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This isn’t to say earning money is bad. It’s very good. I’ve built a career around earning in a lot of different ways. But for me, the ever present capital layer buried in how we package and put ourselves out online, well - kind of ruined why I enjoyed doing it in the first place. I never wanted a full time job, I never wanted to be owned by anyone. Something about having a patreon (it was small, but large enough that I felt, well, owned) was getting in the way of me enjoying the act of making shit. It’s beautiful that online stuff can generate life sustaining income. I just think, we should be making stuff more freely, or just - without the impulse to constantly package and sell ourselves to an audience. It’s gross, and it’s bad for the art. Demonetize yourself once n' a while, play games, and be wrong and upset people more. There's nothing to lose when there's nothing to lose!

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This is hard to explain because it requires the understanding of what is was like for me to make several feature films for next to no money with a crew of friends who were being paid nothing, but it has become important to me to sometimes create work devoid of any financial consideration. I get asked to make music videos every so often and have not been paid for one in over four years. Which is fine. Doing something with the understanding that it is not a financial transaction, and thus ought to be categorized as “for the art” forces me to remind myself why I even ostensibly enjoy creating anything in the first place, which is increasingly easy to lose sight of considering the rotten and broken state of the industry in which I have chosen to work.
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I feel like there’s such pressure for creatives of all types to “make a name for themselves”, constantly be promoting and using all the right hashtags. Who cares? What if you just wanna make paintings for fun without monetary gain or fame in mind? What if you wanna make youtube videos just as a personal diary instead of becoming a “content creator” or “influencer”? What if you just enjoy making logos instead of wanting to be a career freelance designer who spends every waking moment keeping up to date on design trends? Maybe your goal is to make money and become popular for your art, and that’s great, go for it! But I think it’s just as valid to enjoy art for arts sake, and not feel a need to worry about posting it consistently and appeasing your followers.
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đź’¸
Capitalism somewhat ruined art I think when the end goal for an artist is to earn money their art suffers from it. I do believe they should be able to monetize it and make a living from it ultimately I love this artist called Infinite Bisous (Rory McCarthy) and he phrased it better then I did in this interview.
Apr 25, 2024

Top Recs from @matthew-daniel-siskin

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Now that you've deleted your patreon, rented a loft, had a couple kids, and stopped posting online - the next best thing you can do is to try skipping dinner sometimes. This is not a pro ano post by any means, I've just found that skipping dinner actually gives you a super focused and a little radicalized spin on the normal stuff. Maybe it's because most people stuff their faces and go to sleep, but for me skipping dinner when I can - makes me feel way more alive and present. Yes, I know that's fucked up for some people and maybe even unhealthy - but I am not a trained medical practionioner, I just find feeling hungry in all ways, always yields a more interesting result.
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One of my favorite playwrights of all time (just behind my dear friend Polly Stenham, who first introduced me to her work)  - her book of complete plays (Blasted, Phaedra’s Love, Cleansed, Crave, 4.48 Psychosis, and Skin) is everything I love about music, films, really anything. There’s something about reading plays that allows my brain to process and experience the work differently - it’s a crazy thrill to read her,, especially Blasted. It’s intense to the bone stuff. She also made a short film for Skin in 1997 just before hanging herself in 1999.
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Having an online audience of any kind or a patreon is a huge responsibility, but I highly recommend making your way towards the goal of eventually having or making children. I’m a dada to a 2.5 year old little boy, named Dashiell (Dash) - with our little girl Meadow set to arrive in August. This is by far the hardest group project I’ve ever been a part of - I won’t mention the endless list of things we all see when millennials talk about how tired they are, or how their boobs hurt (mine don’t, but if you have boobs they will hurt bad) - but when he takes my hand and pulls me in the direction he wants to go, or makes fun of something stupid I did in front of him (he has a way of saying “ohhh, daaaaddaaa” which just levels me ) - I swear I’ve never felt a bigger or more true love in my entire life. Everything fades, everything dies, except the love of a child. Unless you really fuck with them, be good to your kids and love them a lot. I swear there’s nothing better than this, absolutely nothing. There’s nothing better than love, I swear.