can i ask a serious question. How do most artists support themselves to live? Do most work? What sort of jobs do they do ? How do the ones that don't work survive? How does this vary between young artists such as you, and slightly more established ones like the ones whose websites we'd often visit?
Well, I think the thing about the art life is that it is, in an economic way completely unstable which makes it so frightening to most people. The thing is, it's not a vocation fitting into the system like all other vocations, where you get certain training and there are a limited set of income sources available for that training. What I liked about Graeber was his insistence that one of the truly radical things about artists and artist communities is that they propose new forms of community and living. Basically, I think I wanna say that its one of the few forms of 'work' in society which is in some aspects resist to capital. So many of the 'products' of art and they behaviors and activities engaged in are deliberately counter-economic. At the same time, every single artist has to devise his or her means of survival so I think it's pretty impossible to generalize. For ourselves, we have been living rent free for the past four months by relying on artist communities, and that combined with selective, short periods of work and small remuneration from art institutions has let us get by. Of course its not sustainable, but then you just buckle down and do some part time work again until you've got enough to leave off and work on art alone again. I think the important thing is engaging in the system on your own terms and not having to sacrifice yourself to it completely. At the same time, we were helping a friend a few months a go who was setting up her work in the National Museum for a private viewing for collectors, and she really was a salesperson, spruiking and selling the works, which were going for $25, 000 US a pop, and I guess thats a level, if you're lucky, you can reach by the time your're a mid-career artist without patronage.
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