POINEERING

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“The person who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The person who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever seen before.”

Albert Einstein

“Do whatever you do intensely. The artist is the man who leaves the crowd and goes pioneering. With him there is an idea which is his life.”

Robert Henri

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“We only know a tiny proportion about the complexity of the natural world. Wherever you look, there are still things we don’t know about and don’t understand. [...] There are always new things to find out if you go looking for them.”

David Attenborough

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“The visionary is destined to walk in solitude.

If the vision is truly original;

If the vision is truly unprecedented;

Then by its very nature, only the visionary is privy to its wonders.

It is the burden of a single soul.

Alone.

For even the visionary must peel back, chisel and ax away at the status quo to eventually reveal for all humanity what is yet unseen and unheard of.

The visionary is the sculptor releasing the vision from the block of stone that is convention.”

A.E. Samaan

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“She is a warrior capable of slaying the demons in life. She is a pioneer capable of choosing her own path. She is a trailblazer capable of achieving new horizons. Just give her some time and see her bedazzle the world.”

Avijeet Das

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“The best path is the one that’s not there because we are in the process of creating it.”

Craig D. Lounsbrough

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GLEANED FROM

In 2011, Indigenous artist Richard Bell chose the winner of the $20,000 Sulman Prize based on a combination of his own criteria (liking animals), looking out for his friends and, most controversially, a coin toss. While much of the commentary treated it as a disrespectful stunt, it missed that it was a reveal. Where the winning artist felt that they would rather have been selected based on their merit, Bell named how ‘like every prize, it’s a lottery’. Choices are never made on merit alone when there are aesthetic subjectivities and social capital at play.

This is particularly true when the selection rests on the decisions of the one individual who is structurally positioned as the gatekeeper of others’ success – a structure overwhelmingly reflecting the colonial-capitalism that excludes so many by design. Within this paradigm, a transparent lottery selection may actually be fairer. It may have more chance of going to the most deserving. It may go to someone who is persistently encouraged to compete, despite having to disproportionately contend with the dark aspects of meritocracy – where there is only one person rewarded and others must suffer loss, rejection and exclusion.

The idea that there is a valid method involved in who succeeds and who is deserving is a strong cultural mythology. Daniel Markovits writes in The Meritocracy Trap that ‘the meritocratic ideal … anchors the self-image of the age’. The notion that wealth and status should be earned through accomplishment parades itself as basic decency and pervades the background of everyday experience, comprehensively organising the structures that determine our work and lives. Many even view it as healthy and necessary for producing and safeguarding quality. All the while it makes alternative methods for awarding advancement seem absurd, unfair or even corrupt (for example, selecting based on need rather than merit).

Read: Arts funding that honours artists rather than neoliberal markets

Wilson can imagine different ways of doing things, but often feels overwhelmed by the enormity of the task at hand. ‘The other night I woke up at 3am and had a fantasy moment where institutions didn’t exist in a single building. Instead, the industry operated on a local council basis. Artists were paid a wage like a universal basic income and [instead of cultural and institutional gatekeeping] the people at council were there to support and produce and provide space and opportunities, to facilitate artistic activity among the community.’

However, a key element for her is that Capitalism doesn’t just need to be resisted on economic terms, but on social terms, too. For example, she notes even with the increased programming of social and community engaged practices, a greater shift is needed as, too often, the social and cultural capital are still flowing back to the artist and institution. ‘In some instances it feels more like the community is serving the work, rather than the work serving the community.’ Importantly, she stresses the burden of navigating and trying to change this paradigm as an independent artist – the tier of workers who face the most precarity in the industry.

As a starting point, Wilson would like to see people in institutions taking on these questions, and ‘to at least start by being really transparent about what kind of system we’re up against, what we’re dealing with’. This is important to her because she perceives how the lack of transparency creates a conflictual position between the artist and the institution. ‘It doesn’t feel like a pleasant space to be in. Working in it and making change in it needs a lot of energy.’ She doesn’t want artists to be alone in the struggle.