There is a reason why most artists are considered to be ‘bohemian’. They come from wealthy families with parents who can afford to financially support them, so they don’t have to go out and get a bill-paying job. Therefore they can spend all of their time painting, writing music, etc. Collective patronage is not for the well-off. It is for those who cannot afford not to work a day job. It is a social movement aimed at the working class, or in today’s terms, the multitude. The true ‘struggling artist.’ Anyone who is not in a position to spend their 40 hour working week working on their art is eligible for the fund. Would this would involve some kind of means testing?
Everyone has talents. But you need to be of a certain standard before you are food enough to be patronised for your work. What is someone tries to abe a bare minimum box-ticker, producing album after album of crap music that no one wants to listen to? If there is no audience, ther will be no funding. Patrons of the pot must publish their work through the proper channels – books must be available to download as eBooks and as print-on-demand. Films must be available to watch online, but also should be given cinema screenings in key cities around the world, if only a projector screen and lecture theatre, bands and musicians must make their album available to stream and download, buy as an on-demand CD and perform the music live at gigs around the world. Working full-time on the music means going on tour. Equally so, travel is integral to the deal in all disciplines. Painters must exhibit their work in multiple cities, for example. The work must be disseminated as widely as possible – the cream will rise to the top, but as long as there is an audience for the work, if even as small as 50 people, the fund will continue to be received. How to measure an audience? Qualitatively and quantitatively. Using online metrics for hard data. Evidence will be available on the artist’s page, where they are required to document their publications and performances, thus building communities around themselves and ultimately increasing the number of donations to the pot. It may be possible to spend some of the pot on other things like setting up small cinemas, concert venues and so on, easily rolled into one. All work must be Creative Commons licenced. Collective patronage encourages talented individuals to embrace their vocations, increases the amount of art produced and decommodifies culture.
Art for art’s sake. That is justification enough. Talented artists should be engaged in the creation of art for its own sake, that is, to be consumed, enjoyed and experienced by audiences. Yet today’s thinking fails to see that justification. Unless an artist can make a living from selling their work, it is seen as a hobby. Success is measured in monetary terms rather than the quality of the work itself. The importance of cultural works in society cannot be understated, yet the argument in favour of it needs to be strengthened. The benefits to people, psychological, emotional, social – of consuming cultural works, i.e. music, paintings, books, films are many. Artist would need to produce an exhibition of their own work. A minimum number of works. A film-maker, a feature film – a musician, an album, an author, a full book.
Collaboration is a sticking point. It is much more straightforward to deal with individual sproducing individual works. Somewhat more tricky if a number of people collaborate on a single work. It is a question of relativity. In order to continue to qualify for patronage, you would need to produce more collaborative works than an individual producing finished works alone, solo. In theory, collaborative projects should be completed more quickly and require less involvement from individual artists than working solo. However, the scale of the project could be an issue – for example, attempting to produce a Hollywood style feature-film might require a much greater number of collaborators and take a lot longer to produce than a sole director shooting a low-budget documentary with his own handycam. Another option would be for a filmmaker to hire everyone they need to produce their film – none of these would receive partronage but the ‘film-maker’ would. It could get muddy defining exactly what constitutes a film-maker – is it the director? The producer? The script-writer? I would guess in all cases, it is the producer, without whom the finished piece would not materialize. That is not to say that the producer may not also be the director, or the scriptwriter, the camera operator or even one of the actors, but the person claiming the title of producer is the one person who primarily brought the project to fruition. All other players in the team are expendable and replaceable. Of course, if the producer decides to write the script, direct and edit the movie themselves, they are fully entitled to do so. This is a more likely scenario for smaller projects, as opposed to Hollywood blockbuster style movies. Small budget movies. The technologies re very affordable now to become a film-maker, musician, writer, animator, games developer. What about so-called ‘commercial art’? Advertising, yes there is such a thing as non-commercial advertising. Certainly graphic design may exist as a non-commercial art form. TV commercials – instead of advertising dog food or cola, perhaps artists could advertise the pot, social or political issues. What about stand-up comedy, dance, performance art?
What about cover performers – no this is about creating new art. Not open to performers of other people’s work. Only for the creation of new work. But is recording a cover of a song in your own style not bringing something new to the table? It is derivative, but is it any more derivative than producing a remix using copyrighted material? This needs to be explored further. Quality is a significant aspect of this project. There’s no point giving people €25,000 a year to produce amateur or shoddily produced content. This is for serious and committed artists to produce substantial works of art. The quality, in terms of production values, has to be of a professional standar, on par with mainstream media content. Therre is no reason why this cannot be the case. It is about producing more full-time artists, musicians writers, filmmakers. Tag line – ‘Prepare to be patronized – give up the day job!” It is not open to anyone. If you’re not good enough, you need to get further training to become a master of your art. A requirement is that the artist create a new work and gets it made in whatever from is relevant. A book, DVD or exhibition, for example. The artist is the producer, so the idea is to encourage creators to get their work produced, e.g. if you’ve written a script, you need to take responsibility to get the thing made. Hire a director, actors and a small crew and get the film made, but you, as the artist, and the person who publishes the work, will be the one who receives patronage. The actors, sound guys are just players on the team. They are not the creators or the producers.
We are interested in funding individuals only who will ideally create something – write a novel, write 10 songs, paint 10 pictures, write a script – fix it in the form of some kind of appropriate media, e.g. eBook, CD, exhibition space, DVD/cinema screening and publish it for public consumption. Print on demand book or downloadable ebook etc. So, this idea of the idea-expression-media trichotomy comes into play. The intangible idea – the expression – as soon as you write it down or record / perform it and the media is the actual storage device, whether a CD, a DVD, a book or whatever. So the quality of the work needs to be of a professional standard and individuals who wish to be patronised should ideally be currently working a day job but doing their art in their spare time. They need to give up their job and also have a proven track record of art-making. They must prove their worth by first producing a substantial work in their spare time.
Popel who are more interested in money than making art need not applu. Having said that, perhaps €25,000 is not enough. How much would I need in order to be able to give up my job and make art full-time? In Ireland, considering it would be tax free under the artist exemption relief, I’d say between €25,000 and €30,000 per year. So, we could up it to €30,000? Should it make any difference if you have children? No. Must be rigid on that point. A good place to trawl would be advertising companies – anywhere that creative people tend to wind up after they’ve sold their soul. But even better would be talented people who have been forced to work unrelated, uncreative jobs to pay the bills and who have forsaken their natural gifts in order to survive, or be able to afford to buy material possessions. The collective patronage model requires applicants to choose art-making as a vocation, potentially sacrificing monetary gain for the opportunity to focus on their art without having to worry about paying the bills. But the chances of becoming financially wealthy by following this path are very slim.
How do we keep the pot full? Each new person is paid monthly, so the more people you have, the more outgoings but also the more fans will put money in. A beautiful cycle that results in the creation of lots more new art and enables artists to make a living doing what they love, supported directly by the people who love what they do. If 100 people gave €5 each, that’s €500. If 10,000 people gave €10 each, that’s €100k. That would pay for 3 artists for a year. Or 30 artists for a month. Need a lot of money in the pot. If 10,000 people gave €10 each once a month, that would be about €1.2 million. Not bad. There are 4.5 million people in Ireland. A lot of people here are highly creative. We’re known for it. If 1,000 people gave €5 a month, that would be €60,000 a year. Perhaps we could give smaller amounts initially? Would there be any point giving people €5,000? Or less than the dole? Why would an artist not go on the dole if it was worth more than the amount we could give them? What if people tried to game the system? Take the patronage and the dole? The big challenge would be in getting enough money in the pot initially and keeping funding coming in on an ongoing basis. It’s all about having the money there in the pot and then taking an active role in following who gets patronised. Perhaps by contributing to the fund, you get some say in how the money gets spent. Only those who contribute have a voice and can be patronised.
A key aspect to this is that it is global and non-geographical. In other words, the ‘finished piece’ must be digitized and shared with the online community. Of course, it’s important for each artist to drum up local support and have physical audiences at their gigs, but using networked digital technologies sduch as live video streaming and digital recording and encoding as well as networked distribution, there is absolutely no need to be restricted by geographical location. Most of the action takes place in virtual space, however, all work must be available in material form also – books, CDs, DVDs, as well as mp3s, ebooks and online video. Exciting! Couple of ideas to tease out here – First of all, the idea that there are people who are very special types of individuals, who have something to say and who can make a difference in people’s lives. Most people like this came to my attention as a result of having read one of their books, listened to one of their albums, watched one of their movies, played one of their games and I became a fan or follower of theirs. What they created spoke to me on a personal level and it made no difference whether I paid for it or not – the value of this kind of work is not reducible to monetary terms. It communicates, inspires, motivates – I suppose overall, it has an effect on people. It affects people. Those are not necessarily the same thing. It stirs the emotions, makes you feel something you would not otherwise have felt if you hadn’t been affected by the work – it can make you think in a different way, change or enhance your perspective on life – alter your opinions.
Artistic works are incredibly valuable to us as human beings and money doesn’t even come into the equation. One of my goals is to decommodify cultural works. They are not commodities and should not be treated as such. Not everything in life can or should be thought of in economic terms. Life can exist without any form of money. Societies can exist without money. Communities and individuals can live full and utterly meaningful lives without the concept of money. Life should not revolve around it. Dedicating one’s live to making more money is a wasted life. This system is rotten to the core. Alternative systems can exist alongside or even within such a system, and can eventually outgrow the host, like a virus, an idea can spread and take over until the entire system is transformed, changed utterly from the inside out.