Artist Run = Emerging: A Bad Equation
The current ubiquity of the terms ‘artist-run’ and ‘emerging’ is symptomatic of much greater problems in our culture. For if one were to take seriously the autonomy suggested by the term ‘artist-run’, then the assumed natural dominance and superior expertise of many other key players in the so-called culture industry would be called into question. The term ‘emerging’, as it is applied to artists for some years now, rather than a given simply describing artists at the beginning of their careers, carries with it some much more questionable associative baggage. Of course, the use of ‘emerging’ is predominantly a convenient bureaucratic means of parceling off the work of artists who technically have had ‘five years or less’ (as per the Australia Council designation) professional practice. In this way, various funding bodies, often regardless of the evident rigour or innovation of the actual work produced and exhibited under this descriptor, may channel their funds primarily towards young artists who most obviously fulfill the image of future industry careerists.
It is curious then, that such a situation is unlikely to surface in any field other than the arts. Elsewhere it is safe to make the generalisation that the criteria for judging the worth of production is based precisely, irrespective of career placement, according to the evident innovation of what is proposed. In art however, the artificial portioning off of the work of young practitioners, regardless of its worthiness – and while it may seem contradictory as far as specific funding criteria are concerned – has in fact the potential to restrict both its critical reach and overall ambition. Merely being emerging and making work that fulfils that description to a ‘high degree’, rarely gives any serious kudos to the content of the work. This is particularly true from an administrative or curatorial point of view; ‘youth’ itself is now a term relentlessly pedalled for its predictable signifiers of an apparent disregard for ‘seriousness’. In its place, in keeping with rather vapid stereotypes of youth, what is vaunted is earnestness or naïvety, alongside obvious traces of a ‘positive outlook’, humour, playfulness, energy, colourfulness, et cetera. Therefore, when this basically bureaucratic concept of the ‘emerging’ artist aligns with the practices of ARIs (Artist-Run-Initiatives, another convenient term), then the latter can only suffer the ignominy of being degraded to the level of culture factories for beginners. Meanwhile, those ARIs that genuinely operate as critically engaged, autonomous entities tend to be sidelined even though they are the kinds of venues that may be offering real alternatives to mainstream institutions who are either staid in their outlook or must operate according to the behest of funding bodies and a board. The specious equation of the term ‘artist-run’ with ‘emerging’ suggests broader aspects of what is at stake in this debate for contemporary artists. Thus concepts of autonomy, research and experimentation in art have been gradually devalued as a result of art’s excessive professionalisation.
Even in terms of funding criteria, the terms ‘artists-run’ and ‘emerging’ are indissolubly linked. It is therefore an institutionalised given that an ARI’s primary task is to exhibit and promote the work of practitioners who have had an exhibiting history of up to about five years. Naturally the situation gets a lot more complicated when those involved in organising and directing ARIs, which may be better served by the term ‘Artist Spaces’, do not conveniently inhabit the territory of ‘emerging’, whether in terms of who runs them or the artists they exhibit. From a dominant institutional perspective, the implicit criticism of such spaces would seem to be ‘what’s the point’? Those committed to such spaces who have established careers, yet who may not subscribe wholeheartedly to an overweaningly commercial vision of contemporary art, could be seen to be just wasting or perhaps filling in time. More crucially though, this implication can be reversed when Artist Spaces foreground the ongoing practices of established mid- career artists in conjunction with the work of so-called emerging artists as part of a combined network encompassing both. The refusal to target emerging artists alone, or to not to buy into treating them as ‘special’ or as ‘learners’, radically shifts the bureaucratic emphasis on institutional terminology to one, thankfully, favouring actual intellectual consideration of the art exhibited. Furthermore, to realise and exhibit art without having to go through the democratic yet cumbersomely bureaucratic task of having to consider lengthy proposals, is to enhance the potential of Artist Spaces as sites of genuine experiment and alternative possibility. That is, however, not to argue that this is the lone best strategy, or that it is separate from the machinations that drive the rest of the art world. Of course it isn’t; autonomy by definition will always be partial and inevitably connects to the broader workings of the dominant culture. On the other hand, one must also vouch for the relative autonomy of such spaces. Indeed the establishment of autonomous venues dedicated to the practices of artists, the majority of whom already have established careers, is a testament of faith in the continuing worth of the work of those artists in a terrain where base commercial novelty is regularly taken as an indicator of value. This holds true most particularly with respect to the label ‘emerging’, which is too often bandied about for the sake of the fresh and the new over tenable philosophical concerns.
The rather staid concept of the emerging artist, with his or her list of attributes, is an after-effect of the over-professionalisation of art that tends to divide artists into genres, ages, types, and so on. For example, the most tiresome and frequently reiterated function of ARIs is that they are ‘training grounds’ for future arts professionals (note the phrase, as opposed to just ‘artists’). Indeed, while much criticism of this outlook has been made over the years, comparatively little has been achieved to disqualify this assumption. Without a doubt, one of the reasons this notion persists is due to global culture’s unerring fixation with neoliberal capitalist ‘cause and effect’ systems in which art is not deemed valuable until it literally attains notable monetary value. True, it would be pointless and hopelessly naïve to argue that art can escape, or would want entirely to escape, the workings of the market. Nonetheless, it is equally detrimental to art, as far as it may be considered a serious intellectual and sensual endeavour incorporating both research and intuition, to direct its focus unquestioningly to the simple novelty that markets most frequently demand – a novelty that is only exacerbated in an age where instantaneity and newness is placed at a premium.
Much has changed since the waning of the contemporary art boom that reached its peak in the 1980s. Given the current global economic crisis that is not only seriously undercutting the art market but decimating art schools and other art institutions worldwide, it is only understandable that young artists might be desperate to seek a financial footing in the commercial arena, an arena they ironically seem to believe is safe. As a result, the transformation of many ARIs into quasi-commercial training grounds for the production of artworks, conceived seemingly from the outset to appeal to market tastes, is unsurprising. With this in mind, the term ‘emerging’ similarly suggests an artist’s emergence into the ‘adult’ world of finance and marketing.
In the end, the habitual association of ARIs with ‘emerging’ art has a negative effect on the ecology of the contemporary art world. This is because this association expects nothing more ambitious from autonomous ‘artist- run’ projects than the facilitation of simple career outcomes. Alternatively, the flipside of this equation can be attested by those Artist Spaces that function as platforms for the cultivation of ongoing, complex and discursive practices within local and international contexts, contexts allowing intellectually ambitious concepts to be fully developed and conveyed.
Certainly this distinction does not seek to disclaim the very real difficulties facing so-called emerging artists or the value of their work, for it is a fact that every artist must begin somewhere. And this ‘somewhere’ is often via association, either as directors or exhibitors or both, with ARIs. Again, the real problem lies with a hopelessly unimaginative refusal to see the potential of such spaces as anything else. And while young artists engaged in the operations of ARIs inevitably learn a great deal from the experience, it takes many years of cultivating such a role to acquire a critically nuanced curatorial outlook. The fact that the years of practice it takes to attain such an outlook is so routinely ignored by lazily lumping the terms ‘artist- run’ and ‘emerging’ together, only testifies to a greater contemporary culture that, while more geographically dispersed than ever, is beholden to ever-narrowing bureaucratising parameters. This kind of narrowing of the horizons of critical artistic endeavour is also symptomatic of the extreme economic rationalisation that has accelerated since the 1980s. Such rationalisation seeks increasingly that art and its related institutions prove their reasons for existing in largely economic terms; abstract ‘real’ value is all but jettisoned.
This demand for incontrovertible proof of art’s worth today likewise transfigures experiments such that they must have ‘results’, and research must have ‘outcomes’. Equally, ARIs are expected to run as quasi- commercial enterprises and young artists to be emerging ‘culture industrialists’. The antidote to this situation would be a sustained commitment to enlightened autonomous projects highlighting art primarily as a tool of critical inquiry and speculative transformation.
Alex Gawronski
First published, Art Monthly Australasia, Issue 257, March 2013.