$ Identity Capital $ - Freddie Wulf reflects on neoliberalism in the arts and the current pressure to capitalise on identity as an artist.

Opinion piece with words from Yewande Adeniran aka Ifeoluwa, Tom Marshman, Ania Varez & Katayoun Jalilipour is now live on Trinity website here

How could institutions support artists making work about identity?

As noted in my article for Trinity Centre, artists who hold marginalised identities are often offered opportunities which relate to speaking about their personal experiences. This creates added pressures beyond the usual work/financial pressures, which tbh are already enough in this time when rent is more than 40% of our income!

Here are some ideas for how institutions creating ‘opportunities’ for artists who hold marginalised identities, could try to make those opportunities more realistic and beneficial for the artists.

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Pastoral support

One major overlooked area, is the need for pastoral support around identity-linked opportunities. Speaking about personal issues in a professional context creates vulnerability, potentially anxiety, and could draw prejudice or criticism (which then would be hard to ignore, since its personal).

I think we are scared to draw from therapeutic models because we are terrified of saying art is therapy. Work exploring identity, is not therapy. But it makes sense that we would need to think about safety models and supervision in a similar way, since it draws on vulnerable themes - that would be due diligence on the part of the commissioner.

* if there is budget - provide a budget for the artist to access a therapeutic or coaching space to process what comes up around the work
* if there isn’t - offer to support the artist by providing a member of staff to talk through any anxieties and complexities arising from presenting the work
* regardless of pastoral support - the venue or commissioner should be engaging on a professional level with the complexities of presenting identity based work, and creating space for the artist to feed into this or share their own perspective if wanted
* write it into the contract, that in cases of online hate, you will support the artist

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Practical support

What people don’t seem to see, is how the personal factors are linked to the economic. If you are commissioning an artist who holds a marginalised identity, they may be facing marginalisation in their access to economic resources. Therefore, if you are offering a low fee which doesn’t provide space for a team to support them, please consider how this could compound with the already mentioned personal and psychological pressures associated with making work about personal identity.

I have worked in institutions on the production and admin side, and I know that venues are understaffed, staff members are paid little and there is never enough time in the day. However, essentially this isn’t the visiting artist’s problem and I think we should try to create some kind of care, where possible, within the limitations of funding.

For instance, where there is a salaried team they could be:

* booking the travel
* supporting with writing the copy and choosing an image

This is much easier for someone who is already doing computer work a lot of the day, who knows the local area and the format of your programme. The artist may or may not be skilled in copy writing, and may or may not have barriers which make travel booking hard, such as neurodiversity. It would make sense to ask what admin support they need - a relatively small commitment, such as a 30min spent on a zoom call or a train booking, could take hours or days of work off the freelance artist’s plate.

*paying people on time - (freelancers are relying on your payment to pay rent, and delays cause major problems both for freelancer-led projects and the people they are directly supporting. if you are a salaried member of staff at a university or other institution with a complex payment process - thankyou for using your position to leverage funds for artists. however please also factor in, if your institution has complex payment systems, it shouldn’t be on the artist to navigate them and chase late payments)

* providing a taxi or meeting the artist to help carry their bags (which are often transporting the whole show)
* providing a warm space with some water and easy access to nourishing food
* adding more time to the schedule to allow for a break between arriving and performing / speaking

If you imagine the pressure, of one person travelling maybe 6hrs on a megabus with a huge heavy bag which contains everything in their show, and knowing that they have to arrive and be on form to deliver a great performance, it makes sense that small gestures of care or taking one thing off their plate could help. If you then imagine the added pressure of revealing personal stuff, and possibly facing prejudice in the room or online for doing it, then you can see how practical and pastoral care are linked. They are all feeding into the general wellbeing and ability to deliver the work, and reducing the likelihood of harm being caused by these pressurised situations.

Touch is gendered … is sensation gendered?

Content note: this blog is about a sex positive project & includes sex in discussions of touch languages

In April 2022 I did a residency at Pervasive Media Studio developing my ideas for a haptics project focussing on trans touch & intimacy. Iʼm interested in the relationships between touch, sensation & gender.

Iʼm a non binary / trans masculine artist usually working in performance, sound & video - full bio here.

What do I mean, ‘touch is genderedʼ?

I realised that feeling safe with a partner and working out the types of touch I like to receive, is one of the main ways I was able to accept and process my trans-ness.

Before I did any medical transition, before it was about seeing something more comfortable in the mirror, I could experience my body in a non-dysphoric way through touch.

Reflecting on this, I was thinking – what was it about this touch that made me feel ‘masculineʼ?

My partner found ways to touch me, that reflected traditionally (gay)masculine touch languages. Touch that both looked and felt ‘rightʼ, and affirmed my understanding of myself as masculine, & that my masculinity was desirable. This was revolutionary to me, because in my experience growing up as a female-socialised person, anything perceived as 'masculine' was deeply shamed.*

So, the first lens this came to me through was personal: one particular touch relationship which helped me experience my gender in a positive way. But then I reflected on other types of touch, and the way this happens across society, in less intimate touch contexts too.

Mainly what came to mind, was the types of touch I have automatically offered to men who were my partners – like was I offering to put my arm around them, or was that feeling only open to me as the smaller/shorter/more ‘femmeʼ person? – and how that was based on gendered assumptions which were very limited. How those same assumptions are made when we offer touch in the context of greetings, comfort, and other platonic touch – slaps on the back, handshakes, strong & short hugs. Mainly the touch available to masculine people seems to me, to be quite firm and quite brief and perfunctory.

Then I thought about ways I can be touched which might feel traditionally ‘feminineʼ. There are certain types of touch which ‘feelʼ feminine to me.

(This is where I got to the question – is sensation gendered?)

Light touch, soft touch, meandering & not to the point. All these things feel femme to me. & they can be enjoyable, or there could be negatives to this, for instance I might feel dysphoric when offered those kinds of touch in certain contexts.

Obviously, itʼs a deep deep shame that people might miss out on the full spectrum of touch and sensation, due to how their gender is perceived.

BUT – there can be positives to being aware of this language of gendered touch. I can think of a lot of times in recent years where I have been able to offer a touch language that has helped my partner feel a certain way. And who knows, to be honest, whether there is anything inherent about our experience of touch/sensation/gender, or if its all due to societal conditioning. For me, at the moment, the point is that we live in this world the way it is right now, and by consciously playing with these languages we can develop an awareness, affirm the ways that our friends and partners want to feel, and at the same time start to expand what is possible – so that touch vocabulary is no longer assumed based on anatomy or gender presentation, and people can choose and find what feels good for them.

Haptics 

Haptics: ‘The science & technology of transmitting and understanding information through touchʼ, ‘any type of technology that gives you a tactile response eg. when you long press your iPhone and it vibratesʼ [OED online] 

Where this comes into my research with haptics, is beginning to look at whether the sensations I personally categorise as ‘feminineʼ or ‘masculineʼ**, share some similar resonance for other people OR whether my ‘touch meaningsʼ are actually very personal.

Then starting to work out how this maps onto the available types of sensation – what are the mediums available in haptics? How do these different types of synthesised touch feel?

This is drawn from the title of a paper: ‘User Experiences and Expectations of Vibrotactile, Thermal and Squeeze Feedback in Interpersonal Communication’, Suhonen, Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila, Mäkelä (2012).

Some of the most rewarding parts of this work so far, have been working out how to talk about personal experiences of sensation between people who have different anatomies (or, just between any two people!). Working with collaborators, some of the language that has come up has been based in sound – ‘speakers panningʼ, ‘applying a filterʼ – & this is an area I want to explore more.

I also remembered Labanʼs Movement Analysis (a way of describing movement in Dance), & the Effort axes which describe each movement eg. sudden > sustained, direct > indirect. Something about the method of identifying sensations on a continuum, felt helpful to me so I made a first draft of an adapted model with some parameters which could be used to discuss sensation:

Laban Effort graph by Jeffrey Longstaff

Some ideas for word-continuums to talk about sensation, based on the Laban Movement Analysis model

Note: we found it is really hard to talk about sensation, not touch! :) but it is really helpful to make the distinction between the two.

Next steps

I'm totally new to this field, although Iʼm experienced in talking about affect and sensation in terms of performance, & looking at embodied experience through the lens of somatics.

I have identified relevant research areas to follow up in the fields of haptics for prosthetics & haptics for VR. I would love to meet and chat with some researchers in these fields.

I also want to continue prototyping ways of creating sensation, to learn in a material way at the same time. Right now Iʼm looking for technologist collaborators who are interested in this field.

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Notes:

*My experience of being a teenager in 1999 where I grew up in a village/small town in the UK, was extremely gender-conforming. Even though my visual ‘masculinityʼ makes me feel gender euphoric now, I still carry the ingrained shame of feeling that masculinity was somehow wrong on my body.

**Just to say – these are of course not the only types of gender or gendered sensation – for instance what about things that feel completely beyond the binary, agender, ‘alienʼ, or plant like? But they are the axes I started with in this particular project, because even though they might feel quite limiting & bring up all these social contradictions, Iʼve had meaningful experiences there.

***& often drawing from film eg. ‘Haptic Visuality’ by Laura Marks[https://www.sfu.ca/~lmarks/styled-7/].

More about the residency structure & accessibility

I was there for a month, coming into the Studio 3 days a week. The part time model was great: because of my fatigue it allowed me to do the project in a gentle-ish way and then recover or switch to other types of work the rest of the time.

The Studio turned out to be a great environment for me to work in (I donʼt always find that with shared spaces). They have a ‘quiet spaceʼ where I sometimes went to lie down, which meant I could stay there all day instead of having to go home and rest.

Working with access support worker Liz Clarke was really a gamechanger - Liz helped me to process both the mundane (travel booking, invoicing) and the expansive, philosophical/ethical themes of the work.

Residency collaborator credits:

Vix Williams, slimetime

Paul Hanson

Martin O’Leary, PM Studio Creative Technologist

Liz Clarke, Access Support

Freddie Wulf is a trans masculine artist making visceral & visual performance. He is interested in sensation, embodiment & self perception. His work is sex positive & draws from kink methodologies.

Midi residency at Pervasive Media Studio

My April midi residency was announced at Pervasive Media Studio, short blog about it here

‘The boring shit’ #3 - running budget

This is something my dyspraxic brain has always struggled with. I think since numbers and dates and time confuse me, maybe money over time is just too much to get my head around. Oh wait thats cashflow? Okay never mind.

There’s a very specific feeling I get which I associate with my brain not being able to do something because of neurodiversity. Its a really fluffy, annoying feeling of ‘bamboozled’. Like no matter how hard I try, I just can’t compute the information. That’s what I get with the running budget, or even trying to explain what I’m recording and why I’m confused.

Anyway luckily I was able to share this with the amazing Pippa Frith (Exec Producer of Fierce Festival), who is someone I actually feel comfortable expressing my bamboozlement to. She showed me some examples of how her documents work, and I made this new system.

Here are some images of an example template:

[ID: a budget spreadsheet (see audio for full description) ]

• ‘Cash budget’ is the amount you have assigned to that budget area.

• ‘Spent’ is money that has actually left the bank account.

• ‘Committed’ is money you have committed to pay, but not yet paid - eg. fee instalments.

[ID: example of a formula in the budget spreadsheet. Remaining = Cash Budget minus ((SUM:spent column)+(SUM:committed column)) ]

• ‘Remaining’ = Cash budget - (Spent + Committed).

• At the bottom of the sheet, the Remaining total should match the bank account.

• In order to ‘reconcile’ the bank account, you need to go through each bank statement and check that all the transactions are listed in the budget and have a receipt or invoice number.

• (Please please have a separate bank account for receiving grants - aside from being best practice it makes everything so much easier).

The spreadsheet should have several tabs, so you don’t have to look at too much information in one place.

My example has a tab for a list of invoices and receipts, this is where you record them and assign them a number, eg. when you buy something and there is a paper receipt, you can file it or take a picture and enter the data in the sheet, and give it a number. These can just be consecutive numbers for a list which includes both invoices and receipts. When an invoice comes in you can rename the file to include the new number.

Then a tab for the running budget, and a separate tab for the ‘original’ or ‘submitted’ budget. This is the one submitted in the funding application, so you have a record. When you start the project and probably need to modify the budget, you can just start a new one which will become the running budget and re-assign the headers there. When you do the evaluation then you can compare the original budget to the running budget.

‘The boring shit’ #2 - filing system

I have never had a good filing system. Working with audio and video, I am constantly saving source files and multiple versions of the same project. 

Sounds are so hard to file! How do you categorise them? Names like ‘crunchy 2’ are everywhere.

Then how do you deal with versions? Every single time I end up with ‘[filename] final final FINAL THIS ONE’. 

Then there are the random project files the software creates which I have no idea what they are and always have some extension I can’t understand, but I assume are necessary for something? And I always forget to set it up properly so the files are just saving to some completely inconvenient location and they all get split away from the project files and then when I come to put it all back together its just a mess.

Hoping to solve this, I worked with my Access Support Worker to research how other artists - like video and sound editors - deal with filing.

One major consideration was that I work in projects which span different media types - so the existing system of Documents, Pictures, Music, Movies on a Mac wasn’t really helping me. It would be better to somehow group those things together by project first.

This tutorial was really helpful (and quite short).

These were the main things I learnt:

Project name

• Use the project name in every filename

• Create a short code eg. the first 3 letters of the project name

• The aim is to make the files searchable - so if you search that code all those files show up

• (Often I don’t have a project name at the start, so I decided this): Choose a code at the start & replace it systematically later if the project name changes

Key words

• Choose key words for filenames & always use the same - this is to tell you without doubt what is in the file

I looked at the types of files I usually have for each project and chose one way to name them (to avoid having multiple words for one file type eg. audio, sound, samples, recordings).

v.1, 2, 3 etc and ‘Submitted’ are there to avoid the curse of ‘final final 2 FINAL’ :)

With the sound & video I decided to use the venue name to show it was a final version, and which performance it was for.

Filename format

• Naming every folder & file the same format eg.

So ‘ExP’ is the project code for ‘Example Project’, then it is followed by ‘proposal’ to show what is in the file, and v.1 to show the version.

Hopefully when I go to the folder, I can scroll to the latest file version just by selecting the highest v. number.

Then, when I send something off for instance a grant application, I should save that version as ‘submitted’.

This is how I named the folders.

The numbers are just there so the Mac displays them in the right order - this helps my brain somehow.

Each project should have quite similar folders, but they can also be modified to fit the types of files needed for that project.

‘The boring shit’ #1 - schedule, focus & energy

One of the major things I learnt from my first fully funded period of working full time as an artist, was that I need a schedule. For me, this is not actually so much about managing when I do things, but working with my energy and focus to make sure different tasks get done.

As a neurodivergent person I always felt like time was against me - I struggled with 9-5 working because I couldn’t direct my brain to focus on the right thing at the right time. I was consistently late for a 9am start, but working through lunch breaks or staying late to get things done. During my Master’s degree I was consistently the last one there being kicked out of the computer lab when they locked up at 9pm - my hyper focus would kick in after everyone left and I would get so absorbed in editing video I would wish for another hour every time.

When I got my first grant I felt so happy to be free of these schedule demands and be able to flow with my ideas. But it turned out, that totally unstructured time was equally as hard to manage and feel healthy in!

Over the time since then, and the pandemic I have been able to get curious about my own energy and focus and at what times, in what conditions it comes and goes. Slowly I have pieced together a schedule that works for me - so I wanted to share that here. Not because it would necessarily work for someone else, but because the types of questions I’ve asked in the process might be helpful to someone else trying to design their own schedule.

This is an example schedule of my week:

ID: example timetable of a week, colour coded (see audio for full description)

Here are a few key things to consider for scheduling:

• Focus - when is the best time for me to focus? Mine is 11am, so now I try to keep that time free every day for any cognitively taxing work, for instance writing a proposal or having an important meeting.

• Types of work - I know that I can be really effective at thinking around 11am, but not so much after 2pm. So I schedule ‘physical work’ in the afternoon.

• One thing feeds another - if I focus for several hours in the morning on a very detailed task, my mind needs to zoom out and my body needs to move. So the physical work I do in the afternoon actually supports the morning work.

• Social or connected vs solo time - I can’t work alone all day. I lose track and quickly lose motivation. I need to schedule meetings, and social types of work, throughout the week to keep me motivated and inspired.

• Energy - when am I tired? I used to push through using coffee or sugary snacks. Now I try to listen to my body and rest when I am tired, and come back to it in the morning. Usually now this is after 5/6pm. This might seem frustrating but I have found that the quality of decision making is so much better the next day, I can usually finish tasks in half the time it would take me at 8pm.

• Flexibility! even though I know these things as general rules, I still keep space and allow myself to flex when I do things as much as possible to work with my body and brain. Sometimes I do still work all evening, once in a while if I get into a flow. But then its important to rest later in the week or the weekend.

Tricks:

• Flex on, flex off - I used to try and get one task done and only focus on that, even for multiple days or weeks until it was done. Now I realise I often need to do a rough draft of something, store it away, and come back to it later with a fresh perspective.

• Mini breaks - if I am feeling tired or mentally overwhelmed, I lie down and wear an eye mask for half an hour. Or if I have something to do in the evening, I rest and try to decompress from the day first.

• Stretching, bath or shower - even if I don’t have the time or motivation to exercise, stretching, or having a bath or shower helps me to get back into my body and clear my mind.

• Mini tasks - like going out to post a letter or return something to a shop. I dread these when they are on my list, but when I use them to break up my day and refresh between focussed tasks they can actually be helpful!

• Split the planning and the doing - I read somewhere (can’t remember where, sorry) that for neurodivergent brains with poor executive function, this is helpful because the planning drains all your capacity so when you get to the task your focus is too depleted to complete it. It works for me - I do the planning and break the task into steps in bullet points, then come back to it next time I have focus.

• Breaking things into steps - often the problem is the task on the list, eg. ‘Write proposal’, is actually 5 or 6 tasks. When I break it down into steps first it really helps, eg. ‘Read guidelines’, ‘research costings’, ‘get a bio from person X’, etc.

• Support or ‘body doubling’ - my Access Support Worker helps me do things like breaking tasks into steps. Many neurodivergent people work best by doing ‘verbal processing’ - talking about the task until you realise what the next steps are. I really, really need this and have also found I can share this with particular friends (obviously checking in first to ask if they have space). Usually this gets me unstuck and bumps me onto the next stage of the task.
  ‘Body doubling’ is where you arrange to work with someone - for instance just sitting together on Zoom while you both work for a fixed period of time, or checking in by text at set times to see how each other is doing.

• Food - I am terrible at this but one thing I saw recently was an ADHD nutritionist recommending banana & peanut butter on toast as a quick snack which provides slow burn energy and protein. Stuff like this does help me when I’m feeling too overwhelmed to eat but need to be on good form. I also keep protein bars in my bag for when I get a sudden energy crash during a cleaning shift or when I’m out.

Ideas for a trauma-informed performance practice

This was written after a session of ‘Bubble Baths for the Soul’, a group of queer artists using talking therapy to process issues around our practice, facilitated by Lou Platt, Artist Wellbeing; initiated by Tom Marshman; funded by Theatre Bristol and LGBTQ+ Voice & Influence.

The context of the discussion was about work in which the performer/s are dealing with themes that have a real emotional weight for them personally - which is often expected of live artists without necessarily any structure in place to deal with the aftermath.

• Use the process to deal with emotions around the themes

Maybe theatre/art making processes already have a structure that we can use to somewhat-resolve our personal feelings about the material, before we put it on stage?

I think there is a pressure within the theatre/art making culture in the UK to push personal feelings aside and be ‘productive’ in the rehearsal room - also extreme time pressure and limited budgets make it hard to make space for each person’s emotions. So often instead of using this time to slowly process whatever comes up, I was pushing feelings aside and trying to ignore them, racing to the end goal of having ‘a finished show’ or something to put onstage.

Titration: gradually increasing dosage to allow you to get used to it and find the right dosage for you. In medicine this is used for drugs, in trauma therapy this is a technique used by therapists to help clients approach traumatic themes/memories in small chunks which can be tolerated, and then move away from them again. The idea is that this allows the body/mind to slowly increase the window of tolerance for dealing with this theme, without getting triggered/retraumatised and causing further harm.

Perhaps the theatre making process (ideas > discussions > improvisations > feedback > scratch performances > feedback > final performance) actually is already structured to allow quite a lot of titration. Maybe we can just change the focus, to use that space for the performer/s to process anything that comes up & consider how manageable the performance feels for them, so that by the time we get onstage we feel somewhat resolved and don’t have the fear of a surprise trigger and mental health risk.

• Structure the performance to safely take you out of that space before the end

Jesse* said he often does this in his work - telling a story and then changing to a new scene, much lighter, and incorporating the perspective of ‘now’ as well as ‘then’.

What can we do in the structure of our writing / composing that creates a safe trajectory for the performer? On both a nervous system and conscious level. Do we need to regulate with the audience after visiting a challenging place?

This makes me reflect that I have often structured my work with only the audience in mind, and never thought about my own needs as a performer or how to write them in. Which seems silly when I am basically designing the work.

*Jesse Cooper, Bristol-based performance artist

• ‘Professionalism’ - what does it mean for a performer?

I think the reason I have often suppressed emotions in the past, is to ‘be professional’. But is that really what ‘professionalism’ is, in performance?

To me, professionalism would mean arriving onstage feeling somewhat resolved around the themes of the show, knowing that I can hold space for them and that I know how to regulate and give myself what I need, if it does get too much unexpectedly. That makes it safe(r) for me, and for my audience. And I believe that being at a slight distance, or knowing how to visit and connect to an emotional place and come back out of it, often creates work where the audience can go with the performer on their journey. Maybe that isn’t possible without having some space to deal with emotions around the topic and build skill around coping strategies.

So, maybe trying to share this idea of professionalism which actually includes emotions and discussion of what comes up in the rehearsal room, and necessitates that as part of the show-making process, could help to create better working conditions and safer, happier performers.

DYCP PROJECT, 2021: NEURODIVERSITY, MENTAL HEALTH & ART PRACTICE

Here is some stuff about why I’m writing the blog:

In 2019 I took a break from my art practice (performing, but also researching and developing ideas) due to mental health & burnout. At that time I was open to the idea that I would never return to making work, although I hoped that I would. I had always been seeing making ‘good art’ as the number 1 goal in my life and it was taking precedence over everything, including my health. Now in 2021 I am returning to my art practice and I wanted to document the process of trying to make it sustainable for me, and to put that somewhere public so that anyone else with similar struggles can access the same information.

I have realised over this time of taking a break, that there have been struggles I’ve had since forever that I suppressed and over-compensated for. I have never heard anyone speak in detail about *how* they actually make their art, never mind being honest about the trickier parts. Discussions of process always seem so abstracted and intellectualised. I am really interested in the day to day, and how to overcome challenges, rather than pretending they don’t exist or thinking I am a bad person for having them.

I am now (2021) starting a process of funded professional development looking specifically at these areas of struggle with my DYCP (Developing Your Creative Practice, funded by Arts Council England). This blog will include documentation of that process, as well as stuff from before and beyond that project. Since I am using public money during the DYCP which not everyone can access, I also think ethically, I would like to share and make as much available to others as possible.

In general as well I find work quite inaccessible - I have tried several different jobs alongside art making, and in my time away from art I have tried to ‘just’ work in an office job, and in a beauty salon. It was super challenging and made me realise that those roles often require me to stay in my weakest areas and rarely get to show my strengths. I went through an Access to Work process and received some coaching around neurodiversity and employment. I have had to accept that I am actually not as good at some things - admin and office work, doing long/consistent hours in the same role - as I thought I was, and that I can’t fall back on this as a ‘second career’. That’s actually a good thing, because I am really unhappy in that environment and those roles. But it was a shock, and I felt like everyone else around me, and everyone I had ever met was just ‘fine’ with lots of things I find completely insurmountable. So that’s another reason for writing about this, not only in the context of art but in the context of work, and how do we as neurodivergent people make work, work for us, in a way that is healthy long term.

I hope by sharing what my process is like from the inside, it can be useful to someone else.