Help
In our interview I asked Dominique White if she does all of her stuff alone. She responded,
At the moment, I do everything myself. But this year, I will be taking on an assistant at some point. I haven’t quite worked out when because my schedule keeps changing. And it’s really... ugh! But yeah, it’s been a long time coming, but it’s always been like a problem of funding. ‘Cause couldn’t not pay someone, and I also want to pay someone, like, a more than decent wage. In France, it’s very, like, normal for you to just take on a student for free for like three months. And I’m just like, I can’t... I can’t do that.[i]
I replied, “Yeah, it’s really normal in the U.S. also, especially for, like, professors just to like have a, like, free student.”[ii] I remember speaking to Cecile Tulkens about this, and about how Cecile wasn’t paid for her first job. She said,
I wasn't paid for my first job and I sort of assumed I would be paid, or like that he would like, give me some money for some reason, because that's... Because we had no agreement, we hadn't said anything verbally, like I was kind of... I don't really know what I was expecting. And I wasn't on... it wasn't an internship. It was like someone needed... he said, “I need help with the crochet.” So I came, but then I ended up like, basically designing the whole thing and doing it for him…Yeah, and I thought it would be like, “Oh, that's such a good job, like, maybe I'll give you 50 quid or something.” And I wasn't expecting a lot, you know? You know when you're that age, and you're just like... You know what, I was more angry at myself being like, “Oh, my God, you're so naive! Like, why would you think that just because you did something for him that he would feel any kind of responsibility towards you because you did that for his brand, which is what he was expecting anyway?” So, it's just sort of like... it wasn't even a favor to him, it was like what I had to do, you know what I mean? He didn't see it as like... I saw it as I was doing him a favor, as like a person-to-person relationship, whereas he saw me as beneath him, and he is the head of the brand and I am the underworker. And so my production was made only for the sake of his brand, therefore he doesn't have to pay me. And the experience that I got and like the fact that I can say to people, 'I made that crochet top' is, like, enough. You know, he posts photos of it even now and it's not written underneath it like made by … no way![iii]
I’ve never had an unpaid internship, nor have I worked for or made anything for another artist, but I have done work for free. While I have the privilege now of limiting this unpaid work to friends and collectives, occasionally I still do work for free in exchange for knowledge, experience, networking potential, institutional affiliation, and social credit. Recently, I was a (and then the) representative of my PhD cohort at a variety of meetings for the Ruskin School of Art, a necessary position to facilitate communication between the administrative staff and full-time faculty and the PhD students, but an unpaid position. I have always advocated for all representatives to be paid, and some people within the Ruskin School of Art have also advocated for and looked into representatives to be paid, but the Ruskin’s position was and remains that there would need precedent, that they could not pay us when none of the other representatives from the other departments get paid, and that there is an expectation of civic engagement at the University. They have recognized that this expectation of civic engagement does not accommodate for people who have caring responsibilities, or work jobs perhaps to fund their studies… but this is the expectation, and they would need precedent.
While I did not get paid, I did learn a lot about how the school operates, and I got to know people who otherwise would have just been the voice on the other side of an email telling me no. I got to know the professors and they got to know me, and I know this has benefitted me in a number of ways including perhaps the fact that I got funding after my first year at Oxford. So, not only did I do this position which had weekly commitments for free, but for one term I was paying thousands of pounds to do this unpaid position.
The excerpt from my interview with Gregory Bae which is in the archive comes from a different section of our three-hour long interview than what is featured in the podcast. In this excerpt you hear Greg speak to his experiences of being a preparator which made some select people from institutions and galleries (assisted by racial stereotypes) not see him as his own artist and think that he was, “okay with that.”[iv] Greg spoke to what this does to one’s mental health saying that it is, “infuriating, and you know, then you go home and your quality of life is not that great, and then you're at home like making and stuff and it's um... you know you've got to be tough, basically.”[v]
Earlier on in the excerpt, Greg speaks to the connection between invisible labour and racial stereotypes specifically in terms of Asian people, saying,
The way people have in their minds like, you know, Asian people being invisible workers, you know... The invisible worker bees behind operations or something like that, like, or being somebody's sidekick or something like that, you know? That really started to get in my head. And I was like, oh, that's really the, kind of, the situation that I'm kind of being seen in as here, is like, I'm not actually an individual, I'm completely invisible. I might be recognized for like, you know, doing some work as long as I don't get, like, any kind of actual face appreciation out of it, you know? Like, I'm not actually like, seen, you know?[vi]
Nicole Morris speaks to another form of invisible labour in terms of childcare and the “double shift”. When I asked what the “double shift” was, Nicole responded,
So, if you think about caring responsibilities, so the idea that you would work all day, and then you go home, and you're going to have another shift of whatever that caring responsibility is. You know, there's no break. Whereas if a State recognizes reproductive labor which is saying that, that these things are not worthy of economic support. They're saying that having children, despite being, like, key to economic growth, they're saying that that is not worthy of being financially supported. They're saying, that having elderly cared for is not worthy. They're saying that cleaning is something we don't need to pay for.
If you think about all those reproductive labour costs, they don't pay for any of them, which means that your actual paid labor is cut. And then, it just kind of all falls in, into this devalued sense of identity, of purpose, of... And then you get this moment, I think, where then the State starts paying when they’re like three or something. And then you're just picking up the pieces of a very broken career, and a broken sense of self because you've fought so hard to just keep your foot in something, and then when you come back everything has, kind of, changed… so I think there's something in that definitely around State recognition. [vii]
In our conversation Bella Milroy speaks about getting registered with Social Services’ Access to Work scheme to get a Personal Assistant (P.A.). She said that it was,
…life changing, totally life changing. [Laughter] Also, an (I'm gonna say that really trite word again) astronomically steep learning curve, as well. That was that I had anticipated, but I think it's just a different animal, when you experience it yourself. When you go from that kind of informal family care setup to this, essentially a stranger who is, like, in your home. Especially going from shielding to not having that at all, and then having to cope with that and adjust to that. And just like, you know, all the internalized ableism, you didn't even know you had just kind of spills out into like, oh, yeah, I don't really ask for what I need very often in a very straightforward way. And I find that really hard and complicated.
So that was a really big thing. And I think I'm still learning with it. Like, I've had that for about six months now. I think I'm definitely getting there, and it's easier in some respects, it is consistently a job. Like it's a job in itself, and you have to manage it, and the way that happens, it is a big thing, it takes up a lot of time and energy in itself.[viii]
This is a broader conversation between care workers, freelance workers, and precarious workers. I think Dom, Cecile, Greg, Nicole, and Bella have spoken to me about different forms of recognition which are needed. Dom and Cecile speak to the importance of recognition from the employer of ethical labour practices. Greg speaks to the need for one’s community and one’s employers to recognize their employees as whole people with their own ambitions and their own careers sometimes related to, but sometimes separate from, the paid work that they are currently doing for them. Nicole speaks to recognition which is necessary from the State to re-categorize reproductive labour, elderly care, and cleaning as things worthy of economic support, and Bella speaks to recognition of the fact that even when State support is available, to apply for it, receive it, and manage it, is a job in itself.
Additionally, Cecile, Greg, and Nicole speak to the toll it takes when these forms of labour go unrecognized, with Cecile saying that she felt angry at herself for being “so naïve… [to think that her employer would] feel any kind of responsibility towards [her]”[ix]; with Greg saying that “you have to be tough”[x]; and with Nicole saying that “you're just picking up the pieces of a very broken career, and a broken sense of self”[xi].
Kelly Lloyd
[i] “Interview with Dominique White” Kelly Lloyd. February 1, 2021. https://www.thisthingwecallart.com/podcast/dominique-white
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] “Interview with Cecile Tulkens” Kelly Lloyd. February 21, 2019. https://www.thisthingwecallart.com/archive/cecile-tulkens
[iv] “Interview with Gregory Bae” Kelly Lloyd. February 9, 2021. https://www.thisthingwecallart.com/archive/gregory-bae
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Ibid.
[vii]“Interview with Nicole Morris” Kelly Lloyd. February 25, 2021. https://www.thisthingwecallart.com/podcast/nicole-morris
[viii] “Interview with Bella Milroy” Kelly Lloyd. May 8, 2021. https://www.thisthingwecallart.com/podcast/bella-milroy
[ix]“Interview with Cecile Tulkens” Kelly Lloyd. February 21, 2019. https://www.thisthingwecallart.com/archive/cecile-tulkens
[x] “Interview with Gregory Bae” Kelly Lloyd. February 9, 2021. https://www.thisthingwecallart.com/archive/gregory-bae
[xi] Ibid.