Internal subsidization

In spite of the bohemian work ethic, artists working on project-basis are sometimes obliged to tap into other incomes in order to provide and make a living (see also Menger 2002, 4; Abbing 2008, 143). In an outline of the dance landscape in Flanders, Flemish writer and critic Pieter T’Jonck observes that many Brussels-based dance artists have to manage with project-based and therefore conditional funding, which engenders a precarious position. Interestingly, T’Jonck notes that this precarious position is not necessarily unattractive for artists, for example, because this enables them to work autonomously on their own projects. Nevertheless, the question remains how long one can endure such an unstable work life (T’Jonck 2013, 22). The situation is not any different in Berlin, where

6 One may wonder here who ‘the enemy’ in this case exactly is. And is there only one enemy or are multiple enemies? While the quotation addresses an issue of power difference, I use the term more generically as the art of the weak, pointing to the everyday tactics given the precarious working conditions.

performing artists are in the same manner reliant on project-based funding. In addition, artists can receive support from co-producers and residency spaces, however this commonly happens on the condition that project subsidy has been awarded. Since artists cannot count on receiving project funding, they have to hedge against income insecurity through betting on several horses and multiple jobholding. McRobbie points out that the held jobs in this project-based regime often carry a ‘nebulous status, existing somewhere between the old profession, the once secure jobs in the public sector […] and career pathways in the corporate world’ (2016, 43). Typically, they co-exist with low-status day jobs or side jobs necessary to pay rent and living costs (such as bartending). Indeed, also the artists must sometimes find other work to subsidize the pursuit of their art; ideally it would concern work that is consistent with the lifestyle.

My informants have mentioned undertaking side jobs such as teaching yoga or Pilates.

It should be noted that yoga and Pilates reoccur quite often as an essential part of the cases’ lifestyles, as I demonstrated earlier in the first chapter of this part. It is therefore not surprising that this has become a side job for many informants. An informant clarifies that holding a side job teaching yoga does not actually serve as an internal subsidization, which refers to form of cross-financing when income stemming from one activity is used to finance a loss-making activity within the same enterprise (see Hesters 2004; Abbing 2008). She explains that in order to earn 30 euros per class, she needs to charge 80 euros to the yoga studio. She works with ‘day contracts’, which are managed through an alternative management bureau that charges a small percentage. On top of that, taxes need to be deducted. In the end, she receives about 30 euros for a class, which officially lasts for one hour, but actually takes up much more of her time: she arrives an hour beforehand to check whether the studio is clean and warm, she welcomes the students and asks them, for example, if someone has any physical problems she has to take into account while teaching. She is not obliged to do so, but sees it integral to being a teacher.

After class, she showers, puts away the yoga mats and checks up on her students whether they have questions about the exercises. She easily stays 30 to 45 minutes longer.

Additionally, the yoga studio is rather far away, which demands a commute. In total, she thus receives a mere 30 euros for being away for four hours doing intense (hot yoga) and specialized work. She adds that she is even lucky she has found a yoga studio that can pay this price, because also that is not something that should be taken for granted. As a matter of fact, when she became entitled to receive unemployment benefits under the artist status which gave her the right to deny non-artistic jobs, the Brussels job center recommended her not to pursue the teaching anymore as it was not beneficial at all. Yet, she continues to teach yoga because she loves the job. In addition, it has provided her with other jobs in the past (such as, teaching yoga at a student’s workplace or events, for example). And most importantly, she can take free yoga classes at the studio, which she sees as an ideal training for certain rehearsals or performances. She concludes that even

though the payment may be meager, she enjoys the advantage of taking free classes as a very pleasant exchange.

Correspondingly, the Berlin job center discouraged another informant from continuing her activities as a translator in the sense that they insist that the income from translations should not support her artistic practice. However, internal subsidization is the main reason to do translation work in the first place: ‘I do translations, so I can support my choreography. So, for example, the money that I earn translating for [a choreographic center] went straight into the rent of my dancers. That’s why, otherwise I wouldn’t be translating, or at least not with this kind of urgency.’ In her case, it is obvious that both jobs, translating and choreographing, are not financially viable when looking at them separately, but they are when putting the two together.

In a similar vein, another Berlin-based informant demonstrates internal subsidization tactics through multiple jobholding. Working the rather dull job selling tickets at the register of theater venues and art festivals, checking them at the entrance, or assigning seats to the spectators pays off for her in a variety of ways. She explains that she usually receives festival passes which enable her to attend many festivals, also in other artistic fields, that she would usually not attend as she would not have the means to pay for all the events. She sees this as an extralegal benefit, or even a reward, for doing an uncreative and unrewarding job in the art field. The internal subsidization in this case is manifold:

first of all, she receives an income from her employer, which allows her two pursue her art. Additionally, it concerns an employment situation, which means that she enjoys several benefits and securities that she would have to provide herself if she would be merely self-employed. For example, her employer covers her health insurance and the contributions she is responsible for are therefore much lower than if she would be paying into the self-employed insurances. Thirdly, she is able to go to several performances and installations in the venues and during the festivals without having to pay for them. In her case, cross-financing does apply: in her creative process which I was able to follow through (participatory) observation, none of the involved people were remunerated.

They were able to use studio spaces from Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz (HZT), as some of the performers were still students there and could therefore easily book studio space free of charge. In fact, the school allows alumni to book free studio space last minute as well. They were not working with a set or props, so there was no budgetary investment necessary. The sound engineer provided his own equipment and each performer provided costumes, usually something they had laying around. They had been given two performance dates in a small venue in Berlin. The only form of support they received from the venue was 50% from the ticket sales. Yet, this form of payment exposes the precarious working conditions since payment is not guaranteed and depends on a highly unsure turnout. More often than not, the returns from ticket sales are usually split with the venue and among those involved in the production, as was also the case here. Hence, in this case only a negligible fee remained for each performer of a six-person production

with two performance dates in a venue with scarcely 30 seats.⁷ As she does not receive funding for her art, the project is thus cross-financed with her income from her side activity. However, when I point this out to her, she prefers to see it differently: her side job rather finances her life.

Besides these jobs, artists take up service sector jobs as temporary stops on the way to something else on the premise that these jobs will support their real work as a cultural producer (McRobbie 2016, 182). These jobs (in hip bars and coffee shops for example) usually belong to what urban sociologist Sharon Zukin has termed ‘critical infrastructure’

(1993, 214): well-educated and young workers hold service sector jobs, typically in gastronomy, for which they are either un- or overqualified. Yet, following Zukin, I propose that these jobs enable artists to put their social and cultural capital to use through play, acting as critical mediators and facilitators in the social, cultural, and economic neighborhood-transformations connected to gentrification processes (Zukin 1993, 179–216). Especially coffee house or bartending jobs are often preferred because they allow flexible work schedules and the maintenance of social relationships. However, Hesters points out that bartending work is in fact often not so evident to combine with a career in dance, since working in bars and restaurants requires night shifts and can be strenuous for the body. Moreover, the ideal-typical international dance artist is often handicapped on the non-artistic job market because of language difficulties, the lack of the required diploma, constant transnational mobility, and the necessity of a work permit to name only a few. (Hesters 2004, 129-130). In this respect, an informant explains that bartending work is not ideal for two reasons: first, he does not like the rhythm of evening work, because he wants to wake up early and practice. Indeed, he would make more money, but he would not be able to get up early and take the dance classes he could then finally afford. Secondly, he points out that the constant mobility interferes with commitment. Even if bartending jobs are more flexible than others, you cannot expect an employer to engage someone who will be away for a month. Conversely, he has developed an interesting tactic to generate income rapidly and efficiently through bartending a full month each summer in a Scandinavian country, where he can earn much more money than anywhere else in Europe because the minimum wage is high and most employers tend to pay even more.

Nevertheless, it should be noted that the informants generally are not willing to take up just any kind of side job – because, as Menger points out, when these jobs are

7 A side-note from my fieldnotes when I attended the premiere seems appropriate to quote here: ‘Spectators are entitled to choose how much they want to pay for this performance, ranging from 8 to 15 euros. I decide to pay 10 euros, knowing that the ticket sales go to the performers I didn’t want to pay 8 euros, but 15 euros is a bit too much for such a small space. However, I should’ve probably paid 15 euros, as I was very aware that there will not be much left when they split the ticket sales among all performers’.

artistic, multiple jobholding will lead to alienation (2014, 125). In most cases, as pointed out in the above, the side jobs are in one way or another related to the cultural capital they possess.⁸ For example, the Berlin job center has proposed several jobs for multilingual babysitting to one informant, who refuses to accept this offer because she sees it as the positive, white form of prostitution: ‘Because I’m female, I either open my legs or I hold a baby in my arms.’ On top of that, she did not want to see herself as a highly educated choreographer with four degrees doing babysitting, adding that ‘as soon as the baby has its nap, I’ll just kill myself. It’s just a question of honor, dignity.’ Indeed, most side jobs are in some way rewarding and in line with one’s artistic practice: for example, several informants take on translating jobs now and then, but these are usually conforming with the sector, such as translating program booklet texts, project funding applications, an institution’s website information, or a production’s evening leaflet. One informant testifies: ‘proofreading is boring, so I throw in the actual conceptual comments for free, because that’s how I can continue doing it.’ She finds it difficult to improve punctuation when the argument does not make sense for her. Therefore, she only translates for people who know she is not a professional translator, but who ask her anyway.

Perhaps the most conventional example of a performance of precarity exemplifying internal subsidization is the trilogy Perform Performing from German choreographer Jochen Roller. The trilogy dates from more than a decade ago but is still extremely pertinent. German-speaking scholars such as Gabriele Klein (2012) and Katharina Pewny (2011a) have discussed these three performances extensively in the context of precarious labor. At the time, Roller dared to address the urgent question whether dance can be described as labor. In the first part of the trilogy, No Money, No Love (2002)⁹, Roller performed the precarious living conditions of a freelance artist who can only afford to dance thanks to many other jobs. His dance movements were derived from the movement vocabulary of his multiple jobholding, such as folding t-shirts at H&M and closing envelopes by licking. His movement material demonstrates how cross-financing or internal subsidization shapes the aesthetics of his artistic work. In so doing, he expressed that a dance artist can perform other professions offstage as well as onstage:

When I don’t work as a dancer, I do other jobs. And I don’t get these jobs by applying for them as a dancer. For this, I must create another profession identity. So I move,

8 A couple of informants have held ‘day jobs’ doing data entry or bookkeeping, however these jobs happened while they were living in the US and thus before they moved to Brussels or Berlin. And even in those cases, the data dealt with were usually related to the performing arts field.

9 The second part, Art Gigolo (2003), and third part, That’s The Way I like it (2004), of the trilogy question the social relevance of the art of dance in neoliberal societies with. It is interesting to note the analogy between Roller’s gigolo-reference and the use of the prostitute metaphor by Bauer, which I pointed out in the previous chapter.

speak and dress differently. That’s exactly what I do when I am onstage and work as a dancer. (Roller 2009, paragraph 1)

In a fragment from the performance, which Roller named “Being Christina Aguilera”, he describes the ratio of self-exploitation, or self-precarization, when working multiple artistic as well as non-artistic jobs as a freelancer. He warns his audience that one should always consider beforehand whether the work effort has a proportional relationship to the use you get from it. He explains during the performance that when he was working on his 20-minute solo “Being Christina Aguilera”, he rehearsed in the mornings from 10 am until 1 pm for one month, while in the afternoons he was employed at a record company from 2 pm until 8 pm. By means of some visuals, he continues that he thus had to work six hours in order to be able to rehearse three hours. He earned ten euros per hour in the record company, which is equal to 60 euros per day and 1,200 euros per month. Since his solo was only 20 minutes long, this means that he had to earn 1,200 euros to produce 20 minutes. Through using simple mathematics, a white board, and markers in different colors, he calculates that each minute of this solo cost him 60 euros.

Consequently, one day of work in the record company, allowed him to create one minute of the solo. Roller then ends this anecdote by dancing one minute of that solo for us. This fragment distinctly demonstrates artists’ self-precarization and exploitation, but it also shows how internal subsidization affects what is performed onstage. This particular performance of precarity makes the internal subsidization visible on stage and reveals this as a survival tactic.

The above-made outline on internal subsidization illustrates that in the art world, money is thus not an end but a means. Appropriately, Hans Abbing observed that artists (as well as others employed in the arts) in fact ‘give large amounts of money to the arts by funneling income from second jobs, allowances, or inheritances into the arts’ (Abbing 2008, 46).