Epis. 341: Class Issues- artists and class with Berlin artist Norbert Witzgall
Berlin-based artist and co-curator of the exhibition \u2018Class Issues: Art Production in and out of Precarity,\u2019 Norbert Witzgall talks about:
The term/phenomenon of \u201cHope Labor,\u201d which drives the economy of fine art and is based on the presumption that your hard work will pay off when you \u2018make it;\u2019 how Berlin has become prohibitively expensive for artists, which among other things has led to artists creating platforms such as the Ministry for Empathy to help artists in need; mental health in connection with artists\u2019 labor conditions; the challenge for migrants in getting German grants, largely because of accessibility and knowledge; the intersectionality of exclusion, which is essentially how access includes less frequently acknowledged statuses such as class background and housing in addition to race and gender; art\u2019s struggle to represent the society at large, using the example that there are no Germans of Turkish descent who are recognized in the art world; homeless artists, in particular a German collective, \u2018Anonymous,\u2019 included in \u2018Class Issues;\u2019 the poverty of some artists in old age; the transparency they used in \u2018Class Issues,\u2019 including production costs for the artworks, the family background of the artist, and what an artist\u2019s pension is/will be; his at one time 11 simultaneous freelance jobs, which meant a big \u2018class journey,\u2019 or class switching, between gigs; his decision to re-train as a fine arts school teacher, which he started but then left at 19, coming back this time because he has the life experience to bring with him; and the hope that we can decrease the amount of \u2018hope labor\u2019 being put out by many, many artists.