tales of precarity, 2019-2023
tales of precarity is a series of thirteen co-curated visual stories that document the affective tensions that artists experience in sustaining their individual practice despite political and economic discourses that place little value on their work. embodied in each story are life histories that reflect why artists work to sustain their practice. together the tales illustrate a too often unheard narrative of precarious yet deeply meaningful work
below you can watch an excerpt from the film and scroll through each story
this visual sociology is the outcome of a four-year academic research project. conceptually, it seeks to challenge everyday misconceptions of artistic freedom and contest contemporary economic logics that devalue cultural production and render artists’ processes invisible. methodologically, the project employs analogue photography and dialogue over a series of one-to-one encounters to slow the sensemaking process, develop shared understandings and invoke deeply felt embodiments. together, participants and I co-curated their individual stories from the photographic and transcribed texts produced, to tell only tales that are faithful to their truths
tales of precarity was originally conceived with Counterpoints Arts as seven Instagram artefacts exhibited as part of the Who Are We program in 2019, a multimodal socially engaged art exhibition at Tate Exchange, London. in September 2023, it will be exhibited at Sawtooth ARI, Launceston, Tasmania. the project informs my book, creative work beyond precarity published by Routledge
tales of precarity is currently shown as a 56-minute film that moved through overlapping images and text, story-to-story. this is an excerpt from the full film. below is each story in a format similar to the scrolling experience of the original instagram stories.
