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Ireland to launch basic income program for artists

artforum.com

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Re: Ireland to launch basic income program for artists

#81

Post by goodpoint »

chongli wrote: post #48
lelanthran wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's always nice seeing countries look to support their artists in building their cultural heritage. But, at the end of the day it's still worth close to nothing, right? I enjoy art and music as much as anyone else but the reason those professions are so poorly paid is because the supply outstrips the demand considerably[1]. What value is there in asking taxpayers to pay for an increase the supply when there's alre…

Art produces huge positive externalities. This is the reason artists are the pioneers of gentrified neighbourhoods. They arrive when rent is low (all they can afford) and their product increases the desirability of the area. The artists themselves capture none of this value and often have to leave when rents go up.

Is that sarcasm?

This is a positive externality for landlords and a negative one for tenant. It's a zero-sum game between the two groups.

And rent-seeking is a net negative for society.

Re: Ireland to launch basic income program for artists

#82

Post by burntoutfire »

arcticbull wrote: post #2

Well that's not really universal by any metric (you have to be an artist, there can't be too many applicants or you'll get subjected to lottery) but I'm still enthusiastic. It's always nice seeing countries look to support their artists in building their cultural heritage. These feel more like government artist in residence grants.

Modern art world is completely overtaken by cliques and is basically about marketing and who-knows-who. If you create something that is against the current clique that runs things (i.e. are curators in major museums, officials in Ministry of Culture, art critics in major newspapers etc.) then you're basically screwed. The art world absolutely eclipses academia in terms of petty politics.

The reason for that is of course the impossibility of objectively judging the value of a work of art. It's all subjective, and hence "emperor's new clothes" kinds of situation are commonplace. Also, subjectivity heavily supports no-skill fields like conceptual or performance art - why work 10+ years to learn how to paint properly, when you can do abstract paint splatters, and instead work on marketing it, building a clique (an "art movement") with like-minded allied "artists" instead?

IMO it's all fair game until taxpayer's money are involved. I for one don't want my taxes to be paying a small fortune for an empty piece of canvas, the "artist"'s canned shit or a "performance" of an "artist" sitting on a stool and peeling potatoes.

Re: Ireland to launch basic income program for artists

#84

Post by nixass »

unwind wrote: post #65
chrismorgan wrote: post #15

> two thousand arts and culture workers for a span of three years … earmarked €25 million for the plan … top recommendation … €10.50 per hour 3 years × 2,000 hours per year (estimate of full time employment) × €10.50 per hour × 2,000 people = €126 million, five times as much as is earmarked (even ignoring administrative costs). Perhaps it’s 400 rather than 2,000, perhaps it’s not full-time, perhaps the mention of the…

2,000 hours at 40 hours/week is 50 weeks. As a European, that sounds really really high. I believe around 1,700 is the real average for all of EU, for instance. That is not enough of course to change the result much (at 1,700 hours they would need €107 or just above four times the earmarked amount), I just wanted to point it out.

1768 hours to be more exact, at least HR in my company (FAANG) in Germany calculates it that way (85%)

Re: Ireland to launch basic income program for artists

#85

Post by petercooper »

inglor_cz wrote: post #59
jll29 wrote: post #51

I wish for the cynics and for the literary connoisseurs that the next James Joyce comes out of this programme. Norway has had a stipend programme for writers for some time. Interesting question: how does not "prove" to be an artist, and a needy one at that? At the moment it's a lottery.

How often does a new James Joyce arise out of government subsidies? We spend much more money on art than in 1920, yet the art quality does not seem to have improved proportionately, indeed it possibly went down. That might or might not be causal (possibly talented people do not choose to be artists anymore), but it is still worrying. There is a lot of gatekeeping around art and professionals tend to declare opinions…

We spend much more money on art than in 1920, yet the art quality does not seem to have improved proportionately, indeed it possibly went down.

I think it's hard to say because there's so much art above a basic quality bar now that it's next to impossible to experience, curate or judge a significant amount of it, even within a category.

We are so overwhelmed with creative output that even watching every "highly recommended" TV show or movie we're recommended on Netflix would be a fulltime job, let alone the hidden gems, or the millions of books published each year. You'd hope that someone would find the next Oscar Wilde and shout about it, but I don't like the odds.. especially as the gamut of what is considered good literature is now broader than ever before.

I frequently find some amazing new music that isn't popular and shout about it a bit but no-one really cares. There's too much music, tastes vary too much (what I find amazing could well seem like total crud to everyone else), and most people prefer to listen to what they already know over and over rather than keep digging for something new.

Re: Ireland to launch basic income program for artists

#86

Post by barcoder »

chrismorgan wrote: post #15

> two thousand arts and culture workers for a span of three years … earmarked €25 million for the plan … top recommendation … €10.50 per hour 3 years × 2,000 hours per year (estimate of full time employment) × €10.50 per hour × 2,000 people = €126 million, five times as much as is earmarked (even ignoring administrative costs). Perhaps it’s 400 rather than 2,000, perhaps it’s not full-time, perhaps the mention of the…

It is basic income, so presumably the artist will be able to make additional money their art.

Re: Ireland to launch basic income program for artists

#87

Post by hubert022 »

Wow this is so naive… how are they gonna define who is an artist and who is not? Why taxpayers (who may not care about art at all) should pay for this? Why a government can define that this specific group of people should get some grants, but not for example teachers or Uber drivers? Utopia

Re: Ireland to launch basic income program for artists

#88

Post by danivaz »

toyg wrote: post #40
lelanthran wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Art and cultural heritage may have worth outside that represented by short-term supply and demand? Or it may not. We can't tell objectively, because there is no metric to measure. I suppose my point is, if you cannot tell that there is a benefit at all , why leap to the assumption that it's a large enough benefit to pay 25m euros for.

Because not of bread alone you shalt live. You can't get to the moon without moonshots. There is a queue of people willing to fund for-profit moonshots, but when it comes to art and other non-monetizable human endeavours, in practice there is only the State.

art is monetizable

Re: Ireland to launch basic income program for artists

#89

Post by goodpoint »

adwn wrote: post #78

Why is it so often "artists" that receive this kind of public funding? Why not open source developers? Hear me out, this isn't the "my hobbies are more important than your hobbies" kind of argument. Art is almost always exclusively used for consumption. That doesn't make it worthless: it has value to the people who enjoy consuming that kind of art. But when an artist creates a work of art, that's the end of the chain…

> Art is almost always exclusively used for consumption ... Not all OSS is used productively by other people

If anything it's the opposite: there is more demand for software than art.

True, for most niche single-developer OSS projects is very difficult to gain an user community. But for a random musician/sculptor/painter it's even worse.

Re: Ireland to launch basic income program for artists

#90

Post by valdiorn »

socialdemocrat wrote: post #63

Is it right to call this UBI? In Norway we have supported artists economically since at least the mid 1800s. Playwrights like Henrik Ibsen got paid by the government after decisions by the Parliament. This is payment for contributing specifically to the cultural enrichment of the country while UBI as a system has no strings attached.

Same in Iceland. We have something called "artist salary" where every year a handful of artists are selected to essentially be paid by the government to practice their craft. Opinions are however divided as there's always this debate about who is deemed worthy and who is not.

This sounds very similar, but I think they'll have the same problem; who decides what art is worthy of being supported?

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