I participated in an audition on November 7th for
performance artist Marina Abramovic’s production for the annual gala of
the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. I auditioned because I
wanted to participate in the project of an artist whose work I have
followed with interest for many years and because it was affiliated with
MOCA, an institution that I have a connection with as a Los
Angeles-based artist. Out of approximately 800 applicants, I was one of
two hundred selected to audition. Ultimately, I was offered the role of
one of six nude females to re-enact Abramovic's signature work, "Nude
with Skeleton" (2002), at the center of tables with seats priced at up
to $100,000 each. For reasons I detail here — reasons that I strongly
believe need to be made public — I turned it down.
I am writing to address three main points: One, to add my voice to
the discourse around this event as an artist who was critical of the
experience and decided to walk away, a voice which I feel has been
absent thus far in the LA Times and New York Times coverage; two, to
clarify my identity as the informant about the conditions being asked of
artists and make clear why I chose, up till now, to be anonymous in
regards to my email to Yvonne Rainer; and three, to prompt a shift of
thinking of cultural workers to consider, when either accepting or
rejecting work of any kind, the short- and long-term impact of our
personal choices on the entire field. Each point is to support my
overriding interest in organizing and forming a union that secures labor
standards and fair wages for fine and performing artists in Los Angeles
and beyond.
I refused to participate as a performer because what I anticipated
would be a few hours of creative labor, a meal, and the chance to
network with like-minded colleagues turned out to be an unfairly
remunerated job. I was expected to lie naked and speechless on a slowly
rotating table, starting from before guests arrived and lasting until
after they left (a total of nearly four hours). I was expected to ignore
(by staying in what Abramovic refers to as "performance mode") any
potential physical or verbal harassment while performing. I was expected
to commit to fifteen hours of rehearsal time, and sign a Non-Disclosure
Agreement stating that if I spoke to anyone about what happened in the
audition I was liable for being sued by Bounce Events, Marketing, Inc.,
the event’s producer, for a sum of $1 million dollars plus attorney
fees.
I was to be paid $150. During the audition, there was no mention of
safeguards, signs, or signals for performers in distress, and when I
asked about what protection would be provided I was told it could not be
guaranteed. What I experienced as an auditionee for this work was
extremely problematic, exploitative, and potentially abusive.
I am a professional dancer and choreographer with 16 years of
experience working in the United States, Canada, and Europe, and I hold a
Master of Fine Arts degree in Dance from the University of California,
Los Angeles. As a professional artist working towards earning a middle
class living in Los Angeles, I am outraged that there are no official or
even unofficial standard practice measures for working conditions,
compensation, and benefits for artists and performers, or for relations
between creator, performer, presenting venue and production company in
regard to such highly respected and professionalized individuals and
institutions such as Abramovic and MOCA. In Europe I produced over a
dozen performance works involving casts up to 15 to 20 artists. When I
hired dancers, I was obliged to follow a national union pay scale
agreement based on each artist’s number of years of experience. In
Canada, where I recently performed a work by another artist, I was paid
$350 for one performance that lasted 15 minutes, not including rehearsal
time that was supported by another fee for up to 35 hours, in
accordance with the standards set by CARFAC (Canadian Artists
Representation/Le Front Des Artistes Canadiens) established in 1968.
If my call for labor standards for artists seems out of bounds, think
of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG, established 1933), the American
Federation of Musicians (AFM, founded 1896), or the umbrella
organization the Associated Actors and Artistes of America (the 4A’s,
founded in 1919), which hold the film, theater and music industries to
regulatory and best practice standards for commercial working artists
and entertainers. If there is any group of cultural workers that
deserves basic standards of labor, it is us performers working in
museums, whose medium is our own bodies and deserve humane treatment and
respect. Artists of all disciplines deserve fair and equal treatment
and can organize if we care enough to put the effort into it. I would
rather be the face of the outspoken artist then the silenced, slowly
rotating head (or, worse, "centerpiece") at the table. I want a voice,
loud and clear.
Abramovic’s call for artists was, as the LA Times quoted, for
“strong, silent types.” I am certainly strong but I am not comfortable
with silence in this situation. I refuse to be a silent artist regarding
issues that affect my livelihood and the culture of my practice. There
are issues too important to be silenced and I just happen to be the one
to speak out, to break that silence. I spoke out in response to ethics,
not artistic material or content, and I know that I am not the only one
who feels the way I do.
I rejected the offer to work with Abramovic and MOCA — to participate
in perpetuating unethical, exploitative and discriminatory labor
practices — with my community in mind. It has moved me to work towards
the establishment of ethical standards, labor rights and equal pay for
artists, especially dancers, who tend to be some of the lowest paid
artists.
The time has come for artists in Los Angeles and elsewhere to unite,
organize, and work toward changing the degenerate discrepancies between
the wealthy and powerful funders of art and the artists, mainly poor,
who are at its service and are expected to provide so-called
avant-garde, prescient content or "entertainment," as is increasingly
the case — what is nonetheless merchandise in the service of money. We
must do this not because of what happened at MOCA but in response to a
greater need (painfully demonstrated by the events at MOCA) for equity
and justice for cultural workers.
I am not judging my colleagues who accepted their roles in this work
and I, too, am vulnerable to the cult of charisma surrounding celebrity
artists. I am judging, rather, the current social, cultural, and
economic conditions that have rendered the exploitation of cultural
workers commonplace, natural, and even horrifically banal, whether it is
perpetrated by entities such as MOCA and Abramovic or self-imposed by
the artists themselves.
I want to suggest another mode of thinking: When we, as artists,
accept or reject work, when we participate in the making of a work, even
(or perhaps especially) when it is not our own, we contribute to the
establishment of standards and precedents for our cohort and all who
will come after us.
To conclude, I am grateful to Rainer for utilizing her position
(without a request from me) of cultural authority and respect to make
these issues public for the sake of launching a debate that has been
overlooked for too long. Jeffrey Deitch, director of MOCA, was quoted in
the LA Times as saying, in response to receiving my anonymous email and
Rainer’s letter, “Art is about dialogue.” While I agree, Deitch’s idea
of dialogue here is only a palliative. It obscures a situation of
injustice in which both artist and institution have proven irresponsible
in their unwillingness to recognize that art is not immune to ethical
standards. Let’s have a new discourse that begins on this thought.
Sara Wookey is an artist, choreographer, and creative consultant based in Los Angeles. Her Web site is www.sarawookey.com.
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