P.P.S. In the first paragraph of my initial comment, “specfici” should have been “specific.”

If you want to enter the art market, which is what you must do if you want to be paid for your work, then you must follow certain market demands for the art market. You must learn to speak about your work in a certain way. You must be able to package your work in ways that interest the art market. You must draft an advertising blurb and generate publicity photos long before you’ve finished the work or perhaps even know what it is.

The process of doing this may start to define how and what you make. This is ok. There’s nothing wrong with choosing to enter the art market, and, in our capitalist culture, we all must engage with it on some level. But, I feel it is important that we avoid setting up a sort of ultimatum where only one sort of artist (inside the market or outside the market) counts. Different approaches have different impacts on the art and audiences, and artists have to choose which approach (or combination thereof) is best for their work at any given point in their lives.

Yes, it is important not to exploit workers – even art workers – when one is operating within a market, but choosing to place value on commodities other than money (time, credit, the sharing of ideas, exchanges of effort – i.e. helping a performer move in exchange for rehearsal) is valid. The ability to pay should not always be a barrier to making art. We are in dangerous territory if we make it so.

I’m not a naysayer, just a clarifier.