Documentations looks at artistic practices and what art workers do. We publish interviews, essays, investigations, exhibition reviews, and texts written by artists and art workers, always with a political lens. Documentations looks at activist practices : we support and relay endeavors to politicize the French art scene, and use our platform to enact solidarity with political movements.
Documentations started with a very straightforward address in a text on our website in October 2018. During Fiac, the main Paris art fair, president Emmanuel Macron invited dozens of arts professionals—mostly gallerists and institution directors—to attend a reception at the Elysée Palace.Our feeds were suddenly flooded with images of gilded reception halls and of presidential selfies taken by our peers. Brilliant curators and artists,who would usually define their own work as "acts of resistance", were now throwing a span of joy on social media for having reached the antechamber of power .
We were, of course, aware of the neoliberal forces shaping politics and capitalism—Macron being its most visible puppet—and how they affected the economy of the arts. But that day, those contradictions were blatantly embodied by people we call colleagues or friends, and some even insist to say that we're family. Their Macron-selfies were blunt reminders of the profound discrepancy between the vast majority of art workers and the few at the top of the pyramid. They expressed their happiness of being on the winning side, reassured to be part "those who made it" and not "those who are nothing" (les gens qui ne sont rien), as Macron himself would put it.
It felt urgent to say something, and that's exactly what we did. We perceived a dire lack in critical discourse in the contemporary art scene. Political matters and activism were more than ever conjured in artworks and talks, yet they never seemed to affect the politics of art and art-making. They were barely addressed in art writing, and there was a lot of work to do to fill that blank. At the same time, we saw that many collectives and organizations—Decolonize This Place & W.A.G.E in the US, Wages for Wages Against in Switzerland, Kunstenaars Honorarium in the Netherlands, Économie Solidaire de l’Art in France, CAVEAT in Belgium—as well as art criticism platforms—The White Pube,ArtLeaks— were emerging and we believed we could provide a similar kind of voice in our context.
Friendship, confrontation and dissensus
According to those injonctions, we're all one big family. In times of crisis, we're all on the same boat, we all stand at the same starting line, or, as Emmanuel Macron himself poetically declared, we all ride the same tiger. This of course is a blatant lie; a lie that is however repeated over and over. How could artists and art workers who occupy such different positions in the pyramid of power be on the same starting line? How could people with such vast wealth disparities share the same interests and concerns?
In a context where relations of power are left unaddressed, consensus is not the result of a moderated, polite debate. Consensus is the voice of the powerful. Avoiding disagreement in the name of consensus is just another word for silencing. Silencing dissent maintains an unfair social order by erasing difference and conflict. If you disagree, if you contest the way you are treated, if you protest, your action is not framed as political, it is framed and dismissed as personal. It means you have a grudge against someone, it means you're a difficult artist/curator/writer/fill the blank. If you're a woman or a non-white person, you may be framed as sensitive, overreacting, even angry. Tone policing is as pernicious as it is ubiquitous, and it may be even more so in so-called Nordic consensual democracies where the emphasis on civility and responsibility is just another word for erasing voices that don't fit.
Publicity allows the attention to shift on who you are, rather than what you stand for. Raising your voice turns you into the abuser—you're the one bringing "violence" into an otherwise quiet and happy family, no one has said anything before, you must be the problem. And if you dare speak or write publicly to exposethe many misdeeds you observe or are subjected to, maybe going to the press or to court if you're lucky enough to have access or evidence, you become the perpetrator. You become the one who brings shame onto the family.
Empowering art workers
We are not friends, we are not brothers and sisters. It’s really important to remember that the economy of the art world brings closely together perpetrators and victims—persons who are exploited on a daily basis, persons who are subjected to discrimination, bullying, sexism, and the list goes on. But, as we are all part of this system, we have the responsibility to fight for it to change.
An essential part of Documentations' content is gathering information about abusive labor practices for artists, museum employees, and various workers in the cultural field. We strongly believe that labor practices should be under scrutiny in the same way that funding is, and that they reveal just as much what institutions truly uphold. For these reasons, institutions must be accountable for the way they treat their collaborators, artists, employees—or any subordinates.
We have been highlighting known cases of abuse: in December 2019, we published a straightforward post containing screenshots of job postings to pinpoint the mad turnover at Bétonsalon, which was enough to spark many conversations about its dysfunctional management; later we relayed an op-ed denouncing the impunity of the director or the Lyon Opera, protected despite his court conviction for discrimination. Unfortunately, abuse is so widespread that we could give many other examples.
To put it simply, we want to empower art workers: in March 2020, we published an interview with a lawyer on abuse of power and labor law, as a continuing effort to make art workers aware of their rights. One of our most important achievements was a full-on investigation of labor relations in a major Paris performing and visual arts venue, la Gaîté Lyrique: in February 2020, we published an article uncovering mismanagement, bullying, and conflicts of interest within the institution. Our findings were relayed by the national press and investigations are currently underway.
Of course, since March 2020, developments of the Covid-19 crisis forced us to shift our focus. A certain sense of urgency meant we had to use our platform to defend artists and art workers, who usually didn't benefit from safety nets, and reinforce our commitment to stay vigilant as the ensuing social and economic crisis was just starting at the time of writing.
Art criticism, ideology, and social commentary
In August 2019, we published a short op-ed about Southway Studio, an artists-collective-cum-curatorial-platform-cum-commercial-gallery-in-disguise based in Marseille. We wanted to attract attention to the ideological underpinnings of the group: under the appearance of a sunny, nostalgic attachment to local identities, their texts advocated a very reactionary form of religious, whitewashed and paternalist nationalism. As their content was political, we had to reply politically. The institutions who had previously invited Southway Studio had never paid attention to the politics of the discourses they had been using to articulate their artistic choices. It was then very difficult to sort out between endorsement and ignorance: as our field is made of many people who have limited interest or practice of politics—art and art history schools aren't famous for that—or who come straight from conservative backgrounds, many may not even have seen what was going on. How can such political delusion be normalized when the art world spends days and nights talking about the supposed power of art to change the world? How could art writers be expected to look only at the political potency of supposed autonomous artworks, and not at the politics of who makes them, who funds them, and who shows them?
We believe it is important to look at artworks and to look at their context of production. Critics and artists aren't outside the system: they are part of an economy, they produce value, legitimize institutions, professionals, each other. As writers, we can't write as if we were in a void, we can't write as if the artists and institutions we discuss existed autonomously. They uphold interests and values. Their decisions and practices have an effect on the economy.
So-called neutrality or objectivity don't mean that art writers stand outside that economy: when writers say nothing, when they play by the rules, they help the perpetuation of a system. As writers, we take part in a mafia-like system of allegiances, favors—and retribution: if someone dares breaking the silence, the omerta rules. We uphold an economic system based on obscure criteria, where repute and cooptation prevail.
In September 2019, we published another op-ed about the Lyon Biennial, the most important visual arts event in France. We highlighted the role of its private sponsor, the oil giant Total, and the obvious contradiction we saw between its funding and its curatorial statement addressing the anthropocene and the ecological crisis. Even more importantly, we discussed the silence surrounding this contradiction: in New York, meaningful and important protests around the Whitney Biennial had led to the resignation of arms dealer Warren Kanders from the museum's board; in London, Tate had finally renounced its BP funding; in Amsterdam, activists were protesting the Van Gogh Museum's partnership will Shell; and France remained hopelessly silent. The French are usually framed as rowdy, prone to demonstrate people, but nothing of the sort happened, so we had to shake things up.
Of course, publishing an op-ed against evil corporations from some moral high ground is easy. We can write it, read it, share it for some good virtue signalling, and get on with our day. What isn't easy is questioning the networks of complicity: Why do artists and curators we respect and value choose to participate in such masquerades? When can and should we call out someone for doing so? Who are we to define the often-mentioned threshold between economic necessity and compromission? How can we help our fellow practitioners to enact some damn change?
Collaborative practices, anonymity and transparency
There are many ways to bind the rules, to bring about dissent, and to strive towards social change. Unlike in our position as writers, critics, or arts professionals—many of us are artists or curators—, with Documentations, we have a tremendous opportunity to encourage transparency and facilitate conversation on contentious issues. We found ways to write on issues that affect us, like an echo chamber for conversations that are impossible or dismissed in public. To do so, we rely on a set of principles, values, and perpetually self-reflecting collaborative practices.
A first priority in our organization is to try and maintain a flexible, accommodating, horizontal structure. We're not a closed collective, there's no membership card. Editors and contributors have varied degrees of implication but there's no defined leader. This flexibility allows us to appear and disappear as we wish, depending on the issues of the day, and to rethink our methods quickly if need be. Having no defined structure also means that each and every one of us has a responsibility in maintaining openness and benevolence, and be willing to question our own position and power at all times. We believe we're small enough to be efficient, and large enough to bring about meaningful conversations. Maybe this arrangement won't last forever, maybe we'll eventually be institutionalized, maybe we'll get tired—but we're sure that more people will be inspired to break the silence, and see that it is possible to act.
The coherence of the group relies on a set of unwritten yet shared values, notably intersectional and feminist perspectives, social justice concerns, and looking at art through the lens of labor. However, it doesn't mean that we're a collective with a fixed political line. Interpretations of those values can vary, depend on context, and there's always an effort for negotiation. This diversity is also reflected in content, as several lines can co-exist. Defining the boundary between the coherence of our shared values and our disagreements may be tricky, but it is an essential part of working together: if we want to bring about dissensus in the art world, we have to accept it among ourselves.
Another key point is the anonymity of our editors and of most of our contributors. We believe it gives us major advantages to foster social change in our context. First, anonymity circumvents most of the difficulties that we highlighted earlier in this essay: there's less fear of retribution for individual contributors, and less dismissal. Anonymity means that readers will focus on content, rather than on the politics of who-wrote-what. It gives peace of mind to our contributors, who often have positions within the art world. Another factor is of almost equal importance: anonymity impacts writing. Having no names eases collective writing and editing, as there's much less focus on each writer's career advancement, self-promotion or ego. It means that whoever writes a contribution does it for what they believe in, not for posture.
In return, anonymity forces us to act responsibly. Just like any publication relaying information, we have to make sure that facts brought to use are plausible, and we have to get several sides of every story. Featuring anonymous contributors doesn't mean that anything goes: if we can't rely on the credibility brought by someone's good name, we have to provide rock-solid content. Maybe counter-intuitively, anonymity in this specific context builds trust and enables transparency. Anonymity serves both writers and readers.
This is not a model for every organization: ours exist in conjunction with the work of others, who focus on different goals with different means. We are but one instrument in the toolbox of activism.
Conclusion: towards stronger organizing
Only a few weeks after that fateful presidential reception, in November 2018, the Gilets jaunes (Yellow Vests) social movement started. Very rapidly, the unrest put forward an issue that Macron and his goons had buried under heaps of business speak: equality. Suddenly, without concertation, far from party politics, the neoliberal consensus exploded. It would be long and tedious to retrace the imbrication of the Gilets jaunes movement and the art scene – it existed to a certain extent, as many artists and collectives stood in solidarity with them. Most importantly, they triggered conversations about the social order, leading many individuals in the art scene to question their own position and their own role in maintaining that order. In December 2019, another major social conflict erupted in France in the wake of a reform of the retirement system. This time, art workers took action rapidly: the Art en grève (Art on Strike) movement was launched and started stirring the art world in an unprecedented manner.
The Art en grève movement was quite unprecedented. Documentations took part actively in the movement along many collectives of art workers who were concerned with matters of labor and economy within the art field and themultiplication of abuse cases, e.g. unpaid work, illegal contracts, racism, discriminations, moral and sexual harassment, rape. etc. These collectives include La Buse, La Permanence, Décoloniser les arts, 343 racisé.es, La part des femmes, l’Œuvrière, Économie solidaire de l’art, Plein le dos, Wages For Wages Against. They decided to take part in the protests under the same banner, “Art en grève”, and Documentations took an important part in documenting the movement. There were also many alliances with groups from other fields, which contributed to de-isolate the art realm from the broader network of activists, radical groups and unions. Art en grève also led to the formation of new collectives in the field of arts and culture. Art en grève took part in and witnessed a shift in the way cultural workers organize and fight together, but also to the emergence of new radical positions within the field of culture.
Those conversations on labor in the arts may even have impacts on the so-called "real" world. Artists, writers, curators, and myriad other art workers, are at the forefront of new labor relations that tend to become the new normal: less waged labor, more independent work. Our labor structure is not so different from that of the many unwaged workers of the neoliberal gig economy. If we can build new tools for organizing, and if we can invent new ways of securing our well-being, our families, and our jobs, then we can contribute to larger conversations and changes in the field of labor relations.
This omerta is not unique to contemporary art: fashion and cinema have it just the same, so do NGOs, medical professions, and countless other fields. In our line of work, as in many others, our careers are strongly tied to corporate mythologies: we chose this path because this is "our calling" or "our vocation"; there aren't many welcome doormats; we're lucky to even be here in the first place; and we owe that position to someone else—otherwise, who knows where we'd be now. Those mythologies build a system that relies on allegiance, on favors, on secret, and on silence. You may call it oligarchic, maybe feudal, or why not a mafia. Indeed, the so-called families that we're talking about are not quirky, caring, or supportive ones: a lot less like the Waltons, a lot more like the Corleones.
This should be democracy for beginners: debate, disagreement, and conflict are part of decision-making. If the consensus is set before there's a conversation, then consensus is just another word for dogma. In the field of politics, disagreeing with someone who makes decisions about our lives seems perfectly normal, even healthy. Anything else would be utterly shocking in our liberal democracies. Why then should we remain silent when faced with museum directors, collectors, curators, employers, or whoever is in a position of power in our field? What makes them sacred, and what makes us powerless?