Episode 8: DRUG DEALER LOGIC
[THE PROBLEM]
The problem is, more or less, that the arts are idealistic.
You'd be hard pushed to find someone in the arts that wants global warming. It would be a stretch to round up a handful that agree with exploitation.
I'd like to think there is a correlation between people who want to expand their mind through experience and notions of tolerance.
But that's the problem. Or at least it becomes the problem when we have to talk about funding.
This week the news revealed that the Edinburgh Fringe Festival would be keeping their sponsor, Baillie Gifford.
I'd be willing to bet that most artists at the Fringe don't know who Baillie Gifford are.
Baillie Gifford is a Scottish investment firm that previously sponsored the Edinburgh Book Festival. Their sponsorship of this festival ended after on-stage protests, a campaign from Fossil Free Books, and threats of boycotts by authors who objected to the fact that the investment firm had stakes in companies that seemed antithetical with the ethos of the festival and the arts in general.
For example, Baillie Gifford had about £4.5 Billion invested in oil and gas companies.
Some have also noted the investment firm's complicity and investment in companies supplying Israeli arms, including the state owned Israel Aerospace Industries and Rafael Advanced Defence Systems.
You might struggle to find an artist that supports weapons in general, much less ones that have been seen to kill civilians and children.
Indeed, a quick look at social media highlights how outspoken many artists are about standing in solidarity with the oppressed, and the planet in general.
But you'll see far less complain that the Edinburgh Fringe is part funded by the sort of activities that agitate that.
Because, you know, money.
And that isn't good for the arts. Sure, it isn't good for a lot of people, but let's be self centered for a moment. It causes a form of cognitive dissonance. Here we are as artist/activists shouting at the world about how it has to be better, but here we also are benefiting from the economy that enables that harm.
At worst it makes us look like hypocrites.
We aren't hypocrites are we? This isn't just performative is it?
Fringe CEO Shona McCarthy apparently told the comedian Mark Thomas that "There's no such thing as clean money."
Is that true?
I think I know a way of cleaning it. One that doesn't leave artists compromised.
[DRUG DEALER LOGIC]
In his rather wonderful book, Gang Leader for a Day, Sudhir Venkatesh details his sociological work within the projects of Chicago.
It’s a bleak read but it is made bearable by Sudhir’s charm and the first person perspective of a young sociologist being guided through a world of poverty. Venkatesh befriends a gang leader, giving him unrivalled access to this world.
After some time, the gang leader decides that Sudhir should take over responsibility for just one day. That he should make the decisions and choices and see what it is like.
It’s a brutal lesson of compromise and situation.
I won’t spoil it, rather recommend you get a copy. It’s a good read.
However, one thing has really stayed with me. It’s drug dealer logic.
It goes like this. You are a dealer and one of your customers owes you money. They owe you 100 but they only have 50. What do you do?
Do you take the 50?
Do you tell them to come back later with 100?
Do you beat them senseless?
What would you do?
Drug dealer logic dictates that you have to do all three of those options. You take what you can there and then, because the chance of any more money showing up is next to none. You deal in real, not in futures.
You demand more money as recompense. They have wasted your time. They probably won’t have that money, you know that, but if you don’t ask you don’t get.
You must exact punishment harsh enough to act as a warning to others. Additionally, this will also, probably, reduce the chances of the customer turning up with the rest of the money.
It is a brutal form of economics that exists in a reactionary manner. According to drug dealer logic the future is less important than the present, because the future may not exist.
I think I’d struggle with it.
Venkatesh struggles with it.
Eventually the gang leader re-takes control of the situation. He might be letting Venkatesh be gang leader for the day, but ultimately he’ll be in charge tomorrow and will have to pick up the pieces.
[SKEEVE THOUGHT EXPERIMENT]
Let's play thought experiment.
Let's imagine a new, hideous drug that addicts users and causes surges in violence, theft and poverty.
You can give it a street name, if you'd like.
I'm going to call it.... "Skeeve". What about you?
The main beneficiary of skeeve is the drug cartel that manufactures and sells it. It's a well organised operation with money flowing up a pyramid towards the top.
It predates the poor and the desperate, either as user/customers or as the only form of employment available to those communities.
Can we agree that's probably not a great thing?
On the other side of your city there is an arts festival.
It is small and new and fragile. A rare opportunity for artists to connect with audiences. A way for people to express their reality.
And the organisers want to pay those artists. They want to promote the festival so that people will know about it. They need to hire staff and venues. Everything costs something. It all costs too much.
As an artist you could argue that such festivals are necessary to communities, especially those that are oppressed or impoverished. Art is a social good.
I know you think that because I've read your Arts Council applications (side note: You can see other folk's applications under a freedom of information request).
It looks like that the arts festival won't be able to happen this year. There's no money. The local authorities have none to spare. They are tied up dealing with the drug epidemic that has hit the city.
But then... The head of the cartel hears about this. He's been suffering some pretty bad press lately and doesn't like the idea of everyone hating him. As far as he sees it he is providing jobs for a community. He is providing food for his family. He's probably a misunderstood good guy, and maybe he can help other people see that.
So, the head of the cartel offers a lot of money to the arts festival. He wants to become a sponsor.
OK, let's break and ask ourselves a question. "Should the Arts Festival take the money?"
What are your gut reactions. Does it change when you think of it more? Can you see the really unsubtle parallels I'm drawing? Can you do good things with dirty money?
OK, back to the point of the thought experiment.
Imagine another situation. In this case it is the state that approaches the festival with a bunch of money. Here, it says, is money to hold an arts event that might help the community.
The festival takes the money and puts on an amazing show. It pays the staff, the artists and the venues. It keeps ticket prices down, because it can, and it sees audiences from the poorest parts of town turn up to watch things. It creates a dialogue and a camaraderie. It creates a common purpose.
And at the end party, all raucous and bright, the festival organiser says to the Government representative, "thank you for the funding... where did you find that money?"
And the representative says, "We arrested some Cartel leader and used the proceeds of their criminal activity to fund community enterprises".
Which would you pick? That's the experiment.
Would you take the money direct from the drug lord, or would you rather take it from your own government?
The money is the exact same money.
Is that money different?
[MONEY BAGS]
The opioid epidemic is brutal. It transcends age, class and race. It kills and it destroys.
From habitual drug users looking for a cheaper more effective high through to chronic pain sufferers who were told that drugs like OxyContin and fentanyl were not addictive. It’s a predatory plague.
And it is a plague that has paid the Sackler family very well. They have profited from pain and despair. They have deliberately, knowingly, caused suffering in exchange for money.
Nan Goldin, is a photographer known for the most intimate portraits of people belonging to queer subcultures. She documented a different epidemic as she followed her friends and photographic subjects through the HIV/AIDs crisis of the 80s and 90s.
She also revealed in 2017 that she was recovering from opioid addiction following a course of prescription drugs given to her after wrist surgery.
Goldin subsequently launched PAIN (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) and describes the campaign as an attempt to contrast the philanthropic contributions of the Sackler family to art galleries, museums and universities with a lack of responsibility taken for the opioid crisis.
She notes that the very same galleries that display her work are sponsored by the family pharmaceutical firm that profited from her sorrow. This includes the MET and the Guggenheim in the US and the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in the UK.
In 2019 Godin began a series of protests aimed at those galleries.
In 2022 a film was made documenting these protests, All The Beauty and the Bloodshed. The film struggles to span the biography of Goldin, her family history, her work, and the protests themselves, but it does show you the power of one artist.
It shows you an artist doing the thing they talk about in their biography.
As of 2024, many of the galleries featured have refused Sackler money and removed their names from the galleries they once sponsored. These galleries continue to function despite the loss of that sponsorship.
[ART WASHING]
In 2023 Bailley Gifford was listed as the worst selling fund group. This followed 2022 where its managed fund saw its worst performance in its 35 year history.
This provides some context as to why they would want to sponsor arts-based events.
On a surface level, you would think that this is what we can call, "Art Washing". That is, the process of using art to reform the image of a company.
There is no much evidence that art washing actually works, however. It seems like a terribly poor investment for a company to make.
Take BP and its sponsorship of the Tate. Did anyone really think, "Oh those oil guys are funding some gallery, I guess they must be OK"?
Or maybe the Sackler family sponsoring galleries all over the world. Did a single person ever think, "I guess that makes those deaths OK"?
That's not how art washing works, and to think so misses the point.
It is about soft power. The subtle politics of ownership. Ownership of art and ownership of discourse.
Owning an art event means that every artist involved in that even is now complicit. If they pipe up, if they criticise, then you can turn around and say, "but you took the money". You lose the moral high ground.
Your values are so easily bought. We own you.
Furthermore, it inserts these companies into the wider cultural conversation. They can lean on the organisations to platform certain views, to restrict others. It is gentle but persuasive.
And then there is the other thing. It is the free tickets. Not only does this keep the staff happy. It helps them believe they are not the bad guys. It also lets them be there, at that cultural even in force. It allows them to entertain their business partners and their customers.
We can't be the bad guys because here we are enjoying art and culture.
Art washing isn't about changing your opinion of them. It is about changing what that opinion means. It is about devaluing your opinion.
[SOLUTION]
I think you already know the solution. Or at least half of it.
Your government is a sin eater.
They do the dirty money so that you don't have to.
Tax the hideously wealthy.
Tax organisations that exploit.
Tax organisations that exploit people and the planet.
Tax those that make money from misery.
Tax them hard.
And re-invest that money in the process that heal. In healthcare and education. In the arts.
But that is only half of it. The other half of it is that we absolutely must stop tolerating these organisations. We must stop taking their money and pretending that we do something good with it.
Our complicity in that transaction means we are dirtied by it. It is us and not the money that becomes unclean.
So often this discussion is framed as either take the money or don't make the art. A horrible binary. That's *their* argument. They say it, and they make us say it because the alternative is that we take their money as part of our democracy as penance for their behaviour and lack of morals and then we chose how it is distributed.
To take the opinion of Shona McCarthy and say there is no such thing as clean money is akin to drug dealer logic. Take what you can get now. It doesn’t think about the future, it doesn’t care about the long term effect it has. It just gets you through.
But it is a choice. Keeping taking the money and keep letting it happen, or stop and figure out an alternative.
Rather than spend your time defending the sponsorship, maybe use your platform to argue for higher taxation and better arts funding? Is this not the progressive and nuanced discussion we should be having?
There's ultimately a choice for artists too.
Refuse to be part of something that harms others, or be OK with it and remove the word 'activist' from your biography.
