Post-Precarity Autumn Camp: How to survive as an artist?
During this autumn camp, the INC, Hotel Maria Kapel, and Platform BK invite fifteen recent graduates in art, design, and theatre to five days of workshops to boost the hard and soft skills required to live and work in the Dutch cultural sector. The resulting zine will be a toolkit for all (young) cultural workers, collecting insights on work in the gig economy, money flows in the cultural sector, experiments with crypto, staying happy and healthy, and durable self-organization.
When: September 27 - October 1, 2021
Where: Hotel Maria Kapel, Korte Achterstraat 2A, Hoorn
Program
Day 1: Working in the gig economy
09:30-10:00 – Arrival
10:00-10:30 – Welcome
10:30-12:30 – Workshop by Alina Lupu and Silvio Lorusso
12:30-14:00 – Lunch, introduction in the artistic program of HMK
14:00-14:30 – Introduction to zine-making
14:30-16:00 – Working together
16:00-18:00 – Guided tour through Hoorn
Day 2: Money flows in the cultural sector
10:00-12:30 – Workshop by Casco
12:30-14:00 – Lunch (with an introduction to the Fair Practice Code)
14:00-15:00 – Discussion on private money in the arts with Timo Demollin
15:00-16:30 – Working together
16:30-18:00 – Film program by PLOKTA
Day 3: Experiments with crypto
10:00-10:30 – Introduction by Geert Lovink
10:30-12:30 – Workshop by Rosa Menkman
12:30-14:00 – Lunch
14:00-15:30 – Working together
15:30-18:00 – Visit to the West Fries Museum
Day 4: Staying happy and healthy
10:00-12:30 – Workshop by Art Goss
12:30-14:00 – Lunch
14:00-15:30 – Working together
15:30-18:00 – Pecha Kucha
Dag 5: Durable self-organization
10:00-10:30 – Lecture ‘A Criticism of the Cultural Sector’
10:30-13:00 – Workshop by Koen Bartijn
13:00-14:30 – Lunch (conversation with Jip de Ridder)
14:30-16:00 – Working together
16:00-17:00 – Reflection
17:00-20:00 – Communal meal
Participation and results
Because of the Covid circumstances, to avoid labor-intensive application letter-writing at the end of the participants, and to create a group with diverse backgrounds and educations, we have decided to personally invite the participants. If you’re very interested in one of the day topics, please send an email to sepp@networkcultures.org, to see if we might be able to accommodate your attendance.
The knowledge built up during the program will be gathered in a publication, which will be freely distributed.
Research context
The Post-Precarity Autumn Camp is the kick-off event for a new INC research strand, which explores new principles and strategies for cultural work, policy, and solidarity after Covid19. A programmatic text (Dutch only) about this subject was previously published as an INC Longform, which can be read here.
Workshop descriptions
Working in the Gig Economy, by Alina Lupu and Silvio Lorusso
Most of us have used Freelancer.com, Fiverr, Helpling, Uber, and Thuisbezorgd – either as users or as workers. In this workshop, Silvio Lorusso and Alina Lupu. together with the participants, will create a checklist of all the different perspectives one can take to analyze these platforms: from interface design to the origin stories of the founders, and from stock markets to flagship offices and public campaigns. This generalizable methodology for looking at gig economy platforms will help you, the cultural worker, to consider how (not) to use gig platforms, and how to manipulate and subvert their structures.
Commoning Perspectives on Public Funding, by Casco
Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons is an experimental platform in Utrecht, where art invites a new vision of society. Casco has a long track-record of handling public funding as a common pool resource. Good examples are the Parasite Lottery, the Arts Collaboratory, and the recent Covid Solidarity Fund. In their workshop, Casco explains the (practical) principles behind these examples, and how they can be used by freelance cultural workers.
Experiments with Crypto, by Rosa Menkman
Earlier this year, NFT’s briefly dominated the world news. Cryptocurrencies keep skyrocketing and are here to stay. But it remains unclear how smart contracts and crypto can actually serve artists (instead of contributing to the destruction of the environment). In this workshop, Dutch artist, educator, and researcher Rosa Menkman will share the insights from her studies of crypto and netart from both critical and practical perspectives. Participants learn about the workings of these technological phenomena and the way they can be used to support cultural practices. Is it possible to use the online markets, while making the things you want to make?
Curriculum Veto, by Art Goss
Curriculum Veto takes as its starting point the CV: the ultimate, universally recognized, individualized standard that conditions labor. The abbreviation for the Latin ‘curriculum vitae’, or, ‘the course of life’, its name implies a consolidation of life and work; Curriculum Veto starts by critically investigating this conceptual entanglement. Curriculum Veto stems from the idea that it is urgent and insightful to consider the many forms of ‘wasted’ art-work; the labor that falls between the lines of the CV-as-standard. In this workshop, participants will index unexpected assets to their artistic practice like (un)productivities, care work, (un)related work, activism, rejections, boycotts, and refusal.
The Artistic Biotope, by Platform BK
Finding balance in one’s practice is notoriously hard for cultural workers. Where do the professional sphere stop and the private begin? Pascal Gielen has argued that the dichotomy between private and professional is too simple to create a healthy ‘artistic biotope’. Instead, a balance should be struck between four domains: the domestic, the civil, the market, and the peers. In this workshop, Koen Bartijn will guide the participants through a series of exercises to map the inventions needed to create a better balance – for individual participants, but also for the collective.
Organization
The Post-Precarity Autumn Camp is organized by the Institute of Network Cultures, in collaboration with Hotel Maria Kapel and Platform BK. The project is supported by the Centre of Expertise for Creative Innovation (CoECI).