RN02 | Session 01a Gendered Inequalities and Careers in the Arts
Beyond artistic vocation : A gender admission process of men and women candidates to an artistic career
Mathilde Provansal
Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, France mathilde.provansal(at)gmail.com
Women visual artists tend to disappear from the top of artistic rankings and continue to have a dominated position in the contemporary visual art world. Yet about half of the French visual artists are women, and french art schools have been predominantly feminine for the past thirty years. In this presentation, I analyze the ways gender differences emerge in professional trajectories through the analysis of one particular moment that precedes the entrance into an artistic career, the admission to art school. I observed the admission interviews of 87 candidates and the jury deliberations. Some professors and 50 former students of the school were interviewed too.
Observing the oral admission exam to the École des Arts Plastiques reveals the criteria used by jury members to decide between those who can attempt an artistic career and outsiders. I show that women face gendered representations. This may affect early on their experience in art school and their future artistic career.
The arts, a men’s world. Gender inequalities in artists’ labour markets
Jessy Siongers, Astrid Van Steen
Ghent University, Belgium; Ghent University, Belgium jessy.siongers(at)ugent.be,
astridvansteen(at)gmail.com
The artistic labour market is characterized by a-typical employment conditions, often demanding extreme flexibility and resulting in uncertain and precarious career prospects. Over the past years there has been an increase in studies on this precarious position of creative workers. These studies invariably point at elements such as under-payment, unemployment, multiple job holding, difficulties with copyrights, contract negotiations and many more. Also, they all point out that this precarious situation affects female artists more than their male counterparts.
Most of these studies focus on one specific discipline, in this paper we will use a comparative approach. To this end, we rely on data gathered in 2014 by means
of an online survey among 2706 professional artists in Flanders. Artists active in different arts disciplines (audio-visual arts, visual arts, music, literature and performing arts) participated in this study. In our paper, we first describe the gender differences in employment conditions (artistic vs. non-artistic activities, unemployment, income, job satisfaction) in the studied arts disciplines and examine which disciplines are more female-friendly than others.
Secondly, we examine which features cause these gender differences and which aspects have an influence on female artistic careers. By means of multivariate statistical analysis we look at supporting as well as inhibiting factors (working conditions, domestic conditions, education and training, ... ) of female artistic careers.
Female Filmmakers’ Challenges in Creative Work.
Cases of Hungarian Female Filmmakers from Romania
Emese Biró, Andrea Virginás
Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary, Hungary; Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, Romania
biroemese(at)yahoo.com, avirginas(at)gmail.com
Female filmmakers are still underrepresented in East European film production, and the factors influencing their entrance to the film production field, as well as their success or failure to remain active in the field needs to be examined. This is an important aim of our research titled Hungarian Female Filmmakers in Eastern European Film Production. In this study, qualitative interviews were conducted with female filmmakers working as directors, script-writers, producers, editors or actresses. Besides this small-sample in-depth interviewing, we also selected a sample of relevant press interviews made with our interviewees and we conducted a thematic analysis of these articles, in order to compare the result with our previous findings. Besides the entrance and ‘survival’
strategies in the film production, another important focus of our study was on creative female filmmaking practices. Do they see their creative work as a teamwork-based activity or an individual struggle?
How do they perceive their own role in the creative process, decision-making, fundraising, promotion and other aspects? How does their gender and minority background (female Hungarian filmmakers from Romania) influence the above mentioned aspects?
What is the role of international cooperation in their filmmaking possibilities and practices? We also examined how they use their own related personal experiences in their films, especially the fact that some of them are also characterized by geographic mobility. Finally, we used the 2016 research report of the EWA (European Women’s Audiovisual Network) referring to female directorial participation in six national film industries in Europe as a background to contextualize our own results.
RN02 | Session 01b Solidarities in the Arts
The Art of Organic Solidarity: The Fall of
‘Solidarity Forever’ and the Rise of Collaborative Organising and Participatory Art?
Marek Korczynski, Joyce Jiang
University of Nottingham, United Kingdom; York University, United Kingdom
Marek.Korczynski(at)Nottingham.ac.uk, joyce.jiang(at)york.ac.uk
This paper examines the relationship between art and labour organising. Historically, there has been only a limited use of art linked to labour organising. We argue that a key reason for this has been the disjuncture between uniform mechanical solidarity and art works, which tend to be cultural expressions open to multiple readings. If the future of labour organising should lie with a new form of organic collaborative solidarity, does this open up a new space for the role of art in labour organising? We address this first conceptually by articulating an ideal type of the art of organic solidarity – an array of participatory art practices that are symbiotic with organising for collaborative organic solidarity Then we consider the utility of this ideal type in the analysis of an extreme case - Justice For Domestic Workers, a self-help group of migrant domestic workers in London which prioritises organic solidarity. We draw on extensive ethnographic research of this case. In this case, art was constructed as a safe space for participation, in which both individual andφ collective identities of workers were articulated, and in which a form of cognitive questioning took place. We show that the use of art in this case appears successful and sustainable. We argue that the successful use of art in this case stemmed from the symbiosis between the flat participative (related to organic solidarity) modes of both organising and art use. We conclude that there is likely to be more opportunity for art in labour organising in an era where organic solidarity is emphasised than existed in the era when the mechanical ‘Solidarity Forever’ was the song to be sung.
Experiences of Solidarity: Narrations of three Art Initiatives from Ankara
Emek Can Ecevit, Hale BabadoğanKaya
Brunel University, Brunel Business School; Middle East Technical University, Sociology Department ecevitemek(at)gmail.com, hbabadogan(at)gmail.com
Art initiatives could be seen as the smallest organisational agents that have the power to forge a change within the art-world together with the subjective presence of the artists. Specifically by their accepted organisational model that is mostly spontaneous in time, small-group in size, independent and non-hierarchical in decision making procedures, open-ended, non-deterministic and practical in objectives, and interdisciplinary in participation that eventuates in most needed solidarity formations.
Art initiatives have the capacity to make critiques of
the artistic field from within; that is, they raise their voice to the already excepted rules, regulations and laws and implementations on the art-field. As associations thus they force others on the field to question the artistic practice, production and dissemination of works of art within the art-world.
Utilizing various disciplines, their criticisms not only influence the artistic field but also carry over the concepts and issues that the social opposition put forward.
Although they are flexible, nomadic, free floating, seeking collective action and co-existence and new organisational forms within the highly nested and oppressed environment of neo-liberal politics, artist initiatives and artist-run spaces still needs a sustainable ground at least on practical levels.
Taken into consideration of the basic characteristics of artist initiatives and artist-run spaces this paper examines in theory and practice the current position and their future expectations in terms of their political stand, organizational forms, experiences and narrations of two art initiatives, Avareler and Ankara-Art Initiative and an artist-run space, Torun from Ankara that has been lasted more than five years and still active in Ankara, Turkey.
Art, solidarity and civil rights. Theatre as community response.
Ilaria Riccioni
Free University of Bozen, Italy ilaria.riccioni(at)unibz.it
What can be the contributions of the sociology of the arts at the present critical juncture for a democratic Europe, in a time of great uncertainty, loss of rights for many populations and a widespread experience of destructuring institutions. If institutions are meant to be the structure from which the leading values of countries can be represented, what does implies their actual fading away? According to Jean Duvignaud the social function of artistic creation is that “elle vise à créer de la socialité”(Duvignaud 1965:54). Duvignaud defines three types of esthetic attitude: the first implies the relation between aesthetic experience and social space, in which is considered the dialogue between the different signs proposed by artists and the audience. Theatre is the artistical form which assumes this form of community holder: «Cette fraternité devenue irréalisable, prend la forme d’une attitude créatrice efficace, mais en tant que nostalgie d’un communion perdue, en tant que rêve interdit sans cesse avivé par un désir irrépressible de fusion affective» (Duvignaud 1965: 83). The consequent frustration after the division of labour, the social stratification, the extremely specialized jobs of contemporaneity, the need of sharing spaces and experience has changed social needs. In the theatre there is a reflexing communication which merges communication and participation into one single action, reaching for a clear social role: which is to bring to life the existant underlying relations of social movements and social change. This paper will inquire how and if the work of contemporary theatre in Italy
13TH CONFERENCE OF THE EUROPEAN SOCIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION
94
assumes this role of reflexing communication bringing into life deep relation between social issues.
Hear it from themselves: the impact of arts on equality
Pia Maria Houni
Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Finland pia.houni(at)ttl.fi
How do arts-based initiatives influence artists and artistic professions? This question stems from the ArtsEqual–research project (2015-2020) in Finland.
Currently Finnish culture is described more capitalistic than ever before in its history. This means implementing “ hard values” in many sectors of Society. At the same time there is a widespread conversation and political will to support arts-based opportunities for people of all ages. The key issue here is what does equality really mean when looked at through these kinds of projects. How does art develop solidarity in every day life inside a fast paced Society?
Artists are at the center of these questions, they are the people who make things happen with their professional skills. What kind of opportunities have they described to happen in the field? How do they understand the impacts of arts in different frames? To answer these questions, I have based my presentation on semi-structured research interviews of artists, who work in participatory, applied or community art fields. The total amount of interviews is 39. The interview themes include artists’ working habits and practices, their outlooks and impressions on the debate of autonomous and applied art, and their experiences of multi-professional collaboration in arts initiatives (especially in the public sector). What about artists themselves - in what way do they experience the meaning of art in their hybrid identities.
How does aesthetical thinking connect with political missions.
(www.artsequal.fi)
RN02 | Session 01c Artistic Production, Creativity, Skills and Practice
Creating in the studio. Artists’ studios and the flow of creativity
Adina Manta
University of Bucharest, Romania adina.manta(at)sas.unibuc.ro
As a contribution to a deeper understanding of the art worlds, this paper aims to give a comprehensive account of the flows between the materiality of contemporary visual artists` studios and creativity in the process of art production. Following on Latour, Deleuze and Guattari theoretical frameworks, I consider the relationship between visual artists and their studios in order to give a new spin to the much neglected concept of creativity in the sociology of art.
As contemporary visual artists` work practices involve sites and modes of production, the materiality of the space becomes an actor in the creation process. Due to this, I conceptualize creativity as a social product,
an assemblage in which various human and non-human actors are involved. Drawing on interviews with artists and observations of artistic spaces, I examine how in these spaces the artist initiates creatively the experiencing of the space not only as an object, but also as a thing that is part of the artistic creation process. The space, through its materiality, becomes part of the artistic creation and a link in the creativity process. Not only a work place or physical container for creation and contemplation, the studio reveals the complex relationship between materials and forces in the process of art making.
The Craft of Performing Artists: Skill, Identity and the Learning Curve
Chiara Bassetti, Dafne Muntanyola-Saura
University of Trento, Italy; Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
chiara.bassetti(at)unitn.it, dafne.muntanyola(at)uab.cat
What are the skills a professional performing artist needs? How are these developed? How do the performers subjectively describe and interpret their learning process and creative practices? Artists are immersed in specific intersubjective aesthetics, conceptions of artistic work, and common sense alike.
The contemporary art market is impregnated by an individualism that revolves around the glorification of feeling and emotion. Singularity (Simmel, 1908, Heinich, 2014) and distinction (Bourdieu, 1979) are crucial, and the body –with what is perceived as its intrinsic individuality– is taken as a tool for thinking as well as the place for creativity. Still, Feyerabend (1987) regards the myth of creativity as a recent historical construction. Williams (1985) shows how in the wake of 19th century division of labor the adjective
“expert” evolved into the noun “expertise”. The Romantic artist becomes an expert when capable of producing and communicating a certain form of cognition and action that does not belong to everyday life. This professional way of seeing (Goodwin, 1994), moving (Dreyfus, 1998) and doing (Sennett, 2012) lies at the root of expert creative practices. How do performers make sense of their creative process and its cultivation? In our contribution, we provide a comparative discourse analysis of two collectives of performing artists –namely musicians and dancers–
based on around 100 semi-structured biographical interviews conducted in Italy and the UK. We identify the cultural topoi that define artists' narratives, and look at commonalities and contradictions. Finally, we propose a learning curve model that shows how identity and expertise co-evolve along social patterns of skill acquisition and legitimization.
A sociology of causal attribution in music performance: a case study
Pedro Santos Boia
CIPEM/INET-md - Centro de Investigação em Psicologia da Música e Educação Musical, Porto Polytechnic, Portugal; Instituto de Sociologia, Porto University, Portugal
psantosboia(at)gmail.com
This paper develops a sociological and cultural approach to causal attribution in learning, practicing and performing on a music instrument, proposing a new approach to a yet under-researched topic in music performance and education.
Attribution theory refers to the causes people invoke to explain the success or failure of their actions, and has been typically approached by psychology and social psychology (Heider, 1958; Weiner, 1974).
What students, teachers and performing musicians think to be the reasons of why something is ‘difficult’ to play may be influential upon their attitude and motivation to learn, practice and perform. For historical reasons, the viola has gained in the past the reputation of being a particularly problematic instrument to play. As will be shown, this created a tendency to attribute causes of technical and musical difficulties to the viola itself because of its supposedly inherent ‘limitations’. That fact may have a negative impact upon the efficacy of practicing and creativity in problem-solving, and the player’s ability to overcome difficulties in instrumental technique and musical performance. This study draws on empirical analysis of real-time data (video recorded lessons), audio and video interviews with players, documentary analysis, and ethnographic evidence. It considers music history, internalization processes and habitus (Bourdieu, 1977;
Wacquant, 2004), representations and discourses (Durkheim, 1898; Moscovici, 1981), as well as the players’ actual practices (Zembylas, 2014).
This sociocultural approach to the psycho-social process of attribution wishes to contribute to open the black-box of the tacit dimensions of artistic practices and work, unveiling constraints upon performance, learning and teaching that musicians themselves may not be aware of.
Before stardom. Informal collectives as vehicles of biographical mobility
Piotr Szenajch
Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland piotrszenajch(at)gmail.com
This paper aims to reflect on a stage found in the life histories of renowned visual and performance artists with whom I conducted a series of autobiographical narrative interviews. Before establishing relations with an institutionalized and professionalized art world, my interviewees participated in at least one vibrant collective based on shared beliefs, strong bonds and regular meetings, competing for mutually acknowledged stakes and taking positions within structures resembling a field.
Among the vivid cases I would like to describe there was a radical neo-avant-garde art subculture with punk sensibilities established during Polish martial law in early 1980s; a vigorous nation-wide performance art circuit working without institutional support in early 1990s; but also, an amateur theatrical scene in a peripheral post-communist town or even a provincial cycling club.
In these collectives one can find aspects of strategic action fields (N. Fligstein & D. McAdam), thought collectives (L. Fleck), counterpublics producing their own counterdiscourses (N. Fraser) or a self-organized dark matter (G. Sholette). As their participants, my interviewees underwent intensive secondary socialization, learned social skills (Fligstein &
McAdam) and built their subcultural capital (S.
Thornton) but also explored new forms of being together. This contributed to their cultural mobility (P.
DiMaggio), built new layers of their habitus (P.
Bourdieu) or enriched their heritage of dispositions (B.
Lahire). Thus, such informal collectives could become
„vehicles of multidimensional biographical mobility” – what displaces individuals across class structure, discursive formations and positions within social fields – and enabled them to become the most prominent figures of the local art world.
RN02 | Session 02a Site-Specific Art & Public Space (Panel)
Urban Experiments in Times of Crisis: The Case of Svolou’s Neighbourhood Initiative in
Thessaloniki/Greece George Chatzinakos
Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom g.chatzinakos(at)gmail.com
This participatory action research, critically engages with issues of community-building and place-making.
It describes the development of an urban experiment that takes place in inner Thessaloniki. It is organised by a bottom-up neighbourhood initiative, which was founded in 2013, by a group of locals. Influenced by respective cultural practices that take place in Barcelona, our main action is a collective dinner. The first challenge that emerged in our discussions was whether it was possible to transfer in a sustainable way a cultural activity from another city of the European south to Thessaloniki. Apparently, this pilot urban experiment created a more fertile ground for carrying out various activities in the neighbourhood.
Gradually, this enabled us to establish a new neighbourhood identity, by combining various local and socio-cultural attributes. Nowadays, our focus is to find ways that can add to individual responsibility, collective sensitivity and ‘sociological imagination’
towards the commons. Arguably, the denaturation of respective neighbourhood initiatives can create a spreading domino effect, dragging the history of this city in a new era of participation and solidarity;
challenging the social conventions; strengthening social ties; creating a new relationship with public space. In Greece, due to the lack of a permanent institutional framework, people can’t (re-)produce in a sustainable fashion applicable actions that will respond to their individual needs and provide solutions to the collective problems of their place of residence.
To this end, to what extent neighbourhood initiatives can present an alternative way of cities’ management and citizens’ participation in the midst of a more-than-financial crisis?
13TH CONFERENCE OF THE EUROPEAN SOCIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION
96
Artistic re-appropriation of public space in Turkish scenes: the case of site-specific experiences in Istanbul
Zeynep Baykal, Seval Unlu Gok
Beykent University, Turkey; Beykent University, Turkey
zbaykal83(at)gmail.com, sevalunlu(at)hotmail.fr
Nowadays, it seems much more appropriate to define politics beyond its representative liberal democratic meaning, as the right to have a say and have a right to behave for a collective life. In line with this, art itself begins to become a new way of refusing and challenging the traditional ways of doing politics. Thus, the collective spirit emerging out of the long lasting relationship of art and politics is combined and interacted with the unintended, unexpected features of new paths of doing politics. In this process, public space have a crucial role in such new cognitive maps of existence. Public space turned into a concrete presentation which is occupied, appropriated by those who had no right to be a part of it before. Related to that, site- specific theatrical performances with their usage of the space, bodily existence and expression within that space, contingency directly or indirectly to that transformation and have a potential to trigger a kind of collective impact on audiences. From that perspective site-specific performances can be considered more as a cipher of art and politics relation than as an artistic gender. It is possible to understand the impact of space on body expressions and bodily existence of performance by looking at the recent site- specific productions on Turkish art scene. This presentation aims to examine the political and emancipative aspects of selected site- specific performances in Turkey, in İstanbul from 1990’s to now on. This analysis will include a media research about the performances, in-depth interviews made by the authors, and personal experiences of the authors as a spectator of the performances.
Artistic Interventions: Affirmative Over-Identification as Tactics of Critique Mirjam Pot
University of Vienna, Austria mirjam.pot(at)univie.ac.at
Since 2010 the Austrian activist group “Die Freunde des Wohlstands” (Friends of Wealth, FoW) carries out artistic interventions in public space. During these interventions they pledge – among others – for lower property taxes and compulsory labor for the unemployed. Only at second glance it becomes clear that the group works with the technique of affirmative over-identification (AOI). By taking over dominant discourses put forward by the economic and political elites and exaggerating them slightly, they challenge and criticize the ideological basis of theses discourses.
The paper is structured as follows: Based on the literature on AIO I identify four functions of AIO, namely 1) the creation of distance between the discourse at stake and the audience by means of a
complete collapse of distance, 2) semiotic sabotage of the language and signs used in that discourses, 3) emphasis on the responsibility of the audience regarding the interpretation of the intervention due to its ambivalence, and 4) the possibility to break up and reconstruct discourses. Subsequently, I analyze the artistic interventions of FoW in terms of content, implementation and use of AIO and possible affects.
In particular, FoW aim at directing attention on neoliberal, classist and elitist discourses by spontaneously confronting its audience with condensed content of that sort in order to trigger critical reactions. Finally, drawing on Rancière’s notion of the political, I consider artistic over-identification a form of critical political art, as it challenges the
“distribution of the sensible” (Rancière 2006).
Participatory theatre, urban exclusions, and youth (re)claiming the city
Valerie Monique Stam
Carleton University, Canada; University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
valerie.stam(at)carleton.ca
Drawing on a participatory theatre project with youth in what is known as Afrikanerbuurt, a neighbourhood in Rotterdam, this research highlights the processes that work to other and exclude Black and Muslim youth from full belonging, and spotlights the ways in which youth are fighting back to (re)claim space in Dutch society. In the context of the migration crisis in Europe, first- and second-generation racialized and Muslim youth navigate varying barriers to belonging and citizenship: while they hold de facto legal citizenship, their de jure citizenship (social membership) is questioned (Arendt 1951; Somers 2008). Discourses of tolerance and danger, the archetype of “good” citizens, and everyday racism work to other certain bodies (Ahmed 2004; Brown 2008; Essed 1991; Thobani 2007; Wekker 2016). At the same time, cities are becoming important sites of belonging and hyper-diversity (Holston & Appadurai 1999; Tasan Kok et al 2014). In this presentation, I will look at how Black and Muslim youth “talk back” to these processes of othering through theatre. In co-creating and co-producing a theatre production, youth participated in, and facilitated, public conversations on (re)making and (re)claiming urban sites and modes of belonging. This presentation will examine the ways in which participatory theatre allows and disallows for expressions of belonging, subjectivities, citizenship, and resistance. It will also analyze performative ethnography’s potential to transform public city space.
Crip art in public space Laura Moya
University of Zaragoza, SpainUniversity of Zaragoza lmoya(at)unizar.es
The cultural ecologies of the last three decades, motivated for a posthistoric turn of the arts, have ousted the estetic aspect and have caused an opening to multiple creative channels. This diversity of