The Politics of Migration and Mobility in the Art World , livre ebook

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123 pages

English

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Description

While Eastern European migration is predominantly seen as one-way, permanent, for economic reasons and as going bilaterally from East to West Europe, this book investigates alternative patterns of migration and mobility across Europe.

This original new book explores how visual artists take part in regular cross-border mobilities, onward migrations and transnational communications across Europe for work and the effects of this on their feelings of home and belonging. It assesses how far there is a culture of mobility amongst visual artists from the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, for whom a combination of onward migration and regular cross-border mobilities is a necessity for career progression. This is due to the ‘glass ceiling’ in the Baltic States with regard to a lack of local art markets, few dealers buying art and governments not providing enough funding.

How then do artists from the Baltic States get onto the global art market in the face of such barriers? This is a particularly important question, as these artists come from a region where migration, mobilities and cross-cultural exchanges were not freely available during the Soviet Union. This transdisciplinary investigation into visual artists’ working practices, ways of moving and placing dwellings addresses this issue.

Mobile working practices have an impact on artists’ feelings of home and belonging, which can be seen in their artworks that compare different cultures. This is a result of their particular combination of onward migration and regular mobilities, the multiple flows in and out of the home cities and the workings of the global art market within which these artists are operating. Nevertheless, these movements are determined by the forces of the global art world, whereby a particular politics of migration and mobility is experienced by artists from the Baltic States wanting to ‘make it’ in the global art world.

With its focus on Baltic artists and their mobilities, the scope and space explored is the whole of Europe and the mobilities explored in this text are crucially enabled by the freedom of movement in the European Union.

The book is multidisciplinary and at the intersection of art, geographic mobility and creative practice. It combines visual cultures and social sciences in order to answer questions more thoroughly as well as to contextualise an analysis of artworks in a conversation with the artists themselves.

This topic is current, with the situation of the ‘refugee crisis’ and Brexit that has created a culture of anti-immigration and resurgence in anti-Eastern European sentiment in government, mainstream media and society.

The book discusses the implications of these complex itineraries on the conventional sociological notions of home, mobility and diaspora. The author argues that artists form a ‘diaspora of practice’ rather than of ethnicity, their homes are multiple as are the directions of their settlement.

Primary appeal will be to artists and art professionals; scholars working and researching on mobilities and migration issues; those working on the concepts of belonging and home; sociologists; anthropologists; those in the fields of cultural studies and European Union studies.

Introduction

1. Researching the Baltic States and its mobile professionals: Context and methodology

2. Cross-cultural exchange and cultural transition in the Baltic art worlds

3. The nature of artists’ work: Getting onto the global art market

4. Artists’ homescapes and a ‘homing aesthetics’

Conclusion

Appendices

Appendix A: Interviewing artists and culture professionals

Appendix B: Artists’ bios and permissions

Sujets

Arts visuels

ART

Migration

General

Eastern Europe

General officer

Informations

Publié par	Intellect Books
Date de parution	19 janvier 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781789383423
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,4000€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

The Politics of Migration and Mobility in the Art World
Eva Vevere, Poetic Robotism, 2009. Interactive installation at Kim? Contemporary Art Centre, in Riga. Light and dark blue movable boxes.
The Politics of Migration and Mobility in the Art World
Transnational Baltic Artistic Practices across Europe
Emma Duester
First published in the UK in 2021 by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2021 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2021 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover designer: Aleksandra Szumlas
Copy editor: Newgen
Production managers: Emma Berrill and Sophia Munyengeterwa
Typesetting: Newgen
Cover image: Denial , mixed media, Laura Põld, 2020
Print ISBN 978-1-78938-340-9
ePDF ISBN 978-1-78938-341-6
ePub ISBN 978-1-78938-342-3
To find out about all our publications, please visit
www.intellectbooks.com
There you can subscribe to our e-newsletter,
browse or download our current catalogue,
and buy any titles that are in print.
This is a peer-reviewed publication.
Contents
List of Figures
Introduction
1. Researching the Baltic States and Its Mobile Professionals: Context and Methodology
2. Cross-Cultural Exchange and Cultural Transition in the Baltic Art Worlds
3. The Nature of Artists’ Work: Getting onto the Global Art Market
4. Artists’ Homescapes and ‘Homing Aesthetics’
Conclusion
Appendices
Appendix A: Interviewing Artists and Culture Professionals
Appendix B: Artists’ Biographies, Contact Details and Consent
References
Index
Figures
1. Kostas Bogdanas, Identification: The Father and the Son, 2000.
2. Ieva Epnere, Mikrorajons, 2007.
3. Ieva Epnere, The Green Land, 2010.
4. Eglė Budvytytė, Choreography for the Running Male , Vilnius, 2012.
5. Eglė Budvytytė, Choreography for the Running Male, Sydney , 2014.
6. Krišs Salmanis, North by Northeast , 2013.
7. Laura Põld, A Study of Homes , 2012.
8. Laura Põld, Unörte , 2013.
9. Laura Põld, Himmelblau , 2013.
10. Eva Vevere, Poetic Robotism , 2009.
11. Vineta Kaulaca, Pātrinājums II (‘Acceleration II’), 2010.
12. Vineta Kaulaca, Go with the Light , 2011.
Introduction
Transnational Artistic Practices of Migration and Mobility
This book explores how visual artists take part in regular cross-border mobilities, onward migrations and transnational communications across Europe for work and the effects of this on their feelings of home and belonging. It assesses how far there is a ‘culture of mobility’ amongst artists from the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, for whom a combination of onward migration and regular cross-border mobilities is a necessity for career progression. This is due to the ‘glass ceiling’ in the Baltic States with regard to a lack of local art markets, few dealers buying art and governments not providing enough funding. In addition, Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius art scenes have had relatively little time to develop as independent capitalist art scenes, in comparison to established art scenes such as Paris or Vienna, as they had to be rebuilt during the 1990s due to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
This means there is an unanswered question on how visual artists from the Baltic States get onto the global art market amidst these barriers. This is important as these artists come from a region where migration, mobilities and cross-cultural exchanges were not freely available in the Soviet Union and where permanent migrations were prevalent until European Union (EU) accession in 2004. Investigation is required in the Baltic region, in particular, in order to understand how the transition of these art scenes is happening as a direct result of the increasing mobilities of people, communications, artworks and skills in and out of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius. A transdisciplinary investigation is required into artists’ differing practices, ways of moving and placing dwellings, as well as cultural comparisons, in artworks as a result of their particular type of combination of onward migration and regular mobilities, the multiple flows in and out of the home cities and the workings of the global art market within which these artists are operating.
The removal of borders across Europe has facilitated an intensification of travel across European nations. The existence of the European Union and the Schengen Zone means that there are no physical borders, checkpoints or document checks for European Union citizens. As the European Commission ( 2014 : 1) states, ‘[o]‌ne of the fundamental objectives of the European Union is to create an area without internal borders where people may move, live and work freely, knowing that their rights are fully respected and their security ensured’. However, the juxtaposition of European Union member states with economic, political or cultural disparities creates new reasons for travel and a politics of mobility where there is pressure to go to certain places and where flows are centred in some places, yet bypass other places. While Thompson ( 2013 ) argues that travel within the EU has to do with economic disparities, this book argues that visual artists’ mobilities and migration patterns also have to do with the power relations of the global art market. Even though artists are often seen as a ‘highly skilled’ privileged elite (Burton 2007 ; Marche 2015 ) who can migrate and move across European borders with ease, there are elements of control and restriction. This is what I call compulsory mobility associated with the geoeconomics involved in precarious labour. There are specific economic, career-related, networking-related rationales behind the direction and duration of artists’ mobilities and settlements. There is also pressure to be highly mobile, to be international and to follow the global art market that is itself mobile, multisited and has a particular global circuit of flows.
As a result, the global art market determines the location of art centres vis-à-vis art peripheries and the direction of flows of money, people and artwork. This book will show how mobilities, both material and digital, become a necessity due to pressures of the global art market. Certain places (i.e cities across Europe) are more desirable and some artists will overcome financial or language barriers in order to make a place their home if, for instance, they know it will be beneficial to their career. This relates to how the broader system of the global art market affects individuals’ lifeworlds, to paraphrase Marcus ( 1995 ), in terms of how and where artists move and make homes as well as how they subsequently feel about movement and home. This adds to migration and home literatures (Blunt and Dowling 2006 ; Boccagni 2017 ), by showing that there is often a politics and geoeconomics behind artists’ placement of homes across Europe.
Visual artists must move across Europe ‘in tune’ with the economic and cultural flows of the global art market as well as the circuits of art fairs, biennales and shows that are part of the art world. Becker ( 1982 : x) describes the art world as ‘the network of people whose cooperative activity, organized via their joint knowledge of conventional means of doing things, produce(s) the kind of art works that [the] art world is noted for’. Thornton ( 2014 ) argues it as a loose network of overlapping subcultures held together by a belief in art. They span the globe but cluster in art capitals like New York, London, Los Angeles and Berlin. However, the art market denotes the arena of buyers and sellers of artworks, including dealers, auctioneers and auction houses. It is a marketplace and encompasses the economy. Unlike other marketplaces where value and/or price of goods depends on supply and demand, the art market includes additional factors such as perceived cultural value, past value and potential future value. In this book, I will discuss both the art world as well as the art market across Europe. In contrast, I will discuss the opportunities and restrictions of the Baltic art scenes that are becoming more international and professional as well as the fledgling art markets being developed in the Baltic States, taking place through the work of returnees who harness their transnational networks, which have been developed while abroad.
Visual artists’ mobilities across Europe have changed dramatically since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the EU-27 accession in 2004, which included Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Artists from these states have travelled not only west but also east, south and north across Europe. Furthermore, artists have not only travelled outwards, as other European citizens have, but also migrated to the Baltic region in order to carry out their artistic practices. This shows Eastern Europe has by no means been only sending countries. German and Polish artists were living in Lithuania during the First World War and just afterwards (Rėklaitis 1957 ). This is also happening today; I argue that it is important to shed light on flows going into these states, contrary to their ‘image’ and reputation as only so-called ‘outmigration countries’ (Galgóczi and Leschke 2009; OECD 2013 ; Sakkeus 1994 ). There have been reciprocal flows of artists, art and culture professionals across the European Union since its inception in 1993. The freedom of movement and the right to work in any EU member state makes Europe a conducive space for transnational practices.
The ability for European citizens to exercise their right to free movement and work in any member state influences the nature of transnational practices, whe