For most of my adult life, I’ve been in the business of bringing people together, which is beginning to feel more difficult than before. How do you build community in an age of hyper-individualism and fragmentation into tighter identity groups? Why are class struggles largely absent in conversations about intersectionality? Is diversity divisive in practise? Woke 1 truly was crazyyyy and by my count, Glasgow has lost 5(!) venues to purity spirals and self defeating activism. Two could be coincidence, but five is a pattern difficult to ignore. It’s unsurprising the common link is the demographic who these spaces served and politics they shared. More lose out as a result of their closure.
I’ve been fascinated to find out more about where this is all coming from and it has led me to Catherine Liu, whose accomplished work in academia came on my radar and I have found it hugely relieving to hear someone express thoughts and viewpoints I’ve been forming for a while in such a clear and articulate way - she has great chat too!
We tried to arrange a Glasgow leg of the tour for her new book, Traumatized: The New Politics of Public Suffering, but unfortunately it didn’t work out logistically. So for now, we had an advance chat about this book and her widely acclaimed, Virtue Hoarders: The Case Against the Professional Managerial Class, - after reading, makes it almost impossible to unsee examples of the PMC in action across across most forms of music and culture and the roles played by the MANGO class (media / academia / NGO’s) - I’d also expand this group to include funding bodies, publicists, booking agencies, management and seemingly friendly corporations.
As Catherine argues, the PMC uses credentialism to gatekeep authority while expanding a workforce trained to compete for non-existent positions. A striking example came to my attention recently upon learning that 35 people are currently taking a post-grad in Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art) in Glasgow. With fees ranging between £10k and £26k per year, expectations are high, but where exactly are these 35 graduates going to find employment in the city - or even the country? How will they distinguish themselves from each other? What about the following years grads? This is just one course in one school in one city. You can draw a parallel to the endless DJ workshops and access to music courses. Anecdotally, the amount of people who tell me they are looking for a job in music seems to increase each year. I don’t think these positions have ever really existed in Glasgow and the ones who do hold them aren’t likely to move on any time soon. As a result, they are now more desirable and precarious.
This isn’t limited to a city like Glasgow, it’s happening everywhere and there needs to be wider recognition of the complete disconnect between the increasing ‘access’ to arts and the crumbling infrastructure to support the majority of this. I am beyond certain that this is the main source of friction across most cultural sectors as many are left discarded and disillusioned by a neo-liberal system that could never sustain their support in the first place. Symbolic gestures of change have made very little difference, for anyone.
To be clear this isn’t personal and very much in the spirit of hating the game and not the player. I have a great deal of love and affection for many who occupy these roles, many do great work and are in it for the right reasons. I’m also grateful to those who have supported me in various ways over the years. At the same time, I have spent a large part of the past two decades trying to help new artists navigate a system that essentially is spreadbetting on their hopes and aspirations, while the PMC play their own status games to carve out a livelihood that will outlast the average musical project. It’s hardly surprising that metrics play such an important role nowadays.
By reaching a clearer understanding of these broader structural factors and how they impact everyone regardless of their own positioning, I hope we can improve on getting out of our echo chambers to find there is lots of common ground with those around us.
Catherine is an indeed and has much to say on the above and more, be sure to check her elsewhere too as she’s been having a moment since we spoke! I hope her works makes an impact. Be sure to check out her writing too - buy the books!
Speaking of togetherness, this event seems particularly fitting for the Cliu’d up among yous ~ Early Doors w/ Elizabeth Davis (Wilted Woman) Come along :)
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