Artist’s Status

On occasion of the recent unanimous approval by the Spanish parliament of a Statue of the Artist and the Culture Professional that recognises the specificity of artistic and cultural work and the need to reformulate and adapt certain laws (referred to taxation, work protection and social security, and the compatibility between public benefits and copyrights), this month we have decided to reflect on the subject of the status of the artist in articles and interviews from our Magazine and our A*LIVE presential format.

We began the month with a text by Marta Ramos-Yzquierdo that examined the statute and, above all, revealed the lack of interest that it initially arouses among the actual artistic collective. How can we regulate artistic practice under the slogan of irregularity? This is the great question that Marta poses at the end of her text.

Alba Mayol and Mar Arza discuss the role of the art worker in society, starting from the problems they confront in their daily practice.

Other concrete examples are analysed in Héctor Tarancón Royo’s interview with Adonay Bermúdez on the experience of Espacio Dörffi, an independent art space with a long-standing trajectory that did not survive its economic and administrative demands.

Finally, the A*LIVE event held on 4 December last at La Capella in Barcelona that counted on the participation of artists Daniel Gasol and Núria Güell and Eva Sòria, lawyer and coordinator of the Visual Arts Department at the Ramon Llull Institute, discussed the mission of art and culture in an increasingly standardised and regulated world that strives to subdue idiosyncrasies and experiments — in short, all that which ‘doesn’t fit’ or could prove annoying on the subject of the precariousness of the art sector, the pressure to transform cultural workers into entrepreneurs and the possibility that the dynamics in which we find ourselves could entail the end of art as we know it.