IMPORTANT NOTE: the content in this page is not mine only but has been compiled from recent discussions with a number of other artists/art workers and also from other shared google docs.
it was difficult to grasp the enormity of it all the issues so i thought it would be beneficial to divide it into questions on different levels. I have reorganised and typed it out in the hopes of providing some useful starting points for thinking about The Substation.
Questions about the Future for The Substation
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Operations
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Curatorial
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The Board
- Is it due for an overhaul? The current board has been in place for a long time. It left The Substation without an Artistic Director for 9 months. Rarely has one seen an arts organisation left without direction for so long, to the point where artists become very concerned about its fate. Does the board really still care about The Substation? Can it prove it?
- Can there be more transparency in how the board operates? It is currently like a black box - many artists who have worked with The Substation sometimes don't even know who it is on its board. Even some of us who thought we knew, actually didn't realise that members of the board had stepped down or had reduced their involvement with it.
- Accountability and connection with the artists of today - are the board in touch with the needs of artists today? Do they see what is happening on the ground in the arts today? Are they attending the events at The Substation?
Ownership
- Who owns The Substation? Reason stands that it should be the artists who feel ownership of The Substation, yet in reality the building is owned by the government (arts housing), and all of its higher executive decisions are made by its Board, whose ministrations largely remain opaque to the artists within its space. The Board tasks the artistic director to make artistic decisions which affect the community within it. But it has been shown that
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Labour and Fair renumeration for artists and artworkers:
With a so-called lean team at hand, where do they draw the distinction between artists as practitioners and artists as part time staff? At the interest of creating programmes with artists, how are artists compensated fairly? And how do we address issues of rights of the programme?
Open season and sub season (Current AD has proposed a clear division within the year with an Open and Sub season as distinctly seperate)
- Will there be continuation of Partial Support or Venue Support?: In the past, many artists who did not get full support for their projects were sometimes helped by partial substation venue support, which helped make a lot of projects possible. Under the open season, will there still be partially supported events like in the past?
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Process
- Can the emphasis really be about process when one is trying to talk about producing a 'blockbuster' in the same breath? Experiments and process-oriented practice do not and cannot be expected to always result in a work with instant polish, much less at the end of a residency of less than a year / less than half a year.
The Public Voice
Inclusivity of communities
- What role would The Substation take on with regards to pushing and defining its margins of inclusivity with regards to the different arts communities that look to Substation as a space to present work. for instance, to have a place (not to be a place) for a community like the punks, young theatre groups and art collectives, musicians and independent dancers / choreographers.
Cabinet of Curiosities (Current AD has proposed a "cabinet of curiosities". details are still forthcoming)
- Do we really need such a cabinet of curiosities? Are there really any real curiosities, or will they have to be invented? There are concerns that "quirky" plans like cabinets of curiosities in an art space perpetuates a false pretense of looking at so-called "unique" objects. Trying to make an artefact sound "quirky" or "weird" just emphasises its so-called "individualism" and self-importance, rendering it unable to provide any acute reflections on society itself. All the audience will get out of it is: "Oh! art is weird!"...
Difficult questions:
The Substation's direction now seems to be one that encourages artists to deal with "difficult questions" and think critically about society at large, and to reassess perhaps the stakes artists have in society. Difficult questions, surely, will include issues the state will not be willing to confront including operation coldstore, operation spectrum, josef ng, lack of democracy, 377a, labour rights, human rights, queer communities, capital punishment just to name a few. Will substation be ready to support artists who wish to deal with these concerns?
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