Not "transformative" enough
and other false hopes...
The Next Fucking Generation Award
I received an email in the summer that I had been waiting nearly 12 weeks for. An email that has a subject line and sender address that spikes my anxiety with a cold sweat when it appears on my phone’s lock screen. An email that I daydreamed about and have daydreamed about in every situation, where I am awaiting a decision from a bunch of faceless names of faceless civil servants, to warrant my worth for an income.
This time, I received the email I was hoping for: I was going to receive €25,000 euros to support my work, research and dreams. It was a fucking lottery. Tears came to my eyes with the surprise after I had already convinced myself that I didn’t get it - with my other pots of funding due to run out and no definite form of work to fall back on - I got the guarantee I was going to be okay for at least the next two years.
Yet my underlying suspicions were confirmed; the type of doubt of never feeling deserving of the good opportunities I receive (thanks mom) the ones that stopped the tears in their tracks, letting my shoulders slump, and the air to escape my lungs. The follow up emails; the administrative error, the sorry’s and the apologies and the “we regret to inform you”.
The words might as well be branded into my corneas. The only regrets are the error they made, their little fuck up. I have developed that oh so thick skin that my art school educators recommended one grows when it comes to endlessly applying for hope. I have become desensitised to the insincerity of these repeated figures of speech that decorate such emails.
Rejection is a bitter pill on repeat prescription.
I requested clarification which I promptly received the next day. In those hours between, I buried myself under my duvet and continued to recover from my 14 hour stint in A&E from the previous night. The confirmation of my rejection hollowed out the all too familiar void in my stomach and I sat in it, felt it, and arrested my mind into accepting it.
When I had the energy I did the usual request for feedback, which I have shared below because after all - everything is a learning opportunity:
Artistic quality: The application evidences an eclectic and original body of work that explores the erotics of taste, class, domesticity and care labour. The sculptural work playfully pokes at an affective register between humour and disgust, cruelty and self-deprecation. The precision of intention and material approach is still being clarified. The writing element of the practice has significant potential.
Award objectives/priorities: The application is largely geared towards continuing the applicant’s developmental trajectory, as they continue to grow in profile and experience. However it does not communicate a great sense of ambition, or articulate why this is a potentially transformational moment for the practice nationally / internationally, as outlined in the award priorities.
Feasibility: The budget is planned carefully with consideration of the applicant’s role as a family carer. Additional supports have been secured through international residencies in Spain and France, one of which is financed by Wexford Arts Office, which is very positive. The focus on maintaining an existing curatorial relationship is a legible and achievable goal.
Conclusion: As a departure point for new work, the biography of Eileen Gray seems somewhat limited or underinformed, given how heavily it’s already been mined over the last decade. While the enquiry has potential, it doesn’t convincingly communicate a unique, timely need. The application is geared more towards ongoing development than transformation. Arts Council support is not recommended.
Supporting material: The supporting material meets the award guidelines’ requirements.
I then found out on Instagram that I was one of over 100 individuals who received this similar glimmer of false hope, snatched away with a “there there” to subdue our torment. I’m so sick of fucking hope. That when it is granted it is temporary, it is a hustle, it is a highly competitive market filled with equal opportunities - there is no end in sight but the fantasy of hope itself. I surprised myself with how little I cared in the end. I wouldn’t have the guarantee of money from this specific source this time, so I’ll try others, what else is there to do?
There was something else that used to exhilarate me with these awards; the competition itself. Acquiring these CV filler accolades like mantle piece trophies or cheap sports day medals. So we can add them to our Instagram bio and brand ourselves as “supported by the Arts Council of Ireland”, without which you have art world oldies giving unsolicited advice on how to make it, or post grad babies calling themselves “established” because they got a non monetary graduate prize. All of which I have participated in doing too until the glamour of it all faded and I found myself caring more about the image and performativity of being an artist on a tiny island than the genuine love and tactility of my work. I knew my hope was coming from a place inside myself I’m ashamed of. Wanting to quite literally outrun others, beating them in the invisible races of success. Maybe it’s my childhood trauma from neglectful parenting or secondary school bullying that generates a whole body impulse to prove something to myself and others by jacking up my career status. The irony being is that like my choice of occupation and vocation in art, success is a form of glamour supported by the tastes of others that makes it seem almost real, but most of the time it is quiet and very invisible.
It’s been a few months and I have since recovered from the whiplash (I think). It gave me an opportunity to unpack the shame, the longing for acknowledgement I crave from others in my community and social circles. Every time someone else is asked or invited to be part of something I know I would have been suitable for, I still get pangs of perverse envy. They melt away a bit faster every time it happens and I take a second to remind myself of how well I am doing, and to think about what brings me genuine joy than the ability to gloat with material clout. I also take a moment to remind myself that everyone is just as deserving as I am, whatever deserving means, and that wanting it all for myself would lose me the people I have come so attached to, even in the faintest of ways.
Instead the feedback I received from the Arts Council gave me an opportunity - in fairness to them, they do give time, attention and care of a much higher quality in comparison to other Arts Councils (ahem ahem NORTHERN IRELAND ahem ahem) - to register the positives and take note of why they felt my work was unworthy of their lottery draw.
Positives:
I love the word eclectic: it’s how you describe the weird neighbours with too many pets and fashionable clothes always quoting poetry.
Original? No sir, I am anything but, as is every other piece of art on this planet.
The erotics of taste, class, domesticity and care labour is a sentence I will steal and use in my artist statement. Why didn’t I ever think of erotics as a central fulcrum in my work? Perhaps because I became obsessed with perversities rather than erotics, I suppose they are two sides of a coin.
Humour and disgust, cruelty and self-deprecation. Yes and yes, yes and yes. Although cruelty is another new term I had not yet considered until I finished reading Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts this summer and have since picked up The Art of Cruelty. See?! Feedback is useful!
The writing element of the practice has significant potential. Awk thanks, that actually means a lot when you have zero literary background and are trying to constantly convince people that writing is a legitimate form within visual arts practice.
Overall their consideration of my artistic quality is meaningful and not to mention, really fucking encouraging. Most people lack a criticality when you ask for feedback that rarely diverges from vague sentiments of “really great” or the hateful word “beautiful”. However the reasons they gave to not recommend me funding felt like the time I was invited for a job interview once and then being told straight up that there was no job being offered, then proceeding with the interview.
Negatives:
However it does not communicate a great sense of ambition, or articulate why this is a potentially transformational moment for the practice nationally / internationally, as outlined in the award priorities.
…somewhat limited or underinformed, given how heavily it’s already been mined over the last decade.
…it doesn’t convincingly communicate a unique, timely need. The application is geared more towards ongoing development than transformation.
I can take this kind of feedback on the chin to a degree, my feelings as I was writing the application were one foot in and one foot out. I wasn’t convinced of my getting the award nor did I feel the need to embellish my application with bullshit probabilities I would never achieve in my practice. For an artist’s proposal to appear transformational, feels far fetched and over reaching - like what are they asking me to say here? That I change my practice from sculpture to hot air balloon performances across the Sperrin Mountains? Giving a proposal that prioritises sustainability and continued strength in a solo practice might not be the exciting and table turning ideas they want, but it is a pretty far fetched idea in itself for lots of artists in the first place.
I always take the opportunity to discuss funding applications and acquisition with others in the sector, and many people scoff when you mention asking for direct income, one person even saying “they’ll never give you money just to pay your bills.” It’s a wild concept to me, as the only successful funding applications I’ve acquired money from are ones where I put a minimum of 50% of the budget for my time. Understandably, coming from a lower income background, it took me to the point of being utterly desperate to get used to asking for my time to be compensated, going from shameless to “deserving” in my approach.
Under no circumstances is asking to be paid for your time (even on a self directed project) to be considered a handout. Under late capitalism there is literally NO SUCH THING AS ETHICAL CONSUMPTION. To feel as though you’ve earned the right to ask for your time to be compensated is seen a privilege many people cannot comprehend for themselves. When I was at rock bottom and literally looking into an empty abyss of a future three years ago, I was advised to “smashy, smashy, grabby, grabby” - no shame in needing to live and survive by doing what you want (and can) do.
Which brings me back to this application, and how arts councils and funding organisations make decisions on the basis of need articulated by the applicant. “I have no other secure form of income” does not suffice. “I cannot do what I do without this money” also does not suffice. With a lack of transparency in how these decisions are made, their understanding of an individual’s needs is entirely based on how that individual describes their needs or even identifies them. Therefore, even if you are desperate, even if you are going hungry or homeless, your basis of need is weighed up against the quality of what it is you do. If you have had no direct income to solely support your work so it can be developed to a standard they approve of then your desperation gets cancelled out by this other denominator. Underdeveloped and broke is not “needy” enough to be given an income.
Thankfully there are smaller pots the ACI offer such as the Agility and the Bursary that acted as excellent stepping stones and confidence boosters when I received them back in 2021. I still haven’t completed one of the projects I received funding for, which brings me to my next point: how the nature of your work can change organically yet extraordinarily once you have the peace of mind of an income without the chokehold of a specific outcome. So whatever I proposed initially -was a shot in the dark- has now given me a year and a half of development and mulling over things, still without the looming pressure of an outcome to strangle my creative processes. Aside from my desire to eventually get it done, I am comfortably allowing myself to change and transform the proposed idea, whilst giving meaningful time for my art writing practice to diverge and fail and rebirth itself again.
It’s a transformation I could have never asked for, so why do a funding body expect artists to maladaptively predict their future? Given the amount of time everyone spends on these applications, you’ve already convinced yourself of the proposal by the time you’ve submitted it, in the hopes that you could manifest the funding into reality. It’s just like applying for a job with the idea in mind that you’ve already got the job, it’s the same problem. Then when you are rejected, all of that energy and time dissipates, without any compensation of any kind. It’s not like they even put these proposals on file, they simply snub you out and congratulate those who got past the gatekeeper - sorry - goalkeeper. If you have the means to maintain your hope after the fallout for other applications, or perhaps you were smart and threw your idea at multiple funding sources, there’s always that chance that all the time and energy put into applying for hope is lost time and energy you could have put into the “transformation” of your work in the first place.
I need to be clear that I’m not complaining about the wide range of available funding to Irish and U.K. artists. Like we actually have ALOT here and those opportunities only increase the more that larger organisations (and people with money) recognise the needs of artists and what they require to deliver the cultural artefacts and events that keeps our critical world ticking over.
What I am complaining about is the shot in the dark system. My feedback is not transparency, it was a couple of determinations based on opinions derived from a brief explanation of my desire for an award. The process is still damning to those whom struggle to grasp the volume of preparation and editing that applications demand these days. The “high standard” of applications, much like school exams, is endlessly increasing yet never being fully outlined to us. And most importantly, the disappointment is never properly acknowledged, not in any REAL way. We don’t get to voice how paying the bills will continue to be difficult, how moving out of your parent’s box room will continue to be your reality, how your desire for a family or a comfortable place to call your own is still out of reach.
Artists shouldn’t have to jump through a hoop like a circus lion and then explain in 500 words how doing this will transform them into a butterfly if someone pays for the hoop.
I still garner hope with every upcoming open call, I still apply, I still cross my fingers, hold my breath and hope like it will go out of fashion. Sometimes I sigh relief that I don’t have to do an exhibition despite it equating to my food bill for the winter, or that I don’t have to attend a series of pointless seminars in order to be considered for a few bob that will cover my car insurance for a month. The smaller fees or commissions that can keep your head above water always ask for more of you than what they are giving in return, and it’s exhausting.
So when someone asks “would you like €25,000 euros? then tell us how you are going to transform your practice”, the expectation that comes with that amount of money is much higher than what the capacity of the application for it will let you describe.
Better luck next time…
On a side note, in very unorthodox circumstances, the ACI never announced who actually received it in the end. And I certainly didn’t see anyone announcing it on their Instagram feed with the usual “I’m so delighted/honoured/blessed…” malarky. Interesting. Shame perhaps?
Save Palestine #stopthegenocide
Rant over, in more important news I’m making my stance clear on the current situation in Palestine to anyone who reads this; people in Gaza are being brutally murdered by the aggressive forces of the state of Israel. It is pursuing a heartless and sadistic campaign to enforce their occupational and colonial strategies without any compassion for human life regardless of age, race or gender.
If you can demonstrate, do. If you can speak up in a conversation, do. If you can march, do. If you can shout, do. If you can share information and make visible the carnage thats being documented online, do. If you can donate, do. If you can vote, do.
Any action no matter how little or no matter how pointless it seems, can keep the genocide of Palestine in the spotlight and put pressure on those who can put a stop to it. This blatant attack on the right to life, to dignity and humanity, and the right to a home, must end. Ceasefire now. Free Palestine!
