Struggling To Exist

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Struggling To Exist

In a global and instantaneous cultural system, the artist must, in addition to his daily reality of artistic production, deal with the reality of digital technology and in particular communication on the Internet. If only a decade ago, people had to go to openings, physically move around galleries and museums to live the artistic experience, it is now possible for them to attend it in real time via their smartphone or computer screen. This upheaval caused by the emergence of digital and social networks raises the question of our current relationship with the art world and our experience of culture in general. It also raises the question of the impact of a media in the reading of a work, and the increased need for the artist to master the communication he makes around his work.

Artist Tami Notsani presenting her work during its installation on the front of FGO Barbara, Paris, September 2019

The media is a communication medium that makes it possible to extract and then disseminate a multitude of information through a medium that is perceptible to humans. There is thus the media as a support, on which information is drawn and then disseminated. This medium in culture is none other than that of the artist and his work. He is the one without whom nothing is possible. The cultural event alone depends on the artist. It is the object of every culture.

Artist Camille Sauer explaining her work to the public in the Salon de Montrouge, April 2019

Then there is the media that guides. In other words, journalists, and some critics. They are responsible for collecting a multitude of targeted information and directing this information in order to respond the best to the policy of the media that employs them. They are largely influential figures in the art world and contribute to the shaping of mass culture and the general public. The orientation of these media also widens the gap between the few over-mediatized artists and the majority of those who do not receive the same treatment. The former often work with professionals to determine and manage their communication on the Internet, while the latter will have to manage this new data alone.

Georg Polke, son of Sigmar Poke, talking to the press at the opening of the exhibition "Les infamies photographiques", Le Bal, Paris, September 2019

Thus, the artist should today be a global communicator, ranging from explanation and mediation around his work to a role as community manager, website manager, having to know the subtle workings of an environment that he does not master or simply does not have the time or desire to master. Moreover, isn't communication a profession in its own right? Does the artist, who is often already precarious, still have to devote part of his remaining time (once the various administrative burdens, taxes, legal problems, etc. have been overcome) to his artistic production, which allows him to live, to discover the subtle workings of social networks? Isn't the artist's duty simply to produce, talk about his work and exchange with the spectator? Or will it have to resort to contra naturam communication strategies to remain competitive as a market player?

Paztek, artist in Nannay, Burgundy, explaining his work to a visitor of his workshop, June 2019

Faced with this situation of multiplication of tasks for the artist to manage his career, his image and the highlighting of his work, it seems more than essential for him to cultivate and rethink, beyond mediation, the mediatization he makes of it. However, he does not always have the keys in hand, and the training of the various art schools on these subjects is generally lacking. Several options are then available to him: to sacrifice part of his artistic work time to understand and apply often risky communication strategies on social networks, to delegate to a third party then probably paid (a solution almost unthinkable for the majority of precarious artists and sometimes also risky results), or to do nothing and then expose himself to a lack of visibility that could have a negative impact on his career.

What then of any help for these artists without whom creation would not exist? What do art actors (schools, museums, patrons, etc.) do to support those who enable them to function? Could they not, like some people's proposals for a minimum income, or other initiatives to support artists (support and advice during administrative, accounting or legal procedures) support artists by providing them all with a "minimum communication service"? Two fundamental actors of art would benefit: the artist and the public, and creation would grow out of it.

Camille Sauer & Corentin Schimel