And the other says: it doesn't matter
what you do, everything is decided, and anyone who has ever achieved
anything is only there because they've got it all laid out. Both are
really unhelpful. It's good to be aware that people do have privilege
and access that other people don't have – but so many people have
said to me that they won't apply, for instance, for public funding
because they don't have any ways in. But if you don't even apply!
Both are not useful attitudes to have.”
Paula
has this dual outlook because her early years were split between
London and Washington (her father is British, her mother Ghanaian);
she's also pretty clued up about economics because, as it emerges
during the show, her father worked for the International Monetary
Fund. What this background hasn't given her, however, is much direct
contact with the British class system, its entrenchments and
resentments. “I thought I had an understanding of it: I don't have
an understanding at all. At
all.
Having that realisation when making a show on this topic was
terrifying, but maybe it's also a gift. For me, literally everyone is
on exactly the same level, and because I genuinely don't judge
anyone, I think I was able to have conversations with very different
people, people who would offend each other if I allowed them to be in
the same space.”
And
yet, what was that nagging feeling I had of being chastised during
the show if not a feeling of being in some way judged? After we speak
in person, I email Paula a frank breakdown of my own privileges –
the university education, the house I own, the husband with the
full-time job and salary and pension, the nest-egg savings, all of
which make it possible for me to take on commissions like this one –
and the equivocal feelings I have about them, especially set against
my upbringing, with working-class, poor, immigrant parents. I want
the conversation about privilege to be open to such equivocations and
confusions, I tell her. But the more we talk, the more I realise that
what I'm actually doing is performing the outrage of the privileged
at having their privilege called out. Paula isn't judging me. I'm
judging myself.
To
ask whether art is as arduous as cleaning, or whether we should care
about artists' survival when there are refugees to worry about, is
typical of a class-based, capitalist mindset that classifies and
judges, too. Paula is attempting to dismantle this by asking her
audiences to think about “the human cost” of making art: the
“time and energy and effort” involved. Hence the emphasis on
transparency – or, as she phrases it within the show, “full
disclosure”. And she's doing that in a context specifically
resistant to such disclosure. “Obviously England is not the only
culture where people are not fully open about money, but there is a
very particular awkwardness and anxiety about money here. I asked
everyone [I interviewed] what their salary was, and what their
outgoing payments were, and most of the time that question was
incredibly awkward. You could tell they didn't really want to answer
– or when they answered, they seemed OK, but afterwards they'd
contact me and ask please can you not put in how much my house is
worth, or the fact that I own a flat. Especially in London: no one
wants to admit they own a flat in London any more.”
Is
there even a relationship between these financial figures and an
understanding of the “human cost” of making art? Arguably, yes –
because of the connection between precarity and anxiety. Anxiety is
one of the key human costs of working in the arts: I know this
because I live it. Since making the switch from a relationship with
writing about theatre/performance that was fundamentally journalistic
to a relationship that attempts to exist within art's own frameworks,
my salary has steadily dropped; I don't yet know what I earned in the
financial year that just ended, but in 2014-15 it was less than
£10,000. What Paula anticipated to be a half- to full-day job has
taken me at least 22 hours, if not more, stretched over six weeks. I
juggle commissions with being a mum, and worry constantly that I'm
neither working hard enough nor present enough for my kids. It's a
privilege to do this work. It's also self-exploitation.
The
point of unity
We
could, of course, give up. I could stop writing, Paula could stop
performing, we could all get regular jobs. Except maybe it's not that
simple. In another striking sequence in the show, one of Paula's
interviewees, writer/performer Femi Martin, talks about trying to get
a job outside of the arts and meeting only rejection. “That's the
ironic thing,” says Paula, “even if you get to a certain point
where you think, this was a nice idea but enough now – which I'm
very much feeling – it's not so easy, because suddenly you're in a
situation where no one wants to fucking hire you any more.”
Instead
of giving up, Paula argues, our impulse should be to fight. “Artists
are actually in service: even if we're making something that is
escapist or experimental, we are in service to society and we can do
things that the media can't. I really strongly believe that austerity
[as a solution] is a lie, and there's a lot of economists who agree
with me on this, and having a conversation that says it's the NHS or
the Arts Council is the wrong fucking conversation. First of all, the
amount of money that the arts get in the overall budget of local
councils is so tiny. And every business sector gets support: the arms
industry gets support, the automobile industry gets support, most
businesses get some form of support – and they get much more
support.
“I
wanted to make a show about a national question, which is: how do we
value art and what is the human cost of art and what does paying for
the arts and funding for the arts say about how our society values
art and artists? I think art is really valuable for society.” It is
that fundamental belief which drives her to call for better pay, and
me to join my voice with hers. Is it inethical for her to pay me to
write about her work, when there is so little space within the media
where this can happen, and so few paid opportunities? Is that the
right question to ask?
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