It's an email like I get many: am I interested in writing a piece about the artist who I once exhibited, and this for a publication on women artists - "100 women artists", to be exact. No mention of a budget. "Sure", I write back, "What is the fee?" And then comes the second email, again same old shit, saying that there is no budget.
I try to be positive about it and give the two women who are addressing me a great conceptual idea: why don't they ask men to write all the pieces about women artists for free? I mean, feminism is not against men, isn't it, and this way men can contribute and do some work for equality instead of always women doing the job. At the same time they can experience how it is to live a precarious existence.
I thought it was a great idea but they didn't like it. Their project is an all-female project, they wrote proudly, even the lector and the graphic designer are female! I wonder if also the printer of the publication is female, and if all of them don't get paid, or just, as usual, the artists and the writers.
But they have apparently good hearts: they tell me that they also want to give visibility to people like me, the female curators who write the pieces. I find it very suspect when people ask me to do something for their project that will give me publicity. It reminds me of what Heidi and Peter Gente of Merve Verlag said: "Unsere Werbung besteht darin, an bestimmten Orten nicht in Erscheinung zu treten." [Our publicity is to not make an appearance at certain places."]
Following my remark that a so-called critical project like theirs should be transparent about budget in the first email, they argue that they wanted to check if I'm really interested in the project - I guess like "genuinely interested" without the corruption of a money motive... Also, they wanted to keep the first email short. Right, the first thing to do when you want to keep it short, is to leave the mention of budget out.
But they regret very much that I don't want to engage in a project - let me quote here, because this one is beautiful: "if you can't support our project under these conditions (investing your time for less then a page for the greater good and visibility), this is a way to go. We are going for the crowd to support each other to change the art world, instead of not starting (a revolution) at all because we do not get paid."
I was almost happy they didn't write the word "exposure". What about you?
Let me talk also about the artist they wanted me to write about. She is internationally famous, exhibits worldwide, has two galleries and was just prominently featured at the Whitney Biennial. She clearly doesn't need to be made visible, as she's known as an artist and, thank you lord, not reduced to her gender (men never are!).
So is this selection of artists more about their own benefit?
It was the last question I asked and I'm eagerly waiting their response. If you want to be kept up to date about this, let me know. I could turn this blog post into a sequel.