Art Field As Factory
A discussion on the report by the Free/Slow University of Warsaw
We are invited by the Free/Slow University of Warsaw to participate in a meeting and a debate related to the first release of the report “Art Field As Factory”, which embraces two years of research concerning the division and the conditions of work in the field of visual arts in Poland.
As part of the research the FUW team interviewed almost a hundred curators, artists, technical workers and assistants from all over Poland and took a close look at around twenty art projects completed in Poland during the past three years.
On the basis of the visual questionnaires, the interventions of the art workers, the institutional analysis as well as group discussions, the report offers an insight into the economy of the Polish contemporary art’s circulation together with its respective explanatory systems such as moral convictions, desires and rationalizations.
The publication is distributed free of charge to the public, for example at the FUW’s Website.
In order to clarify the way in which the current art circulation is organized, the report refers to such concepts as “project”, “job insecurity”, “flexibility”, “human multitasking”, “competition and cooperation”, “selection mechanisms”, “social” or “symbolic capital”.
It also outlines several tendencies that are predominant in the Polish “art factory”, among which we should into focus the following:
1. The art market does not function properly, almost 70% of artists do not receive more than 10% of their incomes from the art market. The market is a mirage designed to motivate the artists to sacrifice.
2. The art workers operate under the influence of the mysterious “artisol”. Their professional fulfilment does not depend on the objective economic factors such as wages. They work because they love art, even though it brings them poverty. However, the long-lasting overdose of “artisol” causes frustration and burnout.
3. The most commonly mentioned form of injustice is not paying the artists for taking part in the projects.
4. The art is governed by the so called “packed lunch economy” – the artists get more support from their families than they do from either the art market or the ministerial scholarships.
5. In the art field people rarely take care of children or anyone at all. They rather have to be taken care of by others.
6. Everyone in the field of art only disposes of one decade – the vast majority of active artists are aged between 25 and 35. After that they “drop off”.
7. The gender-related discrimination remains invisible and unrecognized.