Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1998 20:13:41 +0100 From: Alastair Dickson <adickson-AT-stirmargrev.demon.co.uk> Subject: Re: Artists' unions and anti-art In article <199806211635.MAA06517-AT-panix2.panix.com>, malgosia askanas <ma-AT-panix.com> writes >Can anybody recommend any good literature on the history of unionization >among artists? I am (of course) particularly interested on the relationships >between unionization trends and anti-art positions. What is the substance of the "unionisation" which you're addressing? Are you seeking those strands which may fit the trade union model, of a professionalised negotiating stratum which interposing itself between capital and labour, generally by reducing conflict to the question of "the rate for the job"? Or are you seeking histories of collective artistic initiatives? Obviously, the two are related. In Britain, some people from the performance art mileau of the 60s have been prominent campaigners for the National Artists Association, a trade union type organisation which did succeed, I think, in negotiating a standard minimum exhibition fee for artists exhibiting in galleries funded by the Arts Council of England (unlike Scotland). Collective initiatives, such as artist-run galleries, tend to expire after a natural life-course or become promotional organisations. I'm thinking here of the difference between the London Musicians Collective as it was around 1978 - a space for non-idiomatic music in a warehouse - and in its current role as a promoter of festivals of various "other" musics. A more famous example is the Jazz Composers Guild, organised by Bill Dixon in the mid 60s, and the later passage from JCG to the Jazz Composers Orchestra Association organised by Carla Bley and Michael Mantler. I don't know whether this intriguing project has been documented in depth, aside from a couple of slapdash pages in Jacques Attali's "Noise" and a few pages in John Szwed's Sun Ra biography. Could you say more about the "anti-art" which you want to relate to such collective positions? A lot would depend on what you were meaning by this? If it was just what I might call "the left-wing of galleryism" - spaces presenting ostensibly challenging work, whose disavowal of popular appeal leads to empty galleries and economic dependence on state funding - their tendency is towards a professionalised administrative stratum negotiating the rate with the funding agencies and acting as (anti-)aesthetic arbitrar. -- Alastair Dickson, Stirling, Scotland -- <adickson-AT-stirmargrev.demon.co.uk> --- from list avant-garde-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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