Cartoon proposed by La Mandanga
The normalization of “free work”
“When a proposal starts with ‘we have a small budget’, ‘we will send you items in exchange’, ‘we will give you visibility’… I already know where they are going and sometimes I don’t. even respond,” says graphic actress and designer Noemí Rebull, ““Le Mandanga.” According to the creator, experience and age, as well as job stability, make it easier to take into account these “free work” proposals which support creative professionals throughout their career.
These practices, normalized by companies and institutions themselves and enabled by a social system that does not value creative productions and works, consciously exploit the precariousness of the sector and the growing dependence on reach and visibility on networks. social. These proposals sometimes resemble blackmail: “if I don’t agree, they can’t call me back” or “this is a unique opportunity for my work to be known”.
But there are other secret forms of “free labor”. With a quick search on Google and LinkedIn we can see how among the general skills The most requested by companies are “resilience, proactivity, multitasking, flexibility…”, words that contain a reality: the normalization of the imposition of performing ever more tasks or directly assuming positions and/or professional profiles previously different. Marina Gomes talks about how, during photo shoots, “you are increasingly asked not only to be a stylist, but also to be a stylist, makeup artist, seamstress… and paying you the same.”
For Ane Guerra, the obligation to be present on the networks and the very functioning of these platforms which reward those who produce the most are a new materialization of “free work”, in this case for large companies in the sector: “ We are working for free for Instagram, for
Presence online and exhibition
As this journalist indicates, “especially if you are a middle-aged or young woman and unless you already have a job in certain media, you have to be present online, Whether you like it or not: more follow-up, more chances of being called for a project.
The platforms themselves reward those who create the most content and punish those who cannot keep up by ostracizing them. This pressure, which is felt in the implications it has on future employment opportunities, is accentuated by its public and quantifiable nature, as Noemí Rebull expresses it: “It is difficult not to compare yourself, it sometimes generates a certain frustration for me to see which colleagues are at a good time which allows them to generate a lot of content. It’s not difficult to feel watched, constantly competing and judged in a productivity marathon driven and reinforced by social media.
The imposition of presence online, as Remedios Zafra points out in Fragile. Letters on Anxiety and Hope in the New Culture (Anagrama, 2021), combines visibility and self-promotion tasks that have the creative subject as protagonist. As Esther Galván laments, this also requires showing a certain intimacy and a certain daily life, even if it is fictional, “now you can no longer just be a photographer, now you must also be a creator of content in which you show yourself not only as a professional. »
The obligation to show both the professional and personal side generates a problematic relationship because if the artist or creator himself is the “product for sale”, validation will be received not only towards the work but also towards the subject itself. For the freelance culture Sara Donoso has learned to put an end to her hyperattention to interaction with social networks: “We seek validation through a reward system disguised as tastes, comments, knowledge or the number of followers and makes it difficult to establish boundaries and distinguish between work and leisure.
We work for free for Instagram, for
Anne Guerra
— journalist
There is, however, a paradox: the “obligation to show oneself” is part of the conservative social norm. Esther Galván denounces that when she takes a political position in its most personal content or when in her work the models are racialized or have non-normative bodies, she loses not only her reach but also her followers: “We know that the algorithm is racist, sexist. , homophobic, transphobic, fatphobic… but also people.
in the novel I’m a fan by Sheena Patel (Alpha Decay, 2023) includes the following reflection from the protagonist, a creative professional: “The discourses available to us are those based on our identities. [racializadas] because it is these stories that receive the approval of the market and social networks. Marina Gomes has had this experience many times; As a fashion designer, it seems that she must always refer to her African heritage and, for the artist, this requirement is part of a practice based on whiteness which only allows her to create from difference and as long as it does not have a discourse that could be read as “radical” – which can be understood as radical for demanding fundamental rights.
Now you can no longer just be a photographer, now you also have to be a content creator in which you show yourself not only as a professional.
Esther Galvan
— photographer
Collective against precariousness
In Enthusiasm, Zafra He also writes that individualization and demobilization are defining characteristics of those who put their enthusiasm into creative jobs. The conditions of the sector therefore favor its professionals to internalize this unstable and precarious state as a conception in which little remains to be done.
When I asked the people interviewed here about the possibilities of getting out of this situation, most shared the intuition that the answer would be to do it collectively; mentioning both the friendship networks which put care at the center and the possibilities of trade unionism and associations. Some demanded, especially in such a feminized sector, to rediscover an “uncomfortable feminism” which transforms practices and structures, and others recognized the importance of meeting spaces for racialized and queer people. There are those who ask to break the silence on working conditions and situations of harassment and discrimination, which are not isolated cases and where precariousness favors their appearance to the same extent that it also makes reporting difficult. both for women and for LGTBIQ+ people.
Return to Fragilefrom Remedios Zafra: “Just like what happened against patriarchy, this requires the sum of wills, collective consciousness and contagion towards practice and a renewed confidence that is born from the awareness of solidarity and the refusal to be repeat submissively. »
