Artist’s Pledge

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[Here in Zurich, at the Gessnerallee dance Laboratoire, we made Artist's Pledges. This is mine.}



I pledge to complain less, or to complain only in a way that is incredibly entertaining for the people around me who have to listen to it.

I pledge to be less actively jealous of artists considerably more successful than me.

I don’t know how to put this next one in the form of a pledge, but I would like to change my attitude towards those who have power over me: at the same time being more stubborn in fighting for my artistic integrity and more generous with them on a human level.

I have to admit I like working for free. Artistically things seem possible when working for free that for some reason seem less possible when getting paid. So perhaps I pledge to search for ways to create the same loose openness in well-paid situations that I have so often found in unpaid ones.

I pledge to always remember that working for free is not some artistic panacea that has been lost. That my present is in so many ways better than my past.

I pledge to remember that many things that seem artistically important to me in terms of working conditions may well be only placebos.

I pledge to continuously reevaluate what is and isn’t important for the work.

My greatest fear is making work that’s empty and not knowing I have done so.



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