Nursing Home Whore House 2; Living as and Artist in Trying Times

Anna Marie Shogren

I am an artist and I no longer have the energy to complain about money, though, I know I will again. We are still far from Star Trek’s money-free system. I live near the airport and the air force reserve, so I hear the national anthem blasting over my neighborhood at 4pm daily. I know this nation doesn’t set aside adequate federal funding to maintain and perpetuate healthy culture, and that that small pot is about to get so much smaller as America gets greater. I know that I am an artist living in Minnesota where arts funding is relatively plentiful. Though, these dollars are not nearly enough to provide for the breadth of innovative and aesthetic thinkers vying for them.

This makes committing to being an artist difficult and annoying, distinctly trying, but also potentially unwise. Being an artist in this nation, if working without and sometimes even with another means of support (a breadwinning partner, a lucrative day job, a trust fund), keeps a person in a meager class. I know I’ve often easily qualified for public support in accessing necessities such as food and healthcare; this causes my family to regularly joke that the nation and taxpayers are supporting artists after all. One may be working hard, be investing in socially benevolent ideas, but to some an artist isn’t more than a drain on the economy.

Competing for grants, winning that upstanding income, can be similarly disheartening. Live artists must submit a flattened video portfolio, but video is another medium and one that leaves out a number of factors; the space, the energy and engagement with the audience, the composition of the night as a whole, it is not a complete document. It is understandable that those with the most accomplished and most expensive videographers could find preference with the tired eyes of panelists.

But, chin up, it’s best to collect feedback to improve the mistakes of the last application. Though, part of the panel thinks your use of the word abstract is inappropriate, half thinks the work is too abstract. I have heard a native artist share that she received criticism that her work was not native enough. I was once told that, in the choreography of others, I was representing myself like a dumb blonde. And I know these aren’t even the worst examples of judgement being placed in the hands of those whom its hard to trust.

I know about Amazon too. I know this world champions aggressive consumerism. It is difficult to see people continue to work as hard as they do in exchange for so few practical resources, but it’s astonishing when that work is a product of their own desire. Accustomed to making something happen using only one’s vessel, dancers somehow find a way to keep creating.

Dancers self produce, dancers make solos when they can’t afford to ask collaborators, dancers dance for their friends for free when they can, dancers know where to find free rehearsal space, dancers pass the same pool of dollars on to the most current shows, dancers persevere. We know this.   

And, don’t we also know deep inside that some of these choices aren’t so unwise, so selfish. We know that riding a bike is a pleasant way to get around. It is good for the heart, the mind, the wallet, the environment. We know how to travel, how to meet and empathize with other people and cultures, even if the old bank balance is low. We know those who will talk with vulnerable curiosity and who will allow you to remain in an open state of learning. We know how to casually invite others to communicate this way. And we trust what the body knows.

The body can never be disregarded in this work. I know dancers stomach much criticism and control over their bodies and identities. Most of us have performed in the nude. I have gladly died my dumb blonde hair black for a show and I have peed in front of an audience happily when asked. To lend oneself to enlivening another’s meaningful ideas, even when that means putting oneself in a potentially compromised position, takes strength and generosity. So shines a good deed in this increasingly antisocial world.

But it gets more difficult when one is asked to yield for less artworthy reasons; for business, for institutional protocol, for the uninformed stipulations of one’s financial support. To have to compromise with those that might drain the intention and energy, the weight, out of the work, that could raise one’s lunch.

I know, but I have wondered why I keep trying? And how to keep trying?

Once I worked for a kiosk-style charcuterie restaurant in the Trump Tower. A brassy place with high top tables, full of power suits on display. There wasn’t a single meal on the menu, all snacks, only small, expensive stacks of cold-cuts. I worked two full shifts, no training, I was never officially hired and never paid.

Once, I was fired from a personal care attendant job working with an awesome and fiery woman with dementia for pointing out to my wealthy boss the hours that were missing from my paycheck.

I remember having been sexually harassed plenty of times at work as a nursing assistant, a university cancer researcher, and art model, a waitress, as door staff at a music venue, as a PCA, as a nanny…but I only remember once, only one occasion, of being harassed as a dance artist.

So, I remember again, the other options. And, if I have to deal with this world than I’m so glad to be doing it as an artist. Being an artist in this tumultuous landscape is a safe place as well as an opportunity.  Howard Zinn said in his writings on Artists in Times of War:

“The word transcendent comes to mind when I think of the role of the artist in dealing with the issues of the day. I use that word to suggest that the role of the artist is to transcend conventional wisdom, to transcend the word of the establishment, to transcend the orthodoxy, to go beyond and escape what is handed down by the government or what is said by the media.”

I agree, art is an honorable and enormous job and I couldn’t be any more grateful that I am not the only artist trying. With this critical mass the next grant in the succession of funding can’t be expected or relied upon. But to make art like the tree falling in the woods, without the support structures of the art world, is it heard? 

Once I made a piece while working with a Brooklyn-based art collective. Each member moved into separate abandoned railroad apartments in a nearly empty building in the forgotten neighborhood of East New York, Brooklyn. We came with few possessions and little materials to live completely alone, making art and assuming the clichéd role of the recluse artist for one week. The doors of each apartment were opened as a modest exhibition on the evening of the final night, offering audiences a chance to see what was made and how we lived.

Coming out of the abrasive vibrations of daily life in New York and the depressing state that I thought our country was in in 2011, I so wanted the solitude. I could make whatever I wanted, however ephemeral or cathartic. I was away from the restricting values of institutions, away from the judging eyes of those engrossed in educational systems, away from those l’d like to have sex with, or very much would not. I made the agreement with myself that I could leave the unit only once per day in order to get a food item or pull some trash from the street to use, glimpse the sky.

I know it happened. This work was made with no real resources, immersed in a place that was offered the same. It was a huge amount of work to organize and advertise. The exhibition met with very few eyes and on websites and applications the photos look drab in the poor lighting of the shabby apartments. It was a thoroughly hidden work of art, but it grew me more than most experiences in my life.

There, artist and audience were the same in me. And it seems exactly appropriate that the work failed. I don’t know, but I feel that art has to be in relationship to the world around it, including all of the disgust and obstacles. I believe that the recluse artist has to hold this goal for their work inside them as well. The art institutions and funders can ask artist to compromise and a career can feel like a dangling carrot, but they are still fulfilling their job of holding people and ideas up a bit higher, assisting the transcendence. They can help an artwork crawl out of hiding.

We exist without these structures, we always have and always will; neanderthals made cave paintings and Star Trek’s Data knows Shakespeare. Now, as ever, artists must give them strong, visceral, challenging, progressive concepts and aesthetics to back. Arts organizations exist for us.

So on we go, we try. The other art project that has changed me more than all other life experiences, is now 8 months old and still struggling to work out how to crawl. It’s fairly awful to witness these little baby frustrations, but it’s a clear reminder that there is only one way out of this.

Anna Marie Shogren is an artist and dancer whose current body of work centers caregiving and the use of dance therein. A current resident at the Weisman Art Museums Target Collaborative Studios Residency, working in collaboration with the University of MN School of Nursing.