Labour Brunch: Artist? Worker? Entrepreneur?

Artists? Workers? Wageless workers? Entrepreneurs?
A lecture by Airi Triisberg, followed by a discussion

The conversation around precarious labour conditions in the cultural sector mostly focuses on income. One point of dispute is whether creative practice can be acknowledged as work.

This presentation discusses four modes in which artistic work is commonly framed — artist, worker, wageless worker, entrepreneur — and shows how each is linked to different types of income and methods of labour struggle.

The exceptional mode places artistic practice outside of conventional wage-labour relations, and channels monetary support to artists via grants and subsidies.

The identification as “art workers” is based on the understanding that art should be recognized and remunerated as work. Art workers insist on receiving wages rather than tax-free grants because wage is not only a pay-check but also a means for organising society. In societies where the social security system is modeled upon waged employment, wage is the only way of accessing health insurance, unemployment insurance and pension.

The idea of artists as wageless workers recognises commonalities between art workers’ struggles against precarious labour and feminist struggles against unwaged social labour. It opens a path for thinking about labour struggles in the cultural sector as a line of conflict within the continuum of feminist struggles.

The entrepreneurial mode suggests that artists are market agents who sell products or provide services.

The presentation discusses different social imaginaries that are constructed from each of those subject positions. How do these four modes co-exist, intertwine, and collide with each other? How does each of these modes shape the tactical choices of labour organising for better working conditions? How does a feminist critique of precarious labour sound, and what does a feminist struggle against it look like?

Airi Triisberg is an independent writer, curator, educator and labour organiser. They regularly publish articles in Estonian cultural media, addressing problems related to precarious labour in the cultural sector, and contribute to advocacy work for fair pay and social security. In 2015, they published Art Workers – Material Conditions and Labour Struggles in Contemporary Art Practice together with Minna Henriksson and Erik Krikortz, this book conceptualises practices of art workers’ organising in Europe. In 2022, they published A Proposal for Fair Pay together with Maarin Ektermann, this proposal was based on long-term research (2019-2021) involving numerous group interviews with art workers in Estonia.

Entry is free, and the conversation language is English.

The event is organised by Feministeerium, hosted by Kartul, and facilitated by Airi Triisberg.

Illustration by Nadya Tjuška