Re: Day Job?

Here's the thing:
I understand that the concept that nearly all fine and conceptual artists
don't make enough at their craft to make a 'living', and mitigates 'day
jobs'. However, I look at this as a result of a society that undervalues
the worth (or use value) of art and artists. Although documenting this fact
is a reality, I also wonder about how such a show reifies some very
unfavorable stereotypes (you're an artist? so, what's your day job?). I
understand the interest in this, and as with the net.ephemera show, it's a
good strategy.

However, I wonder.

At 05:08 PM 9/19/2002 -0400, joy garnett wrote:
>gee whiz, mark, are we all but pawns in your ruthless climb to stah-dom?
>
>;)

i thought it was the other way around…

;-)

>"I have come increasingly to see Rhizome.org as a social sculpture and the
>work I do there as art work."
>–Mark Tribe
>
>
>
>Day Jobs
>Online Exhibition:
>
>http://www.newlangtonarts.org/view_event.php?category=Network&archive=&&eventId5
>
>[…]
>Mark Tribe
>Projects
>
>Day: Rhizome.org http://www.rhizome.org
>Night: Rhizome.org http://www.rhizome.org
>Mark Tribe's art work featured in this exhibition can be seen as
>performance as much as media art. Rhizome.org is an online community that
>Mark describes as "social sculpture" in the tradition of Bueys. [sic!]
>Here, product is not as important as process, though it would be a
>disservice to abstract Rhizome.org to the level of a conceptual art prank
>when, in fact, it has had a very real effect on the social lives of many
>new media artists and offers many practical services. This close-knit
>integration of a conceptual social work combined, inextricably, with
>practical real-world services is exemplary of how new media artists are
>sometimes able to play and work in the same media. Since media is the
>built environment that we now live in full-time (as opposed to a weekend
>leisure destination), artists find it possible to move into the "main
>house" – sometimes without anyone noticing them sneak in.
>
>– Richard Rinehart
>
>[…] etc.
>
>
>+ une dans la gueule, and two for tea !
>-> post: [email protected]
>-> questions: [email protected]
>-> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
>-> give: http://rhizome.org/support
>+
>Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
>Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php

Patrick Lichty wrote:
> I understand that the concept that nearly all fine and conceptual
artists
> don't make enough at their craft to make a 'living', and mitigates
'day
> jobs'.
> However, I look at this as a result of a society that undervalues
> the worth (or use value) of art and artists. Although documenting
this fact
> is a reality, I also wonder about how such a show reifies some very
> unfavorable stereotypes (you're an artist? so, what's your day job?)

Heh heh, like the old joke: "You're an actor? What restaurant do you
work at?"

Seriously, though, I think the show is a great idea and I respectfully
suggest that your concern is 100% aimed in the wrong direction. I've
always wondered why it is that artists always make a concerted effort to
*hide* the fact that they have day jobs? Have you ever seen an artist's
CV that talks about their skills or experience as a picture framer or as
a corporate HTML coder? Almost never. Most seem to sugges that the
artist is and always has been a full-time successful artist. It's as if
we're afraid to admit that we have day jobs out of fear of looking like
we are underacheiving – or worse, having the appearance that art-making
is a hobby.

Even the "Day Job" show seemed to select artists who have
"Art-World-Approved" day jobs, the kinds of day jobs that artists can
freely admit to having without embarassing themselves: teaching,
curating, art journalism, etc. What about the artists who, by day, wait
tables or who answer phones at law firms or who sell real estate?

The way the art world practically forbids even the mention of day jobs
reminds me of the way exclusive white-shoe Sporting Clubs used to frown
upon gentlemen having jobs *at all*, or the way the olympics used to
exclude members of the working class under the seemingly-idealistic
"Amateur" ideology. You are only permitted to participate if your hands
are unsullied by the wounds of actual labor.

I think it is a good thing to 'expose' to the world (that is, to put the
subject on the table for open discussion) the sad state of affairs about
how most artists (those without inheritances, at least) have to spend
the lion's share of their waking hours "working for the man".

It reminds me of a friend of mine who wrote an article for the NY
Observer about how many East Village rock "stars" were, in fact, trust
fund kids. He profiles about six local rock stars who had bad-boy
reputations yet who quite honestly would never have to ever work again.
Many of them were quite angry about this - how dare we openly discuss
the fact that the creative industries have a class system!

-Cf

[christopher eli fahey]
art: http://www.graphpaper.com
sci: http://www.askrom.com
biz: http://www.behaviordesign.com

By the way, (mainly for Mark) this was more of a question rather than a
critique regarding what shows liek this represent.

> Here's the thing:
> I understand that the concept that nearly all fine and conceptual artists
> don't make enough at their craft to make a 'living', and mitigates 'day
> jobs'. However, I look at this as a result of a society that undervalues
> the worth (or use value) of art and artists. Although documenting this
fact
> is a reality, I also wonder about how such a show reifies some very
> unfavorable stereotypes (you're an artist? so, what's your day job?). I
> understand the interest in this, and as with the net.ephemera show, it's a
> good strategy.
>
> However, I wonder.
>
>
> + une dans la gueule, and two for tea !
> -> post: [email protected]
> -> questions: [email protected]
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>

> Seriously, though, I think the show is a great idea and I respectfully
> suggest that your concern is 100% aimed in the wrong direction.

No offense taken. I think you're reading me wrong. I understand the
pragmatic issue here, and to take a broader look at practices is surely
interesting, as well as the larger context fo the artist. Admission of
having a day job is no problem either. I just get a little 'curious' about
the perpetuation of the 'struggling/atarving/dilletante/avocational' artist
sterotype, not from the standpoint that it's not necessarily based on a
grain of truth, but I'd like to propose models that challenge these
stereotypes.

This show may not do it, but it surely accesses the cultural capital
invested in these 'types, and it makes me wonder about that a little.

However, I look at some of the artists and understand that some of their
'day jobs' as well as 'night jobs' are their practice, and that breaks the
cycle.

So, perhaps my argument might be a little shaky, but I still want to
question the framing of that show a little based on those assumptions as a
point of conversation.



I've
> always wondered why it is that artists always make a concerted effort to
> *hide* the fact that they have day jobs? Have you ever seen an artist's
> CV that talks about their skills or experience as a picture framer or as
> a corporate HTML coder? Almost never. Most seem to sugges that the
> artist is and always has been a full-time successful artist. It's as if
> we're afraid to admit that we have day jobs out of fear of looking like
> we are underacheiving – or worse, having the appearance that art-making
> is a hobby.
>
> Even the "Day Job" show seemed to select artists who have
> "Art-World-Approved" day jobs, the kinds of day jobs that artists can
> freely admit to having without embarassing themselves: teaching,
> curating, art journalism, etc. What about the artists who, by day, wait
> tables or who answer phones at law firms or who sell real estate?
>
> The way the art world practically forbids even the mention of day jobs
> reminds me of the way exclusive white-shoe Sporting Clubs used to frown
> upon gentlemen having jobs *at all*, or the way the olympics used to
> exclude members of the working class under the seemingly-idealistic
> "Amateur" ideology. You are only permitted to participate if your hands
> are unsullied by the wounds of actual labor.
>
> I think it is a good thing to 'expose' to the world (that is, to put the
> subject on the table for open discussion) the sad state of affairs about
> how most artists (those without inheritances, at least) have to spend
> the lion's share of their waking hours "working for the man".
>
> It reminds me of a friend of mine who wrote an article for the NY
> Observer about how many East Village rock "stars" were, in fact, trust
> fund kids. He profiles about six local rock stars who had bad-boy
> reputations yet who quite honestly would never have to ever work again.
> Many of them were quite angry about this - how dare we openly discuss
> the fact that the creative industries have a class system!
>
> -Cf
>
> [christopher eli fahey]
> art: http://www.graphpaper.com
> sci: http://www.askrom.com
> biz: http://www.behaviordesign.com
>
>
>
>
>
>

Mark
When do we get to see your paintings that you were talking about at the
Postmasters lecture. We all would love to see them.

Question:
Is Rhizome.org a collaboration?
Or is it just the code that allows us to communicate with each other?

Cheers
Lee
on 9/19/02 7:10 PM, Mark Tribe at [email protected] wrote:

> At 05:08 PM 9/19/2002 -0400, joy garnett wrote:
>> gee whiz, mark, are we all but pawns in your ruthless climb to stah-dom?
>>
>> ;)
>
> i thought it was the other way around…
>
> ;-)
>
>> "I have come increasingly to see Rhizome.org as a social sculpture and the
>> work I do there as art work."
>> –Mark Tribe
>>
>>
>>
>> Day Jobs
>> Online Exhibition:
>>
>> http://www.newlangtonarts.org/view_event.php?category=Network&archive=&&event
>> Id5
>>
>> […]
>> Mark Tribe
>> Projects
>>
>> Day: Rhizome.org http://www.rhizome.org
>> Night: Rhizome.org http://www.rhizome.org
>> Mark Tribe's art work featured in this exhibition can be seen as
>> performance as much as media art. Rhizome.org is an online community that
>> Mark describes as "social sculpture" in the tradition of Bueys. [sic!]
>> Here, product is not as important as process, though it would be a
>> disservice to abstract Rhizome.org to the level of a conceptual art prank
>> when, in fact, it has had a very real effect on the social lives of many
>> new media artists and offers many practical services. This close-knit
>> integration of a conceptual social work combined, inextricably, with
>> practical real-world services is exemplary of how new media artists are
>> sometimes able to play and work in the same media. Since media is the
>> built environment that we now live in full-time (as opposed to a weekend
>> leisure destination), artists find it possible to move into the "main
>> house" – sometimes without anyone noticing them sneak in.
>>
>> – Richard Rinehart
>>
>> […] etc.
>>
>>
>> + une dans la gueule, and two for tea !
>> -> post: [email protected]
>> -> questions: [email protected]
>> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
>> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
>> +
>> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
>> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>
> + une dans la gueule, and two for tea !
> -> post: [email protected]
> -> questions: [email protected]
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php

Valery Grancher
Projects

Day: Roland Barthes au College de France http://212.180.64.237/
Night: 24h00 http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibits/24h00/index.html
Valery Grancher's net artwork 24h00 makes a return from this curator's own
day job when, in 1999, I helped him implement this project at the UC
Berkeley Art Museum in my role as digital media director there. This project
is a collaboration between the artist and college art students and bridges
the space between performance and net art. Hidden from many viewers,
however, was a performance equally as fascinating as the project itself.
That performance took place when Grancher sold this work to the Berkeley Art
Museum and developed his first-of-a-kind contract for selling net art. This
contract and sale helped qualify the artist for his current position at a
large French publisher, where he is in charge of acquisition and development
of internet projects. Cementing the seamless continuity of what can only be
seen as Valery's ongoing career/performance/life, he has carried many of the
same sensibilities from 24h00 into a project for his employer to create a
web resource around the archive of Roland Barthes, both projects structured
around ideas of temporality and community.

– Rick Rinehart

Artist Statement
When I produced 24h00 with Rick Rinehart at the Berkeley Art Museum I
was at the same time starting a project dedicated to electronic publishing
in one of the most important and prestigious publishing companies in France,
Editions du Seuil. In this company, as the Hypermedia project manager, I
started to think about a platform and a way to publish online the lectures
delivered by Roland Barthes at the College de France from 1976 to 1980.
Working with sound archives and manuscripts I got the opportunity to know
better Roland Barthes through this production and document – especially
regarding the concept of 'idiorythmie', or 'acedia'. These concepts focus
on the relationships among monks in Athos Mount in Greece, which is a very
small community dealing with same time and space; they are isolated within.
24h00 defines portraiture in a new way, as the relationships between 24
persons during the same day at the same place. The point I gather from
Barthes' documents is a feeling about what may happen between new media and
the elementary behavior regarding humans as exemplified by the monks. This
is exactly the focus of 24h00.
– Valery Grancher

Valery Grancher's performance-based net artwork explores synthetic digital
realities and related realms. His net art piece 24h00 (1999) addresses
temporality and community concepts also present in his various job-related
Internet projects. He has exhibited works worldwide including Multiple
Personalities (2001) at Haines Gallery in San Francisco and Webpaintings
(2002) at Incognito in Paris. Grancher lives in Paris, France.

At 09:49 PM 9/19/2002 -0400, Christopher Fahey [askrom] wrote:
> I've
>always wondered why it is that artists always make a concerted effort to
>*hide* the fact that they have day jobs? Have you ever seen an artist's
>CV that talks about their skills or experience as a picture framer or as
>a corporate HTML coder? Almost never. Most seem to sugges that the
>artist is and always has been a full-time successful artist. It's as if
>we're afraid to admit that we have day jobs out of fear of looking like
>we are underacheiving – or worse, having the appearance that art-making
>is a hobby.

leaving your day jobs off your artist cv doesn't necessarily indicate an
effort to hide–it just makes sense if the day jobs aren't relevant to you
art practice. in my case, i include the things (like my rhizome job,
teaching jobs, curatorial jobs and my one commercial web design job way
back when) that i think are relevant and leave out the things (like my job
in a group home for teenage kids, or my jobs in restaurant kitchens) that
don't really relate to what i do as an artist. if i were tim rollins (an
artist who works with kids as his art work), i would probably include the
group home job on my resume.

i wanted to participate in the day jobs show because i'm particularly
interested in the ways in which artists are now taking alan kaprow's idea
of the "blurring of art and life" out of the relatively rarefied and
controlled world of happenings and into the messy, complicated and often
compromised "real" world of their employment. doing things that function
simultaneously as art and as something else raises the stakes of this kind
of interdisciplinary activity. i'm interested in the blurring of art and
science, art and activism, art and architecture, art and design, art and
business, art and commerce, etc. just to give an example: it's one thing to
make political art (hans haake) and another thing (to me a more interesting
thing) to engage in political activism as art (electronic disturbance theater).

> leaving your day jobs off your artist cv doesn't necessarily
> indicate an
> effort to hide–it just makes sense if the day jobs aren't
> relevant to you
> art practice. in my case, i include the things (like my rhizome job,
> teaching jobs, curatorial jobs and my one commercial web
> design job way
> back when) that i think are relevant and leave out the things
> (like my job
> in a group home for teenage kids, or my jobs in restaurant
> kitchens) that
> don't really relate to what i do as an artist.


Yes, this totally makes sense. I guess I was thinking less of people
with Day Jobs totally irrelevant to their art CV (like restaurant work)
and more of people for whom there is a strong correlation between their
day jobs and their art practice. (Most non-artists leave irrelevant jobs
off of their professional resumes, too. I leave my job at the aquarium
out of my information architecture resume, for example.)

One of the salient points of the Day Job show is that, particularly with
digital artists, the line between the Day Job and the Art Career becomes
blurred. By day I make flowcharts for clients like JP Morgan or Tom
Jones (!). By night I make flowcharts for conceptual art projects. The
practices are eerily similar.

I know many other digital artists whose jobs and artwork are also
incredibly similar - HTML slingers, Flash artisans, animators, game
designers, information architects, etc. Java database programmers who
make conceptual art, or graphic designers who make artwork that
incorporates or undermines corporate iconography. (In fact, I know
sculptors who are special effects fabricators, painters who are also
commercial illustrators, electronic musicians who also make radio
jingles.) It is this gray area where I feel the art community should
feel more free to openly discuss day jobs - their own and those of
others.

My reason for wanting this untabooing is twofold. First, to make it
easier for people to understand just how hard it is for artists to do
the work that they do (this is related to my own petty class jealousy:
if I have to keep a day job to afford to be an artist while many others
do not, I want people to know why).

Second, I want to create some legitimacy to the day jobs themselves, to
open the art world up to the idea that, in many cases, the Corporate Day
Job can be an asset to someone's development as an artist. We see this
blurring already with groups like Futurefarmers, where the art world
comfortably treats a company like an art collective - which are they? I
think it's cool that their portfolio includes conceptual art and beer
promotions.

I'd like to see more of this in part because I want to see corporate
culture more open to spending (that is, losing) part of their
profitability by putting a company's resources into making art. As I've
said before, there is an entire strata of great digital art ideas and
potential projects that, like filmmaking or theater, are unbuildable
except by large teams, for which a corporate structure is ideal.

-Cf

[christopher eli fahey]
art: http://www.graphpaper.com
sci: http://www.askrom.com
biz: http://www.behaviordesign.com