Episode 18: THE UNPOPULAR MANIFESTO
[INTRODUCTION]
Despite being an artist for what feels like an awfully long time now, I have resisted the urge to write a manifesto.
Artist manifestos tend to come across as self-agrandising, or naive.
I understand that this one will come across as self-aggrandising and naive.
But, I find myself stood in the soft soil of a new year, and I want to plant some seeds.
I think what follows are reminders. They are here to remind me, but perhaps you will find some that resonate too.
We are heading into strange times. A late-stage capitalism that makes us nostalgic for mid-stage capitalism.
Decades of austerity and now rising populism. These things are connected.
The organisations and institutions that support the arts are falling into a franchise model of operation in desperation and economic necessity.
AI and social media combine with monolithic consumption platforms such as Netflix to create a consensus culture that sidelines fringe voices.
A dystopia sits on the horizon. Everything is a popularity contest.
A monoculture looms.
[DISCONTENT]
Art is not “content”.
Art is not “Product”.
If you talk about your art using these words others will treat it as such.
[AUDIENCE]
Do not sacrifice your audience for one you do not have.
Do not chase ghosts whilst the living share your space.
If you make work for an audience, make it for the one that shows up, however small, and not for a larger one that never will.
[LANGUAGE]
Art is its own language.
Your art should, and will, stand on its own merits.
You are under no obligation to translate it into words.
Do not explain your art away for the sake of marketing, funding or social media. To do so robs your audience of agency an the joy of discovery.
Allow and trust your audience to find their meaning in your work.
[HONESTY]
If you have to talk about your work, talk about it honestly and plainly.
No word salad.
No marketing terms.
No funding spiel.
Do not invent silly words to make your work sound important.
Do not hijack academic terms, especially when you do not understand those terms.
[PRESSURE]
Understand that other people will want to change your work to make their lives easier.
Resist these pressures.
Pressure to make your work smaller, or larger.
Pressure to rush it to fit with their scheduling.
Pressure to change what you call it, or how you describe it to fit marketing copy.
Pressure to change how you present it. Pressure to provide it digitally so that it can be shared online and via social media platforms where it will be consumed only as content.
Pressure to make things faster or flashier to cater to an imagined audience with shorter attention spans.
Do not capitulate to these demands, because capitulation will only lead to more demands.
[COMMUNITY]
Your art is an act of community.
Your art is an act of community because you exist as part of any community in which you find yourself.
It belongs to the community of artists foremost. Do not sacrifice this community to appease another.
Beware of talking in the perverted language of funding bodies, of talking of ‘community’ and ‘engagement’.
Beware of organisations that would use your work so that they can use that language when talking to their funding bodies too.
[ENGAGEMENT]
You will not suppose engagement.
Engagement is a nonsense term. It is something that no one has been able to adequately define or predict.
Engagement is not a number.
Engagement is private, internal and slow.
People walking past a painting may or may not be engaged. If asked they may lie, because they do not know what engagement is either.
Artists should talk about intent, not engagement.
Where engagement is ephemeral and unknowable, intent is definable and measurable.
[COMPETITION]
Netflix is not your competition.
Sports are not your competition.
Video games are not your competition.
Firework displays are not your competition.
Art isn’t meant to be massively mainstream. It has never been massively mainstream.
Your art is not second screen art.
People like the arts because is is specifically NOT massively mainstream.
Where these platforms cater for the general and the numerous, the arts cater to the specific, the niche, the individual.
So don’t try to emulate these platforms, because, at best all we will produce is a poor imitation built using the wrong tools.
Again, you will lose the audience you have by chasing one you will never get.
[FRANCHISE]
Every sector tends towards monopoly.
The first step to monopoly is franchise.
We must resist the franchising of our art institutions and organisations.
We’ve endured nearly two decades of austerity funding in the arts. Organisations have responded by pooling their resources. They have been sharing programming, marketing and in some cases, employees.
Meanwhile, the pressure to appeal to bigger audiences have led to marketing materials looking slick, and indistinguishable. They adhere to a generalised form of the institution more than they reflect the art work being promoted.
As these processes occur, organisations start to look more like each other. They offer a more standardised experience.
And as we do this, we alienate the audience we already had. Audience figures decline, and instead of changing tack we have doubled down.
At what point do we go from a few organisations sharing a programme in order to afford work, and branding in a similar manner to attract a similar audience, to becoming a single entity that appears in three places?
Why is this a bad thing?
It is the same process that happened to our town centres. Where once we had centres filled with numerous niche businesses, run locally and responding to local demand, the process of franchising and monopoly left us with megastores.
Topshops. Woolworths. British Home Stores. Debenhams.
Uncaring, indifferent, generic. These are not shops in the sense of a community endeavour, but shops in the sense of a brand.
And then, they died. Empty leviathans on the high street.
They died because they were monopolies. They died because they were franchises. They died because they were slickly marketed rather than honestly connecting with their customers.
In the arts, niche and fringe voices will be pushed out during this process. It will not be necessarily intentional, but as a consequence of uniform brand identity, risk averse practice and centralised management think.
There’s a temptation to suggest that what will be offered will be “product”, much like fast food franchises offer. Entirely consumable but devoid in any nutritional value.
Art burgers.
[INTELLIGENCE]
Understand that AI will not replace artists, however, it will further draw them into an arena when everything is considered content.
Process — the fundamental act of art — is rendered redundant in the light of “product”.
Combined with the primary platforms for the consumption of content, social media, the result is that art will be increasingly led by the metric of popularity.
Likes, re-posts, comments… the new engagement.
The pressure will be for work to conform to these demands.
Showy, audience flattering gimmickry, designed to be encountered for seconds at a time.
Resist the desire to make your work a disposable, consumable product.
[WORTH]
They need you more than you need them.
Your art powers their purpose. Your interaction is the reason for their existence.
Do not let the platforms that exist to support you make you feel like they are doing you a favour.
[POPULARITY]
The combined result of franchising the arts in a climate of digital content consumption is a popularity contest.
Again, being popular is not the purpose of being an artist.
It allows a myriad of niche ideas to co-exist. It creates a polyphony of discussion and a platform for quiet voices.
Mean something to someone rather than nothing to everyone.
Embrace being unpopular.
