It was the last night of my hospital stay and I got moved into a room with an 80 year old lady who kept ringing the buzzer for the nurse every few minutes. Where’s the TV remote? Why haven’t you got me the TV remote yet? I need to sit up and no you can’t help me – get me the other caregiver. Can you get me into the chair so I can go to the toilet? I need you to clean me.
The TV was far too loud and she ignored my requests to turn it down. Hearing aid wasn’t working. Around 5am, perhaps sensing I wasn’t deep asleep, she loudly asked me to ring the buzzer because she couldn’t reach hers. I don’t remember what it was for, only that I was very annoyed and tired. She’s probably a nice woman, just under stress. So am I.
But I know she should still have a right to receive care. Thank goodness there are professional caregivers. Maybe that’s why people call them heroes and angels because this is not what a human being would want to do on a regular basis. Unless you are Mother Teresa, who is literally a saint today. But do we really need heroes, angels and saints?
***
In medieval society, the Church was a powerful institution. Sometimes, families would offer their daughter to the convent to secure social alliances and their spiritual well-being. Widows and otherwise inconvenient women joined because it offered safety in a misogynist world. There were few educational opportunities for women, and despite vows of obedience the Church still offered more opportunities. Although girls who didn’t have a dowry often ended up as mere labourers. The Church ran hospitals and charities; it was an established institution for care, and those who dedicated their lives to it could interact with society on different terms. Even today, some become nuns in search of freedom.
With religious morality, nuns became the models for giving without expecting any returns. But even in their vows of poverty, nuns receive ascetic accommodations and sustenance, which can’t be assumed with care or even in other forms of work today. The Church didn’t really do things for free. Donations to the Church were big business. All this talk of angels and heroes put people into other-worldly spheres. As if there were really any other world.
***
Artists also get put into saintly spheres sometimes. The genius. The autonomy of art. That the performance of our calling is beyond rewarding and money contaminates our genius. Why can’t we learn from caregivers that there is no other world but this present from which we cannot escape? What if art and care are not callings but ways to relate to the world? Should art and care not be practiced by everyone and everywhere? What if all callings are simply things we enjoy and are good at? What if art and care are not professions?
But there is a need for professional care. Because there are different kinds of care. Some require dedication to learn and practice at the cost of other callings. And sometimes it’s simply a job to take care of annoying people. It is clear that recognition of care as work secures rights for those who spend time giving care. It’s a good thing.
But when I look at art and its professionalization, I feel violently allergic. I am unsure why. Perhaps I despise the exclusivity of professionalization, the difficulty of being recognized without formal education, which is becoming increasingly unaffordable depending on where you are. Perhaps I am afraid that art will only be left in the hands of the designated. Perhaps it is the self-doubt as to how my art-making does anything for anyone that deserves it being called a profession. Some theorists say that doubt is part of the artistic process, but it doesn’t make it any easier.
***
Over interpretation. Artists are struggling to interpret what they do in terms of their social value because at the end of the day we need money to live. In our desperation, we interpret what we do in economic terms and put ourselves into various positions of innovation and creativity because that’s economically valuable. What if our innovation is simply that we do things that we believe should be done, like care?
Care work does not need to define itself. It has been a mistake to do so. The managerial efforts in the 90s onwards to codify, standardise and streamline the delivery of care has actually ended up in delivering less care because caregivers could not respond to the care receivers as individuals with needs that can vary wildly.
Perhaps we should resist the definition and the need for finding use value in art, and simply insist that this is good and worthwhile. Because that is in the end what rights are about. Like health care, education, and fair trial should be rights. And a society based on rights is valuable. Just like that. I could say it is valuable because it contributes to social stability, without which no development can take place and economies may even collapse. But when it comes to the heart of the matter, it is because it allows us in our infinite non-codifiability to roam the world, and that is simply the right thing to do. Like art and care.
Vienne Chan, 2023
“In the Mirror of Care Work”, an art publication on art and care, eds. Inga Gerner Nielsen and Klara Utke Acs
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