Sigmar Polke. $-Bild, 1971; paint on fabric.

I espouse fair labor initiatives like W.A.G.E.* to pay artists. However, my own projects are often un- or under-funded; if a stipend covers a significant portion of my expenses, that seems like a success, even if I take a loss on my own time and labor. As a consequence, I’m unable to pay myself, much less collaborators, contributors, or volunteers. In return, I try to offer sincere thanks and credit lines, as well as social media links. First, how do I navigate this paradox? Am I being a hypocrite? What more could I do to support fellow artists? How will I know if I am taking artists’ energy in exchange for an exploitative promise of “exposure”?

Nearly every artist I know navigates this ambiguous and complex territory in some way or another. The paradox you experience operates on a tacit, institutionalized presumption—that artists’ work is a “labor of love” and consequently our primary goal is to have that work “exposed” to the world. This logic dictates the primary model of success and failure within the art world (cf. Melanie Gillman’s “If Other Professions Were Paid Like Artists”). It also plays into the affective conditions of being an artist, namely that a legitimate artist should have an obsessive impulse to create that suppresses all other drives (including the ones to pay rent and eat); ergo, if you care about compensation, you must not be a real artist.

To combat conventional thinking, you must advocate for yourself at every opportunity. To start, each time you are offered a gig that doesn’t mention payment up front, you can ask, “Is there a stipend?” Importantly, the act of asking raises awareness of the problem. You can take this further: “Thanks for inviting me to be part of this exhibition. As you may know, I work with collaborators. Is there room in the budget to compensate them for their time and labor?” The answer may be “no,” but you’ll have shined a light on a dark and oft-unspoken issue.

Since you mention W.A.G.E. specifically, I thought it would be best to to see what they would say about your question (they requested to be named as a bloc). But before I move on to their thoughts, I want to point out that an uncompensated exchange can still be ethical. I acknowledge the irony of asking arts workers to contribute their time and energy to this column for free and, in fact, should note that in the three years that I’ve been writing “Help Desk,” I’ve never paid a contributor for a quote (likewise, no one has ever asked for a stipend). Like you, I offer my gratitude; obvious credit in the column text; and, links, tags, and write-ups on social media. And similarly to arts work, writing an advice column isn’t famous for being a path to considerable profit, but I’m willing to put in my time and labor because I sincerely want to help artists and the art community, and I suspect that the contributors have felt the same. As W.A.G.E. notes below, “that is part of how solidarity and community are built within the field.”

Now on to the thoughts from W.A.G.E.:

“To answer these questions, it first has to be recognized that the art economy and its inherent exploitation of the labor of artists makes peer-to-peer exploitation both inevitable and necessary.

“Without the provision of funding for individual artists from government or private foundations, artists naturally look to art institutions for material support in the production of their work. However, because there are no standards and guidelines for compensation, the support artists might receive falls profoundly short of what is needed not only to make the work, but more importantly what is needed to survive in the most fundamental material sense.

“It should therefore come as no surprise that artists turn to their peers for support, and in doing so they may inadvertently replicate the practices of institutions by enlisting friends and colleagues to work for the promise of exposure. For those artists who don’t have access to the kinds of resources enabled by class privilege, there are very few other options available.

“But it must also be understood that in their failure to provide adequate or consistent support for artists, nonprofit institutions themselves replicate the funding practices of the grant makers that support them. Institutions receive funding as charity and on the basis of whether their programming merits the gift of the funder. In turn, institutions arbitrarily dispense fees to artists on the same basis: as charity and on merit, instead of as subcontracted labor and for the content and services that artists provide, and without which these institutions would cease to function.

“An art institution may argue that it doesn’t receive enough funding to cover all of the costs incurred by its operations and that is why it can’t pay fees. W.A.G.E. asserts that if an institution can’t afford to both compensate artists and maintain the scope and ambition of its programming, then its programming should be scaled back and slowed down—paying for artists’ labor is part of the cost of doing business.

“So if the question being asked is about how artists can resist replicating the practices that result from a broken system that increasingly has little interest in even appearing to redistribute wealth equitably, perhaps the same logic and expectation should be applied to artists within their own practices. Maybe artists should also scale back their production and ambition if either necessitates practicing the same forms of exploitation that institutions can and should be held accountable for.

“There is a very simple but important question behind the equally important question of when it is wrong to exploit one’s peers, which is: When should I get paid? This question regularly arises in relation to institutions, but also in relation to anyone with whom one engages in a labor relation. It’s another way of asking: When is it work? The simple answer is that you should get paid when someone is profiting from your labor. If you’re not getting paid, then you’re being exploited.

“However, providing content or services to a friend without being compensated does not mean that one is being exploited. If the terms of the exchange are mutually agreed upon, and if one person isn’t immediately monetarily profiting from the labor of the other, then it may well be a fair exchange, and one that is part of how solidarity and community are built within the field. W.A.G.E. advocates for equitable compensation, not for the total monetization and commodification of every aspect of our lives; we leave that to neoliberalism.

“How much you should get paid is another matter, and one that W.A.G.E. takes up through W.A.G.E. Certification, a program that recognizes those nonprofits voluntarily paying fees that meet minimum payment standards, as established by W.A.G.E. This program provides hyper-definition and clarity around the questions of artistic labor, and offers a model for a more equitable means of resource distribution within a multi-billion-dollar industry that profits from the unpaid labor of artists, as well as from the many others who work within its supply chain.”

You can take all of this into consideration the next time you’re dealing with a project that will require the work of others. Even when you can’t provide a stipend for your collaborators, you can have an honest conversation about the transaction. Be transparent about the funding that’s available to you and what it will cost to produce the work. If you can’t give your fellow workers a stipend, then offer a trade. If someone volunteers their labor, pay that good energy forward for a worthy project when you can. And if some artists turn you down because you can’t remunerate them, thank them for their honesty and respect their opinions on what constitutes exploitation. Good luck!

Help Desk is an arts-advice column that demystifies practices for artists, writers, curators, collectors, patrons, and the general public. Submit your questions anonymously here. All submissions become the property of Daily Serving.

*Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.) is “a New York-based activist organization focused on regulating the payment of artist fees by nonprofit art institutions, and establishing a sustainable labor relation between artists and the institutions that subcontract their labor” (see http://www.wageforwork.com).

Edward Burtynsky. Oxford Tire Pile #2, Westley, California, 1999; chromogenic color print; 40 x 50 in. Courtesy of Tom Thomsen Art Gallery, Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada.

In order to sustain a high pitch of awareness, the vast majority of the works present a more literal understanding of environmental exploitation and damage, with photography and styles of realism forming the core of this exhibition; it is a reminder of the crucial role documentary processes have in bearing witness to the devastating consequences of ecological destruction. Edward Burtynsky’s photographic oeuvre of landscapes devastated by the industrial waste of capitalism is represented most powerfully by Oxford Tire Pile #2, Westley, California (1999)—an ominous example of toxic waste and scorched earth hidden in plain sight in small towns across the United States. The claustrophobic pilings deconstruct the language of minimalism and its foundation in repetition into disturbing visual reminders of the expanse and physical reality of human waste. And yet the dramatic scale and overwhelming visual richness of the image still captures something of the terrifying sublime at work in nature and industry. The image is lyrical and seductive despite its proximity to more disturbing works that proclaim the ruinous effects and fatal consequences of human progress. Burtynsky constructs a world in which an uncountable field of discarded tires might have a rightful place in the world, aestheticized and purposeful, asking us as viewers to think hard about the role of art in addressing societal problems. Does aesthetic mediation null the painful truths and harsh realities of environmental issues, and if so, does this speak to art’s powerlessness or the deflation of our ability to be politicized through images?

Guy Harvey. Gulf Life-Brown Pelican (Gulf Oil Spill), 2010; watercolors; 31.625 x 28.625 in. Courtesy of Guy Harvey.

To assemble this exhibition in Louisiana—a southeastern state that lives with the most extreme effects of rising sea levels, rapid coastal degeneration, decreased water availability, extreme heat events and their attendant crop failures, and natural disasters—is a bold, even provocative gesture as the state continues to depend economically and culturally on the oil and gas industries. A stream of recent lawsuits and the announcement by BP Oil this week of their agreement to pay a record environmental fine of $18.7 billion—settling legal actions brought on by the fatal 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, which sent 4.2 million barrels of oil into the ocean over 87 days—signal the complex reality of demanding corporate responsibility for ecosystem damage. Judge Carl Barbier, whose oversight of the complicated legal case between BP, the United States government, and several Gulf states, ruled that BP had been “grossly negligent” in its handling of the well, and has demanded $7.1 billion in fines for natural-resource damages and $5.5 billion for Clean Water Act violations.[3] In a statement to the press, BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg stated that “with this agreement we provide a path for closure for BP and the Gulf.” Yet for many Gulf residents, business owners, fishers, and environmentalists, the horrific effects of the spill are far from over as it becomes increasingly evident that marine life and indigenous animal populations have suffered irrevocably in the aftermath of the event.[4] Guy Harvey’s paintings point directly to the massacres of wildlife native to the Gulf coast region, with inky black drips of paint puncturing the finely detailed figures of the animals like bullet holes;, while Kent Ullberg’s memorials in bronze are haunting meditations on the loss of crucial ecological relationships in the aftermath of oil spills past.

As permits continue to be approved for off- and on-shore fracking wells in south Louisiana and the Gulf despite the vocal concerns of community leaders and political authorities, the timing and thematic expanse of this exhibition could not be more relevant to discourses and challenges outside the realm of contemporary art.[5] Calculating the human, animal, and communal costs of climate change, Environmental Impact participates in a new dialogue located within human (and indigenous) rights struggles, Earth law, and political ecology in order to describe a world where aesthetic beauty is no longer the defining feature of representations of our natural world.

Environmental Impact is on view at the Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum at the University of Louisiana–Lafayette through August 8, 2015.

[1] For a compelling account of the history of American landscape painting and its effect on environmental rhetoric today, see Rachel Ziady DeLue’s book George Inness and the Science of Landscape (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).

[2] Many thanks must go to Dr. David J. Wagner for his kindness in answering all my questions and concerns during the writing of this article.

[3] See Dominic Rushe’s article “BP Set to Pay Largest Environmental Fine in U.S. History for Gulf Oil Spill,” The Guardian, July 2, 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/02/bp-will-pay-largest-environmental-fine-in-us-history-for-gulf-oil-spill

[4] Ibid., Rushe.

[5] See Samantha Page’s article “Exploratory Drilling Approved for Louisiana Wetlands,” ThinkProgress, on June 12, 2015. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/06/12/3667630/louisiana-wetlands-fracking/

I espouse fair labor initiatives like W.A.G.E. to pay artists.[1] However, my own projects are often un- or under-funded; if a stipend covers a significant portion of my expenses, that seems like a success, even if I take a loss on my own time and labor. As a consequence, I’m unable to pay myself, much less collaborators, contributors, or volunteers. In return, I try to offer sincere thanks and credit lines, as well as social media links. First, how do I navigate this paradox? Am I being a hypocrite? What more could I do to support fellow artists? How will I know if I am taking artists’ energy in exchange for an exploitative promise of “exposure”?

Sigmar Polke. $-Bild, 1971; paint on fabric.

Nearly every artist I know navigates this ambiguous and complex territory in some way or another. The paradox you experience operates on a tacit, institutionalized presumption—that artists’ work is a “labor of love” and consequently our primary goal is to have that work “exposed” to the world. This logic dictates the primary model of success and failure within the art world (cf. Melanie Gillman’s “If Other Professions Were Paid Like Artists”). It also plays into the affective conditions of being an artist, namely that a legitimate artist should have an obsessive impulse to create that suppresses all other drives (including the ones to pay rent and eat); ergo, if you care about compensation, you must not be a real artist.

To combat conventional thinking, you must advocate for yourself at every opportunity. To start, each time you are offered a gig that doesn’t mention payment up front, you can ask, “Is there a stipend?” Importantly, the act of asking raises awareness of the problem. You can take this further: “Thanks for inviting me to be part of this exhibition. As you may know, I work with collaborators. Is there room in the budget to compensate them for their time and labor?” The answer may be “no,” but you’ll have shined a light on a dark and oft-unspoken issue.

Since you mention W.A.G.E. specifically, I thought it would be best to to see what they would say about your question (they requested to be named as a bloc). But before I move on to their thoughts, I want to point out that an uncompensated exchange can still be ethical. I acknowledge the irony of asking arts workers to contribute their time and energy to this column for free and, in fact, should note that in the three years that I’ve been writing “Help Desk,” I’ve never paid a contributor for a quote (likewise, no one has ever asked for a stipend). Like you, I offer my gratitude; obvious credit in the column text; and, links, tags, and write-ups on social media. And similarly to arts work, writing an advice column isn’t famous for being a path to considerable profit, but I’m willing to put in my time and labor because I sincerely want to help artists and the art community, and I suspect that the contributors have felt the same. As W.A.G.E. notes below, “that is part of how solidarity and community are built within the field.”

Now on to the thoughts from W.A.G.E.:

“To answer these questions, it first has to be recognized that the art economy and its inherent exploitation of the labor of artists makes peer-to-peer exploitation both inevitable and necessary.

“Without the provision of funding for individual artists from government or private foundations, artists naturally look to art institutions for material support in the production of their work. However, because there are no standards and guidelines for compensation, the support artists might receive falls profoundly short of what is needed not only to make the work, but more importantly what is needed to survive in the most fundamental material sense.

“It should therefore come as no surprise that artists turn to their peers for support, and in doing so they may inadvertently replicate the practices of institutions by enlisting friends and colleagues to work for the promise of exposure. For those artists who don’t have access to the kinds of resources enabled by class privilege, there are very few other options available.

“But it must also be understood that in their failure to provide adequate or consistent support for artists, nonprofit institutions themselves replicate the funding practices of the grant makers that support them. Institutions receive funding as charity and on the basis of whether their programming merits the gift of the funder. In turn, institutions arbitrarily dispense fees to artists on the same basis: as charity and on merit, instead of as subcontracted labor and for the content and services that artists provide, and without which these institutions would cease to function.

“An art institution may argue that it doesn’t receive enough funding to cover all of the costs incurred by its operations and that is why it can’t pay fees. W.A.G.E. asserts that if an institution can’t afford to both compensate artists and maintain the scope and ambition of its programming, then its programming should be scaled back and slowed down—paying for artists’ labor is part of the cost of doing business.

“So if the question being asked is about how artists can resist replicating the practices that result from a broken system that increasingly has little interest in even appearing to redistribute wealth equitably, perhaps the same logic and expectation should be applied to artists within their own practices. Maybe artists should also scale back their production and ambition if either necessitates practicing the same forms of exploitation that institutions can and should be held accountable for.

“There is a very simple but important question behind the equally important question of when it is wrong to exploit one’s peers, which is: When should I get paid? This question regularly arises in relation to institutions, but also in relation to anyone with whom one engages in a labor relation. It’s another way of asking: When is it work? The simple answer is that you should get paid when someone is profiting from your labor. If you’re not getting paid, then you’re being exploited.

“However, providing content or services to a friend without being compensated does not mean that one is being exploited. If the terms of the exchange are mutually agreed upon, and if one person isn’t immediately monetarily profiting from the labor of the other, then it may well be a fair exchange, and one that is part of how solidarity and community are built within the field. W.A.G.E. advocates for equitable compensation, not for the total monetization and commodification of every aspect of our lives; we leave that to neoliberalism.

“How much you should get paid is another matter, and one that W.A.G.E. takes up through W.A.G.E. Certification, a program that recognizes those nonprofits voluntarily paying fees that meet minimum payment standards, as established by W.A.G.E. This program provides hyper-definition and clarity around the questions of artistic labor, and offers a model for a more equitable means of resource distribution within a multi-billion-dollar industry that profits from the unpaid labor of artists, as well as from the many others who work within its supply chain.”

You can take all of this into consideration the next time you’re dealing with a project that will require the work of others. Even when you can’t provide a stipend for your collaborators, you can have an honest conversation about the transaction. Be transparent about the funding that’s available to you and what it will cost to produce the work. If you can’t give your fellow workers a stipend, then offer a trade. If someone volunteers their labor, pay that good energy forward for a worthy project when you can. And if some artists turn you down because you can’t remunerate them, thank them for their honesty and respect their opinions on what constitutes exploitation. Good luck!

[1] Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.) is “a New York-based activist organization focused on regulating the payment of artist fees by nonprofit art institutions, and establishing a sustainable labor relation between artists and the institutions that subcontract their labor” (see http://www.wageforwork.com).

Santiago Sierra, Audience Lit by a Petrol Operated Generator, 2008; Veteran Standing in the Corner, 2011, Courtesy of KOW Berlin

Like a newspaper in its matter of fact presentation of content, Cady Noland / Santiago Sierra at KOW Berlin, curated by Alexander Koch and Nikolaus Oberhuber, appears purposefully removed of emotion. We never make eye contact with other humans, backs are often turned, or we find ourselves averting our eyes for our own protection.  We stand on the outside looking in. No one makes a human gesture towards us as viewers; our presence is not acknowledged or regarded with any sort of value. Just as we may be blind to other’s suffering, we are made invisible and unimportant.

Sierra’s video, Burned Buildings (Found Scene) (2008), starts with a hectic, first-person shot approaching a fire. We hear sirens, and see the unsteadiness of the handheld camcorder. We arrive behind a wall—shielding our view of the actual building—the camera is set down, and the video transforms into a contemplative, moving grisaille of smoke in the wind.  Any standard journalistic questions linger and remain unanswered.

Santiago Sierra, Burned Builings (Found Scene), Via Argine, Ponticelli, Naples, Italy, June 2008. Video 5'35", Courtesy of Santiago Sierra and KOW BERLIN, Photo by Alexander Koch.

Monochromatic in its curation, the visual aesthetic of the show easily captivates. This is a purposeful distraction. If we just look at the pictures without bothering to read the story, we don’t need to concern ourselves with the reality of the situations presented. Considering how many images and texts present themselves to us each day, disregarding most of them may be the best coping mechanism for fulfilling our day-to-day tasks and pursuing our own lives.

Santiago Sierra, Teeth of the Last Gipsies of Ponticelli, 2008. Courtesy of Santiago Sierra and KOW BERLIN, Photo by Alexander Koch

It is difficult, however, not to be struck by two of Sierra’s photographs, Teeth of the Last Gipsies of Ponticelli (2008). Two open mouths of teeth, ground down and deformed, give evidence of the psychological stress and physical condition of the sitters. They are both captivating and devastating in their spectacle. The time-intensive process of wearing teeth down so severely brings more questions than emotional concern. Awareness of this state implicates the viewer as partial perpetrator, despite the victim being foreign and obtuse.

Violence is an ever-present undercurrent of the show, and is most overt in Noland’s piece, Enquirer with Eyes Cut Out (1990). The removal of the image’s eyes points to a sort of Hollywood version of psychopathy. The type of story presented, involving the private lives of celebrities, exists in our culture not for its importance or affect on society at large, but rather to knock down people above us in the social hierarchy. Celebrity ‘rag mags’ seem to exist solely for this eventual purpose. Removing the eyes dehumanizes, and by taking away a celebrity’s humanity, we are able to freely violate and judge them, therefore purposefully making ourselves the offenders to their victimhood.

Cady Noland, Enquirer Page with Eyes Cut Out, 1990 , Courtesy of Sammlung Gaby and Wilhelm Shuermann, Photo by Alexander Koch.

We’ve all heard stories of exploitation, just as we’ve all at times chosen not to act or to rebel against various human atrocities. Seeing documentation of this, be it in a paper, or on a gallery’s walls, allows us distance and freedom from any sense of responsibility. The content of the show, however, remains commonplace. It’s delivered to us daily in our mailboxes, or is readily available at the corner newsstand. In 89 Huichols, Sierra highlights particular examples from our world that act as stand-ins for the marginalized figures that give regular society its “other” of the moment. Coupled with Noland’s work, the curators have moved us from the Sierra conversation “Why would he do that?” to “Why do we allow this?” The stories Sierra covers here don’t get a lot of news time when contrasted against Jaclyn Smith’s divorce, due to a lack of interest from the general public. This sentiment is subtle, but apparent throughout the exhibition.

There is a detached quality between both Noland and Sierra and their work.  They’re no Sarah McLaughlin, who appeals to our emotions to garner donations for abused animals. Instead, Coland and Sierra offer fodder for intellectual study.  They have selected specific victims for examination, but instead of inciting activism, the non-sensationalism of the exhibition is at times apathetic, and thus calls us out for our own apathy toward the details of the content. The power of this show relies on having a calm and ordered appearance, as well as projecting a tone of rationalism.

Exhibition view, Metal Fence, Cady Noland, 1990, 89 Huichols, Santiago Sierra, 2006, Courtesy of Santiago Sierra and KOW BERLIN, Sammlung Gaby and Wilhelm Shuermann, Photo by Alexander Koch

While a sort of historicizing happens with the pieces that involve particular groups of people, the object-based pieces in the show exist with a sort of timelessness. These pieces treat the viewer as both victim and perpetrator. We cause our own unease by walking through an imposing gate, and yet we subject ourselves to the onslaught of bright buzzing lights with the visceral awareness that even though we’re in control, we’re contributing to our own discomfort.

We know the wince and moment of anticipation all too well, but we continue to rubberneck at the sight of a car crash. For all the controversy that Noland and Sierra are known for, the show’s sense of violence or exploitation is severely reserved when pitted against any real story of human suffering. Noland and Sierra’s approaches to victimization in our society complicate our individual roles and responsibilities in playing on either side. While no one wants to be a victim, we seem to find ourselves in a position where victimization is natural or necessary, so we prefer the alternative, perhaps despite the moral implications of it, in order to survive.

Cady Noland / Santiago Sierra is on view at KOW Berlin through July 29, 2011.