Your post for next week (due next Monday April 12 at 1:00 pm) needs to consider the differences between these two essays and raise any issues you see these writers neglecting, particularly around the specific kind of labor you feel you are being trained to do at CCA. This writing is intended to help you start thinking about the final essay for this course. Please also include a link to a "performance proletarian" (as Diederichsen would call it). Alex's links from last week are excellent examples. We will look at some of these links in class together next week.
The final illustrated essay will be an essay on labor. For this essay you will need to observe multiple modes of labor (including your own if you like). Rich description of these observations should serve as the foundation for reflecting thoughtfully on what work means today, and what it might mean in the future. (This is your chance to reflect on what we have read and discussed over the semester.) Think of this essay as your own version of the GAMES essay by McLuhan or the DEEP PLAY essay by Geertz, (except that your essay will be on DEEP WORK). This essay needs to be 1200 words (minimum)/ 1500 words (maximum) and should take visual or concrete form as something you have designed to be presented to the class on the last day of the semester. Start to think about it now. You need to write up a short (150 word) proposal for your essay that will be due Friday April 16 at 1:00 pm by email. Tell me what you plan to observe and which arguments/texts from the course you plan to take into consideration. If you have a design concept, you should also include a description in your proposal.
Concept v. Concrete
ReplyDeleteSo how has the last four years of schooling and preparation for joining the work force worked out? If I could sell concepts and diagrams, or urban mappings I would be head of a department somewhere. As it turns out, the people getting hired today in my field have practical experience, and possess tangible assets their employers need. The current economic environment does not support the education I have been pursuing. I think the last 4 years of my education have been lacking in both the grounding of physically manifested work, and the few specific universal skills that would appeal to a potential employer. This understanding of my education is of course relative to the current state of the economy, a few years ago I would be singing a different tune.
“More fundamentally, now as ever, somebody has to actually do things: fix our cars, unclog our toilets, build our houses.” With this quote from “Case for Working With Your Hands”, Crawford cuts to the chase, it seems that the need for real concrete and applicable skills are what is needed the most, not just by employers, but also by employees. Obviously the ability to think and creatively solve problems is a valued trait to bring to any job, but that is not what I hear employers are looking for. I am much more interested in applying the skills I have as opposed to spending my time learning to rationalizing my importance to myself and those around me.
In the article a “A Crisis in Value” by Diederichsen, economic and market systems are contrasted to gain an understanding of where we sit in relation to a participatory or performance base model and the physical object based model. I understand these articles in a similar light, both asking the question how to negotiate the point we are at, between these modes of production. The recent downfall in the economy has offered an opportunity to question the trend towards an economy based on the value of information and performance. Both articles speak to the different modes of production, Crawford contrasting, and Diederichsen concluding with the confluence of these modes. The main point that I take away from the articles is one of awareness. Pay attention to what you want and what environment will provide the quality of life you hope to maintain.
I find solace in the writing of Crawford, it is a good thing I can fix a toilet and pound a nail. It seems it is a time of bottom lines, and part of the bottom line is you better figure out how you fit in, or it will be figured out for you. The next thing you know your going to wake up miserable, and wondering how you ended up filling out TPS reports for the last twenty years.
http://www.slashcontrol.com/free-tv-shows/office-space/2337998879-people-skills
474 words
blogpost, part 1
ReplyDeleteDiedrich Diedrichsen wrote about two worlds of artistic production that co-exist, and sometimes intermingle: a proletariat world of cheap performance full of semi-celebrities doing physical feats displaying vitality, and another post-bourgeoisie world of expensive auratic objects created by exagerratedly-mythical artists. So these worlds serve as sort of high and low markets, but both cast aside political issues and criticality in order to better serve up the energetic and mythical entertainment that draws in the viewers/buyers. In both of these worlds, the value of the work is ephemeral and unsecured: just as one rarely becomes a true star in the world of proletariat performance, neither can an artist-monster ensure lasting popularity. I wonder about the artist-monsters in our day and age who do performance: how might this exist for the bourgeoisie population if there is no concrete object (other than a reproducible chunk of data storage)? I think there is also a semantic level to this kind of production that involves legal/written rights and permissions that are exchanged for money. Maybe then the artist's performance becomes represented by an "auratic" stack of legal documents.
Crawford makes an argument for our society of knowledge and information workers to re-consider the value of manual/skilled labor. Unlike Diedrichsen's portrayal of artistic labor devoid of political or social commentary, Crawford shows how choosing a field of work can be a critical statement because you are choosing to be more ethical: responsibility, rationality, and honesty are all at stake. He also portrays the value of physical work as more secure because it is concrete (rather than ephemeral or easily digitized). I wonder how trades that have low reputations (but are essential) could learn from trade-professions that are more respected (but more disposable) and vice versa: what might the plumber learn from the woodworker in terms of demonstrating the value and respectability of their work? What could the woodworker learn from the plumber in terms of demonstrating the indispensability and necessity of their work? I also think it is important to note that Crawford's positive points about trades and hand labor are mostly only applicable to independent tradespeople or very small businesses: once any group of tradespeople gets too big, I think some of the directness and responsibility inherent in the physical work can get lost in the inevitable hierarchy and bureaucracy.
blogpost, part 2
ReplyDeleteIn my experience at school, CCA's design departments try to walk the fine line between being a school that prepares you to be hired (by teaching "trade" skills per se) and being a conceptual school with "higher" aspirations (taking the risk that students become knowledge workers to a fault and can't get entry-level jobs). This is the very thing that appeals to me about CCA's approach to art/design education: I want to "dirty" my hands in making stuff in order to learn the ins and outs of a profession before entering it, but I also want to be able to look at the bigger picture in ways that aren't possible in a market-driven firm/studio/office.
But in regards to this grey area, I find it disappointing that so few students go on to start their own design firms and studios, where they would better reap the benefits of direct work and direct interaction (like Crawford's concept of a good job). To a certain degree this might arise from the incredibly competitive, expansive, and expensive community (of design, arts, and otherwise) in the Bay Area, but I also wonder if this is the effect of an unsuccessful mediation between skill and conceptual training at CCA. Only a person with the skills to do it all themselves (no need to hire a technician, production assistant, or modelmaker), and the inventiveness to envision something original or new that will be valued by users (stemming from conceptual experimentation done at school) would be successful at starting their own design business. I wonder if more people would succeed as independent designers if they were more skills-oriented (imbued with the confidence to complete tasks) or more knowledge-oriented (imbued with the audacity to try to new things)?
(680 words)
(philologist/scholar turned proletariat performer)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVKF8T7FURM&feature=related
The training we receive at CCA’s design department is a very conceptual one. We are constantly challenged to come up with creative solutions and to push the boundaries. We learn software programs and techniques to help us formulate our ideas and “sell” them to others. We are given lectures on the great designers/artists who we know by name and are at a celebrity status. But unfortunately, not everyone here will reach that level through his or her work. In the times we live in, we are likely to join a larger firm or studio and play out a particular role. We might have some more creativity than other professions, but we will rarely have complete control of what we produce, unless we work completely on our own. In a way, we will be part of a modern production line. Not one person will do everything, that is rare, and on bigger projects, impossible to do.
ReplyDeleteWith a more hands on jobs that Crawford describes, it can easily be done by one’s self, but on larger projects that will be impossible to do. Larger projects require more people and with more people, they have to be assigned to individual tasks to help with the control of the project. At school we are forced to do everything ourselves. From the concept to the production and finally to the presentations we do it all on our own. But once we are out of school that will be very rare. Instead of working individually we will join teams and collaboratively come up with solutions and share tasks. A couple people will lead the overall design and everyone else will be part of the production line to produce the final outcome. To become one of those design directors, one will have to start their own businesses, or climb up the ranks in larger firms/studios.
In my experience working at a larger architectural design firm, I realized that I’m not as important as I thought I was. They hired me because they needed me, not because I was some great designer that they could not do without. They needed someone to fill a hole that they realized they had when production was not going fast enough or as efficiently as they hoped. To them, I’m someone who will speed up the process and profit from. The first things they looked at was what I can offer them. If I can handle the pace, and what skills I had to help them. I now spend my days organizing, calling for materials, picking up redlines on drawings and counting furniture pieces in each room. Being a interior designer is not as glamorous as I thought it would be but if I wanted control in the design then I should start my own business (which I don’t think I have enough business skills to do at this point) or work on very small projects that won’t require any more people than just myself.
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Part I:
ReplyDeleteIn his article, "The Case for Working With Your Hands," Crawford outlines a need for useful arts. He doesn't so much as address the notion of art-objects but rather labor as an artful practice. Much of his assertions imply that there is an honesty inherent to hand work, technical know-how, skill and execution, which I find agreeable. Crawford obtained a PhD in political philosophy, his writing details the bleakness of the academic job market in the early 21st century. Many students (and parents) have been choosing the path of academia in hopes of just the opposite. There is a preconceived notion that higher education leads to more comfortable, often profitable lives. Crawford's piece makes an argument against this, though he doesn't reject education. He treads around the myths of intellectual "knowledge" careers as being superior to labor, though, in a downturn economy it is precisely these trade jobs, which are proving to be most important. Crawford says "a good job requires a field of action where you can put your best capacities to work and see an effect in the world. Academic credentials do not guarantee this." For me, his article stands as a good reminder of passionate, labored, and challenging work, opposed to educational systems which are narrowing their focus to knowledge based learning rather than experiential.
When Crawford asks if there is a "more 'real' alternative" to the absurdity of white-color jobs, I think he proposes an artistic and sincere approach towards a life and career of art, and by that I mean of joy. Like Crawford I find joy in the unexpected course of events which spring from non-systematic work, physicality, and the unspoken dialogue between a worker and the situations that arise in working.
Diederichsen's piece speaks of "high art" and outlines a divide in cultural production in the digital age. On one side, the singular auratic, object-based production, and on the other, that of the participatory, performance-based production. He points to the ever increasing ease of reproduction as central to this shift or "crisis" that "the culture industry has entered." Actors in a performance, he says, have shifted with the culture from being seen as "self-employed businesspeople in the world of the visual arts," to "the status of day laborers. This specific consideration provides a tension between Crawford's vision of a "more entrepreneurial, less managerial" approach to work and Diederichsen's comments about actors moving from personal promoters to wage pawns. Due to the constant reproductions of films and music, the artists are not able to earn a decent living based on their works, instead, they depend on performances to support themselves. The performance contains the perceived value - the secondary aura, while the work of art itself is subject to countless digital reproductions with little loss in quality. Crawford seems to sees his service-labor as an performance or action that has an aura, like a work of art. Is Crawford's bike building considered an artistic act in the way a musical composition is? If his labor can be considered to have value, apart from any performative aspect, then how does Crawford's work equate to art at all? Perhaps it is in the distinction between labor and "life-force."
Part II:
ReplyDeleteIn choosing to pursue training at an art school, many of us are already going against traditional models of education, but it seems that art schools are also associating themselves more and more with traditional academia. I was excited by the theory of CCAC as a craft oriented school and while this may still the case, I feel a shift. As a "individualized major" I have had the opportunity to take courses from various departments, all of which lending towards my studio-based practice. Many of these courses focus on technique, hand-work, and skill, but even more of them focus on justification of intellect or some artificial rationalization. Often we are being trained in the art of defining. I find what Diederichsen says about the singular aura and secondary aura of cultural production to be quite interesting to consider in object-making, but worried that art schools are shuffling people through to become the skilled labor actors of performances. Overall, the amount of varying information, and the quickness with which school flies by is similar to Crawford's quote about his desk-job being so fast paced that "any real concentration" becomes impossible.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6tlw-oPDBM&feature=player_embedded#
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9698TqtY4A&feature=related
In the text The Case for Working With Your Hands, Crawford compares work styles and prompts the question of 'what work is real work?' In a different sense Diederichsen's writing is economically oriented, comparing value of work and the revenue they receive.
ReplyDeleteOne might say that art is not considered real work because it doesn't have an ample impact in life. That it's not the foundation of a functioning world like manual labor that Crawford mentions, fixing our cars, unclogging toilets or building houses. Those tasks which are not to be compared with the creativity and expression of art. People don't realize how the world does greatly rely on mood evoking expressional art.
I think that there is a thin line between the value of physical labor and cognitive work. Some might think that working in a cubicle is not real work because there's no physical labor involved. I think that graphic designers for instance, are sitting and just clicking buttons these days, but are creating well thought out designs. So if someone says that college is not necessary and that it will lead to working in a cubicle, so be it. Someone had to design that toilet, that car, that house, and create that music that you listen to and use everyday. It might seem like working in a confined area is not 'real' work when in fact those are the people, the "knowledge workers", who initially thought up these inventions that have become 'necessities'.
Some people, including my sister, say "I don't need to go to college when I can learn the same things on my own", and I can understand her reasoning to a point. I disagree though, knowing that college, at least CCA from my experience, provides a social network, a "foot in the door", as well as internship requirements to make sure we have experience in the field we want to pursue. Whereas if someone did not go to college they might not get the same advantages or make as much money, they might have to work a lot longer to get to the same level. I know that, in my case, since I decided to come to college I can reach the cognition part in to my career quicker because there are many people surrounding me on a daily basis that are in the same line of work. My sister also has said to me "why spend money (on college) when you could be making money already, like me?" but I believe that if you give a little, you'll get a little...a little more.
Students come to CCA knowing that if they go in to, for example, painting or photography they have to rely on customers being interested in their work in order to earn a living. In comparison students going into graphic design, such as me, know that they don't have to rely solely on that, they have options and clients. Not to say that photographers and painters do not have clients that they create work for, but graphic design is more in demand with the booming of advertising, products, websites, etc. Reproduction is another issue causing artists to earn less for their creations. Whereas the purpose of graphic design is to be exploited and graphic designers, get paid specifically by that person or company.
I believe that whether someone goes to college or not, does physical labor or cognitive work, it all depends on the experience you have, no matter how it was obtained or how it is used.
(587 words)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHVOxhEpjp0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIhLyOKGqCI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R4X2_Il_zg&feature=related
(This one gets a lot weirder and creepier at about 3 min 15 sec, so I suggest if you don't like scary bloody movies, don't go past 3 minutes)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhpUWPwwFNI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm9L60YBj3s
In Crawfords essay, Working With Your Hands, he firmly stands on his belief that work is something that can not be followed by a set of rules or a check list that one simply checks off. Rather work can be dynamic, useful, and satisfying. For most people, over 17 years of training goes into their job and to leave work with no tangible clue to what really happened all day should not be satisfying.
ReplyDelete"Because the work is dirty, many people assume it is also stupid." His essay is all disproving notions like this quote about trade jobs. He fights the real side of trade jobs, that have long been seen as a last option as a employment choice. While reading I could not help but replace trade with my own interests. When he talked about his excitement in finally fixing the problem I remembered how I felt when I got chosen to be in a show. When Crawford said he worked all day and did not feel tired even though he was standing on hard concrete all day, I thought about how sometimes I can spend all day in the studio and it feels like just a few hours. I found what he said to be true and applicable for him and myself, but we have very difference jobs than some of the other trades as he calls them. What about the jobs that are really hands on but only requires you to do the same repetitive motion again and again? Or maybe your job is clean all the tools used in the hospital how much fun can that be? Crawfords is an intelligent man who did go to university where he earned not only a degree but a PHD. He also was exposed to working in a shop times before, so when he decided that he wanted to open his own motorcycle repair shop it was quite possible. Also he works on classic motorcycles not unclogging toilets in smelly apartments. This is not in attempts to argue his point or even critique him in an ill manor but rater pose a question for him. Can trades really be a way for all of us to find happiness and fulfillment in a job? Or is it possible for each and every person to only judge their work on the criteria of personal happiness? And realistically could our world exist on the principle that people only work when it brings pleasure?
This brings me to DIEDERICHSEN, who addresses the ways in which artists of all types deal with the foreign idea of work. I thought that Art school was all about allowing me to take my job into my own hands. When leaving school my plans were to only work were I want to at some place that I get to design and see my work come to fruition. Now I am not so sure, what have I learned... idea generation, space planning and how to layout a display board that I dont care about. I have managed to make a portfolio and it got me an internship but I am scared crazy to be asked to do a task that I don't know how to do.
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Both Diederichsen’s “On Surplus Value” and Crawford’s “The Case for Working With Your Hands” make an observation regarding the way we work today, and how it is different from the way people used to work in the past. These observations reflect upon issues that arose after drastic changes that the work-space has undergone in the past years and, in my opinion, describe trends that occurred in consecutive order. Together they give a bigger continues picture rather than a description of simultaneous events.
ReplyDeleteCarwford’s essay, although written in 2009, after Diederichsen published his book, describes work places that today are know as “corporate” and to me, a young graphic designer in the San Fanciso Bay Area, seem to depict a picture that is more appropriate to a work place of the 1990s. This essay discussed the first move towards the virtual, or semi-virtual, work practice. In this environment, we can see elements from previous work methods (similar to the comparison we did in class between “Play Time” by Jacques Tati and “Modern Times” by Charley Chaplin) such as repetition and anonymity, combined with semi-virtual spaces, such as a corporate office space. From my understanding, companies today are moving away from this method of work and into a work ethic that is more similar to what Diederichsen describes.
Diederichsen discusses some of the issues raised once we, as a society, took a few steps further into the virtual realm. In his essay, he specifically addresses pressing issues that arose in the creative professions and arts, particularly the ones related to entertainment such as music and theater. Fields in which the ready availability of duplication has driven the masses to “performance based realms” while “at the same time, clients and producers at the upper end of the bygone culture-industrial sector are fleeing [back?] to the object-based arts.” (48)
Although both Carwford and Diederichsen write about the tangible verses, the non tangible in the professional world, they both address this matter from different points of view. Carwford calls us to have as much respect for physical labor as we do for intellectual labor and understand that labor jobs require intellect as well. On the other hand, Diederichsen claims that much of the physical work done today is done by “cheap living labor.”
I think that here, at CCA, we are working and being trained in a realm that is somewhere in between the intellectual and the mechanical worlds and in between the virtual and the physical worlds. Design, like technology, is one of the few fields that benefit from both the physical and the virtual, and in order to succeed one must master both technical skills and intellectual understanding.
I find it ironic that I am reading Diederichsen’s essay about reproduction and distribution off of the back side of a reused piece of paper after I printed it from a digital PDF file that was sent to me by email. I can see that is was once scanned from a book. If this was ever an auratic object, I wonder at what point did it loose its aura?
word count: 514
links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEeqHj3Nj2c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY
In the two readings assigned for this week we are presented two different arguments on work and the world of professional artists.
ReplyDeleteOn one hand, Crawford celebrates the satisfying, tangible and immediate qualities of hands-on jobs. As he highlights the fact that this kind of work would offer financial stability and an immediate sense of accomplishment, he suggests that the access key to this sector is that to have a set of skills applicable to concrete matter. Moreover he argues that ‘this kind of knowledge’ is rarely if never provided by school education, for it has shifted to producing ‘knowledge worker’.
On the other hand Diedrichsen, through and analysis of the developments and changes of the art-market, has identified two approaches to the dynamics of artists self-financial-support. The first system is based and nourished by the production of expensive, sensationalized objects\events made by celebrity-artists, in a post-bourgeoisie era. The other method is that to ‘put on a show’. This proletariat entertainment sector is filled with eccentric and peculiar figures that have developed and applied their talent to very specific tasks. As they are jugged on vitality, novelty and overall quality of their performance, they make a living and construct a name\image for themselves. The link that follows, is in my opinion an example of a ‘performance proletarian at work’: http://www.break.com/usercontent/2007/4/Amazing-Street-Glass-Player-270053.html
As the articles point out education’s fallacies, social perceptions of work and the ever-changing artistic world, what is an art student to do?
At CCA I’ve been trained to work with an original idea - the result of mental and soul labor – from its conception to its death and rebirth. The education I pay for is a mix of theoretical and practical skills that seems aware of economy evolution as well as the art-world changes. Paralleled with school-work, my professors have urged me to implement my college-experience with internships and work-study that give me the opportunity to have a first taste of what the industry I would like to become a part of really wants. Trough meetings, lectures and ‘fire chat sessions’ I’m crafting portfolios, writing samples and an image to present to my future employers.
For I’m yet far from putting myself out in the real world, or at least, as I’ve been negated access to it for lack of experience, I’m exploring possible roads that my major has to offer. However, It has been made clear to me that the formula behind being achieving economic stability with my passion for art, not only is not fixed in a specific place, but it changes daily. People skills and communication are as important as your image and your work.
So what is an art student to do? Cross fingers and hope to craft my way into whatever it is I’m passionate about, while keeping in mind that mental elasticity is what we are training for, and inventiveness is supposedly what characterizes our creative problem-solving field.
(490ws)
Ryan K.
ReplyDeleteIn Mathew Crawford’s “The Case for Working With your Hands” he brings up the misconceptions our society has today on what is meaningful and fulfilling work. Crawford argues that even though labor trades have often been seen as stupid work they in fact require a lot more skill and specific knowledge base in order to be done properly. And they are also in his experience more fulfilling because you are working with your hands and completing a task you manually. Diedrich Diederichsen in his essay “On Surplus Value” talks about how artists work has been devalued over the years and because of digital means the reproduction of original works is almost if not completely indistinguishable from the originals. What this means in terms of value and sale a decline of value to increase sale and profitability. Arguing that the visual arts are where the bourgeois are making most of there profits in terms of resale and reproduction, because the labor is cheap to reproduce on a mass scale.
Here at CCA we are being trained to be “knowledge workers” as Crawford puts it, in some ways we are relying at least in my major of graphic design to think through a problem design it and send it off to print. We are encouraged to work with our hands and actually make things that are physical objects. I would assume other majors as well get the same sort of guidance especially architecture and industrial design. Design in general serves a purpose and in the end there will always be a physical object produced. Sometimes the origins of this physical object are found on a computer screen, and other times they are derived from other physical objects.
In my own work, both for school and otherwise, I find myself constantly trying to find a balance. Because I do work on the computer and so much of what I do is designing in the Adobe suit, I have a job that requires me to do things with my hands. It is a skilled job where I curate artist prints and am finding myself on a regular basis cutting and tearing edges framing and de-framing work, and moving things around in general. While there isn’t a lot of problem solving going on there, it is a nice contrast to thinking and designing for school. I find that my intellect is stimulated by course work, and my motor skills are put to use at my working job. Throughout my life I have found myself trying to constantly maintain this balance. Whenever it seems that I am swaying to far towards one or the other I re-evaluate what it is I'm doing and try to figure out how to incorporate the missing or lacking pieces of the work balance equation. Having had a vast array of jobs that require me to work with my hands has also helped me in my design. I fairly regularly try to bring things off of the computer and problem solve using physical objects that I can manipulate with my hands in ways that would just take to long to reproduce on a computer screen. In the same breath though I also am able to think things through, print out templates and plan accordingly to physical forms that I am making because of my design knowledge and teachings that I have gathered here at CCA. I think it is exactly what I have already stated, and probably the point that both writers failed to touch on, a balance of these two forms of work is required to feel stimulated all around. Crawford gets at it when he talks about having to have a vast knowledge base in order to diagnose problems with motorcycles, but he doesn’t talk about having two separate outlets, one specifically to quell the mind and the other the hands.
WC: 642
In “A Crisis in Value” Diedrich Diederichsen describes the condition and economy of the arts in our current state of increased digital reproduction.
ReplyDeleteIn a time where there is so much production of intangible cultural works there is an ever increasing struggle to find something to sell. He comments on musicians releasing limited addition novelty or collectors addition versions of their record as a solution. This is the exact problem that might face a philosopher, comedian, magcian, performance artists etc. until they are willing to sell themselves out to advertising the way the internet and television have as a way to generate income, it will continue to be an impediment to making a sustainable living.
In his essay “The Case for Working with Your Hands” Mathew Crawford describes his transition from a future as a highly educated knowledge worker to a motorcycle mechanic who is also highly educated, but in a very different sense. Crawford paints a beautiful picture of life as a manual laborer with a high level of daily satisfaction in the problem solving and physical exertion which such a job entails.
I think many fine arts students have chose art as their field for similar reasons Crawford made his choice. Among other reasons artists tend to have a strong desire to make something tangible that they can feel proud of and responsible for. They wish to contribute something to the world which is honest and personal and not contradictory to their beliefs the way corporate jobs have a possibility to be. They wish to see tangible evidence for their time and effort. Lastly I believe a very substantial plus to the decision to dedicate ones life to the arts is the hope that one will not end up sitting in a cubicle in front of a computer doing someone else's boring work for the rest of their lives. The down side to be an artist is obvious, we make a product (I hate calling it that) which no one needs and few can afford. Because of this we fall somewhere between the information/ knowledge workers, and the practical laborers. We are respected in a certain way, possibly because most artists are quite bright and tend to have extensive post secondary education. Yet. especially as a student who is not yet established there is a general societal element of belittlement put upon us. similar, I imagine, to that felt by skilled laborers.
In both writings the issues of value are key. What kind of work, or production is worthy of money and how does one go about generating it in a way which is conducive to a satisfying life style.