#MeToo in the Arts: New mores, now what?

After the accusations against artist Julian Andeweg rocked the art world, as ever, there was much discussion about what exactly constitutes abuse and how people who experience it should go about reporting it. For Lilith, Morgane Billuart explores a more pressing and interesting question: What should art institutions and educators be doing to protect the people they ask for vulnerability every day in their work?

A few months after Julian Andeweg's mediatic storm and the waves of denunciations, a semblance of inactivity, perhaps paralysis and waiting lurked above the dutch art cloud. This cyclone of news and discoveries about sexual abuse and abuse of power in the art world tormented its landscape.

In May 2021, I investigated which were the platforms and groups trying to change and shake the creative world, institutions, and industries, organizing discussions or creating policies for radical change. Few months later, the topics and discussions I came across still resonate. What is there to be done for these changes to be implemented? For these forms of oppression and abuse not to be tolerated?

Gossiping and online sharing: digital and public strategies as ways to protect

ArtGoss, an Instagram account run by two women, works with such principles. “Gossip as a way to fight back. Gossip as a way to protect”. For the runner of the account, this strategy is one way to keep each other safe: “It is a new form of social practice”. The anonymous platform attempts to protect people outside the status quo, and hopefully, make oppressive structures known. ArtGoss isn’t the only platform that sees the potential of social media as a means to denunciate and protect. Engagement Arts.BE, a platform initiated in Belgium firstly and now emerging in Holland, also describes its activities as “open meetings where victims can feel free to talk and listen, working as a whispering network”.

Social media and online communities offer crucial elements for this movement and battle as they provide support, trust, and visibility. They shed light on crimes that had to be mentioned, demonstrated, and recognized. Crimes that had been going on for way too long. Because this entire time they were denied, shut down, suppressed, they needed a new voice, a new platform. Social media gave us one.

Image: Morgane Billuart

To prevent these events and behaviors from happening, we saw the figure of the “confidents” emerging in institutions, hopefully acting as gatekeepers for intolerable behaviors. These figures, either internal or external to the institutions, seem to also be one of the necessary components of our battlefield. If the “confidents” positions seem to have quickly emerged in our surroundings these past months, some platforms, dedicated to the same services, have been existing and working on this issue for a little longer.

Mores.Online is a point for calls/emails for undesirable behaviors which emerged a few years ago. They stay at the side of the survivors during the entire process, from initiating a simple discussion to filing a complaint with the police. They are not only an ear that listens to what has dramatically happened, they can also help prevent it from the very beginning by introducing themselves and mediating a discussion between the victim and the predator/oppressor. As Mores.Online mentioned in our discussion:

“You can’t get away with it anymore, and we feel now hopeful that the victims, as well as the abusers, are very much aware of that.”

We need to keep on creating accountability for making changes, implement gatekeepers within and outside the institutions and keep on spreading the word. In this process, the support of these platforms can make us braver, bolder, stronger.

Before and after-care: preventing by targeting some of the sources of the issue

It is one thing to implement gate-keepers, but what could we have done in order to prevent these events from happening in the first place? If we could pinpoint some structural issues which, in the past, and still now, led to these behaviors, how could we precisely name and counteract them?

While enumerating some of the main issues leading to these types of behaviors, ArtGoss mentioned how the precarity of the employment is enhancing a potential danger. “It does not help with community building”. The status of young employees could lead them to accept intolerable behaviors. This precarious financial organization does not encourage support between them. As if the entire system built around art institutions was made to scare us and prevent us from initiating any drastic change. Mores. Online also mentioned that, indeed, the absence of labor contracts makes people’s position weaker and therefore, allows from higher stands uses of absolute powers.  The issue with precarity seems to echo with many other facts and myths around the artist's persona, dooming them into a life of precarity and abuse. Misery should not be a work of art. To enlighten this subject, Platform BK’s practices and actions came to light. As their platform constantly tries to build a discourse on care and fair practices, they also question the idea of autonomy and push for a narrative of solidarity among artists instead.

“With a neoliberal economy, we become even more fragmented. The truth is, autonomous artists are very often precarious workers. The myth of the genius artist, or the bad boy, or the transgressive one only function to hide the material reality of underpaid work.”

If precarity is the fertile ground for abuses and pressure, “We have to get better at refusing vulnerability.”

On the necessity of intervening in educational structures

Within a system that seems to be built on such weak and spiky foundations, a state where budgets for art and creatives seem to be even more reduced, how to stay strong, stay united, and grounded as we try to oppose, as we try to refuse?

To counteract and prevent these things from happening in the academy, policies and workshops in academies are required. Engagement Arts BE, is already active in schools, presenting different codes of conduct and working around educational groups where they initiate workshops. Simultaneously, Platform BK remains busy translating these experiences into guidelines and ethic codes, pushing into policy, wishing to transform structures and build safe environments. But how will we make sure that these protective and defensive practices remain? It is a necessity that these platforms also get help and funds from the government, so not only they can remain but also so they do not stay marginalized. To be acknowledged and funded by higher stands and funds would also mean that they benefit from political support, backing, and validation.

Activism should not be precarious, overworked. Activism should be prosperous and ongoing. To be able to fight back, these platforms need more fundings and help, instead of more barriers and cuts. When the governments and other instances limit the budgets for art, they not only downgrade our practices, they not only limit our capacities to protect ourselves and our actions for greater changes; they also make the creative and artistic world an even more dangerous place to be in.

A new wind blows, transporting hopes of fairness and justice. While we still wait for the institutions to change and to renew themselves, we can positively observe and testify our experiences with the help of these platforms. To call out abusers is now a survival strategy and practice. We won’t be silent. Through this union, we shall carry togetherness, care, and strength. We will call out, assemble, cancel and fight for our safety and simultaneously, for fair and prosperous practices. Silence is and will remain broken.

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