Navigating between precariousness and professionalization: paradoxes and tensions in the field of self-managed performing arts

Abstract

This article analyzes the tension between precariousness and professionalization, in the independent/self-managed/emerging scenic subsector of the City of Buenos Aires, focusing on the characteristics assumed by the artist-manager, and the paradox represented by the freedom/self-exploitation binomial, in the framework of neoliberalism, for the cultural workers. In the same direction, issues such as the institutional status of culture and the characteristics of the analyzed subsector are addressed, through the case of the cultural organization ESCENA; its production conditions, its audiences and its members. Along this path, we will try to transcend the imaginary of the independent scenic field, anchored many times only in the actors and actresses, to take, on the one hand, the multidimensionality of its agents; and on the other, the conception of community: the affective and supportive network that is woven between spaces, artists/managers/producers and the public. Cultural workers (performers, playwrights, directors, set designers, costume designers, lighting designers, sound designers) are subject to fragile labor conditions whose origins lie on different shores, ranging from the lack of regulation and corresponding legislation on the part of the State, even self-exploitation itself, the result of the processes of subjectivation characteristic of our neoliberal societies. This article approaches the context of health emergency due to COVID-19, highlighting and enhancing the weaknesses and shortcomings observed.