In what sounds like a truly monumental example of critical cultural analysis meets mid-life crisis and self-doubt, Depot Basel and members of the global creative network Fictional Collective will spend March exploring the modern nature of creative work and for all the nature of the relationships between creative work and private life and between creative work and financial reward.
As anyone who works creatively will know, and as anyone who doesn’t will no doubt have long suspected, contemporary creative work doesn’t necessarily pay very well. It can. It can pay very, very well. But generally doesn’t. And certainly not as well as it used to. Or indeed still should.
At the risk of generalising to the point of distortion, in the past it was much easier: there were fewer “creatives” and a less widespread understanding of the economic value of creative input. Those creatives who were practising could command a living wage on the basis that those clients who were contracting creatives understood and valued the work being done, and there was a lot less competition amongst creatives, be that copywriters, graphic designers, curators, layouters, programmers, designers, photographers, whatevers.
Today however ever more companies and institutions want creative input, often without actually understanding why, what is actually meant by creative input, far less what is involved in producing “creativity”, and globally ever more schools and collages churn out ever more graduates in ever more creative fields: albeit graduates with often only the most cursory understanding of business acumen and commercial practice and so unaware of their worth and how to secure such.
The result is a market where for every creative who demands a decent wage for a decent job, there are a hundred willing to do it for less. And every client knows that. And if they’re honest every creative knows that as well. Knows they’re partly to blame for the situation, but don’t feel empowered or capable of changing the situation.
Consequently many creatives take badly, or often unpaid, work, generally accompanied by truly appalling conditions, restrictions and deadlines, just to maintain a profile, while supporting their creativity through less creative but properly paid work. The unending cycle of unpaid creative work, paid non-creative work & pitching for paid creative work making anything resembling a normal, structured private life all but impossible.
Other creatives meanwhile ignore such death spirals, devoting themselves fully to their creativity, pushing harder and harder against reality and hoping that the door to wealth and security opens before the whole exercise explodes in their faces.
All claim to be happy. Anything else would be tantamount to admitting defeat.
The situation is clearly absurd.
Not least against the background of the agreed economic value of design led practice for industry and the global movement towards easier and more democratic sharing of cultural, political, social and economic information enabled by digital technology and the need for creative talents to create systems and platforms to maximise the collection, presentation and dissemination of such: systems that by their very nature are largely free and as such must be financed over new, alternative channels.
In context of an exhibition accompanied by a series of discussions, performances, films and lectures over the course of the four week project, Depot Basel and Fictional Collective will explore the economic, sociological and psychological aspects of the contemporary creative economy and in doing so attempt to highlight key issues and find new solutions which restore a sense of balance to the cultural/economic equation as well as providing long-term social and financial security for creatives.
What particularly interest us in how far the results and conclusions of the project will read like a critical, independent analysis of the current situation, and in how far a partisan manifesto and call to arms.
The angel in us is hoping for the former, the devil in us is rooting with all its worth for the latter.
And regardless of what results we are looking forward to a healthy and entertaining debate.
This is work. Redefining creative life stability opens at Depot Basel, Voltastrasse 43, 4056 Basel, Switzerland on Friday February 27th and runs until Saturday March 28th.
In addition from 27.02 the development of the project can followed on the website http://thisiswork.org/
Depot Basel & Fictional Collective present: This is work. Redefining creative life stability.