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The strength of a
political movement is found not only in its ability to
reach a concrete objective. These kinds of successes
depend mostly on the economy of power relations. The
strength of a movement reveals itself more in its
potential for raising new questions and providing new
answers. And this much is certain: the battles of the
precariously employed French cultural workers have
raised new questions demanding new answers.
A new regulation
has been in effect in France since 1 January 2004. The
agreement provides for the cancellation or reduction
of the claims of hundreds of thousands of unemployed
people. Those that this applies to are the so-called
intermittents
du spectacle, "independent" cultural workers.
Prior to this there was a separate regulation for them,
the so-called "cultural exception". Under
this regulation, cultural workers in between two productions
with no income were paid from the unemployment fund
– under the condition (which was already difficult for
many to fulfill) that they could prove 507 hours of
working time for a total of twelve months. This resulted
in a twelve-month claim to unemployment benefits. However,
since businesses and three unions signed the "Protocol
Unedic" on a new regulation of unemployment insurance
last summer, the regulation above is no longer valid
since the beginning of this year. Now the same number
of working hours has to be proven in eleven months,
and then unemployment benefits can only be claimed for
eight months. This means that 35% of those who could
previously claim benefits are no longer entitled to
them.
"We
are performers, interpreters, technicians. We are
involved in the production of theater plays, dance and
circus performances, concerts, records, documentary and
feature films, TV shows, Reality-TV, the evening news
and advertising. We are behind the camera and in front
of it, on stage and backstage, we are on the street, in
classrooms, prisons and hospitals. The structures we
work in range from non-profit projects to entertainment
corporations listed on the stockmarket. As participants
in both art and industry, we are subject to a double
flexibility: flexible working hours and flexible wages.
The regulation on the insurance and unemployment of the
Intermittents du spectacle originally arose from the
need to secure a continuous income and cushion the
discontinuity of employment situations. The regulation
made it possible to flexibly arrange production and
ensure the mobility of wage-dependent persons in between
different projects, sectors and employments."
And
... action!
The Intermittents
resisted with demonstrations and spectacular occupation
and strike actions throughout the summer of 2003. Numerous
cultural events had to be canceled or were turned into
discussion forums; one evening, activists even succeeded
in interrupting the broadcast of the evening news from
the public television channel France 2. Organized in
local coordinations networked throughout the country,
the Intermittents raise the question of precarious employment,
but also beyond the realm of cultural production. Their
battles are about more than just the demand for payment.
They attack not only a legal or economic relationship
of subordination with regards to a public or private
employer. Instead, they show us that it is a matter
of attacking the foundations of the production of public
goods such as education and culture, along with the
institutional procedures and utilization technologies
that go with them: the funding of culture, the distribution
of access rights, and finally the production of consumer-subjectivities
through schools, cultural industries and media.
"For
us, this conflict led to a more in-depth reflection
about our professions. In an era when the utilization of
labor is increasingly based on individuals bringing
themselves into their work with all their subjective
resources, and in which the space afforded to this
subjectivity is increasingly limited and formatted, this
battle represents an act of resistance: we need to
reappropriate the sense of our work at a personal and
collective level."
The cultural and
communication industries are not just new fields of
capitalist accumulation, but they also produce desires,
beliefs and emotions in the control societies. Here the
Intermittents occupy a nexus between these industries,
the production of the public sphere and the consumers of
the various cultural industries. In principle, it is no
longer possible to speak of a "special position of
culture": first of all, because cultural practices
have long since become an integral component of
capitalist production. Secondly, because the production
of emotions precedes material production. The
consumer-subjectivity produced through marketing,
advertising, communication policies and artistic
practice is a fundamental precondition for the cultural
industry, and yet it cannot be limited to utilization by
the cultural industry. The unemployment "reform"
with its implicit promotion of corporate art accelerates
the standardization and norming of this generalization
of cultural production and consumption.
"The
new regulation only spares one category of wage-dependent
persons, namely the group with regular contracts. Originally
the point was to ensure a continuity of income in the
fields, where the logic of profits does not come first.
Now only the most profitable companies – especially
those in the audiovisual industry – are able to continue
to profit from employees, who are under more pressure
than ever to accept the 'contents' and working conditions
of the proposed employment."
As both the actors
in and those affected by this situation, the
Intermittents raise the question of possibilities for
escaping this capitalist occupation of the emotions and
challenge us to more thoroughly examine contemporary
forms of exploitation. As industrial capitalism
appropriates natural raw materials and labor power in
order to exploit them for the production of material
goods, contemporary capitalism seizes cultural and
artistic resources to subordinate them to the logic of
profit – yet without bearing the costs of production.
"As
an assault on collective rights, this 'reform'
introduces a specific idea of the cultural exception: a
showcase art with its especially promoted exemplary
projects on the one hand and an industry of standardized
culture on the other, which is capable of competing in
the world market."
For
a Generalization of the "Cultural Exception"
...
In the course of
the movement of the Intermittents, hotel and restaurant
owners and merchants from Aix-en-Provence took legal
action against unknown persons. The cancellation of
the "festival d'art lyrique" by its director
due to strikes by the Intermittents led to a 30% loss
of profits for the local tourist industry. Together
with the cultural and communications industries, the
tourist industry is most desirous of cultural and artistic
resources: of traditions, ways of living, rites, world
views, as well as festivals, theater and art works of
all kinds. The tourist industry colonizes public goods
such as art works, architecture, landscapes or historical
city centers, appropriates them at no cost and changes
their status: from "human heritage" to the
private inheritance of the industry and tourism. A walk
through the historical city center of any European city
suffices for us to understand how the transformation
of the experience of time and space into commodity form
is carried out. This is not only a tremendous reduction
of the social public sphere to the coupled terms "provider"
and "customer". In addition, a huge amount
of labor is utilized without any financial compensation.
"In
the strict perspective of accounting on which the new
regulation is based, employment is the only basis for
calculation; only the amount is paid that corresponds to
the social security contribution. The portion of
socially produced wealth that goes beyond this is not
taken into consideration."
In principle, it is
possible to advocate for social rights as cultural
workers from two directions. One way would be to insist
on the "cultural exception" in the sense of a
professional privilege. Another would be to understand
the insurance of artistic precariousness as an example
for all those precariously employed, thus inscribing
one's own, initially relatively limited demands into the
battle for social rights.
"Is
it not symptomatic that inroads are systematically being
made in what could be a model for other categories of
precariousness? Developing a model for unemployment
insurance based on the reality of our practices is a
basis for an open discussion of all the forms of
reappropriation, of the dissemination and the spread of
this battle into other areas."
The latter
perspective additionally makes it possible to separate
the general characteristics of post-fordist working
conditions from the neo-liberal rhetoric of
individualization, making this visible as a terrain of
political battles.
"Our
demands have nothing to do with a battle for privileges:
flexibility and mobility, which are becoming a general
requirement, must not lead to precariousness and misery.
The development of a concept of unemployment
compensation that recognizes the reality of our work, in
other words the continuity of the activities and the
discontinuity of payment, opens the door for forms of
reappropriation and circulation."
...
and the Appropriation of the Social
The battles of the
Intermittents from last year call on us to raise new
questions and to find new answers. The point is to subvert
the subordination to the conditions of public or private
"work", to propel the production of public
goods outside the realm of their utilization by capital,
and finally to decouple productive time from payment
and thus secure access for everyone to segments of life
not under surveillance. It is a matter of canceling
out separations: between the invention and the reproduction
of cultural goods, between producers and users, between
experts and amateurs. The Intermittents' battle for
social rights, specifically for a state-guaranteed system
of social security, is a precondition for this, precisely
because it goes beyond this demand, when it rejects
the reproduction of state-conform subjectivities, the
division into "artists" and "other precariously
employed persons" and conjoins the assurance of
social rights with the battle for the social appropriation
of public goods. The demands posed to the state thus
serve to create a new public sphere: a sphere that is
no longer determined by the state.
"Only
collective social rights can guarantee the freedom of
persons, also the continuity of work outside of periods
of employment, also the realization of the most
improbable projects, thus guaranteeing diversity and
innovation. Dynamics, inventiveness and daring, which
characterize artistic work, are based on the purposeful
independence attained through interprofessional
solidarity and the sustainment of acceptable living
conditions."
English translation
by Aileen Derieg based on the German translation by
Michael Sander
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