Funding me - Diary of a broken artist
Today, making art often feels absurd. We write countless funding applications, depend on juries whose decisions are shaped by networks, taste and political trends, and when we are rejected, our ideas disappear into folders full of unrealized projects. We are asked to prove our “fundability” through background, gender, class or identity markers, while structural inequality remains untouched. At the same time, conservative forces increasingly threaten artistic freedom, demanding obedient, “unproblematic” art, while the market requires visibility, constant self-branding and perfect alignment with dominant social narratives. More than ever, art is judged by majority taste — or by attempts to preserve post-capitalist market values through nostalgia for a time when stability still seemed possible. Critique of capitalism appears outdated, while our generation watches a collapsing world and numbs itself with consumption and distraction.
Artists are expected to be everything at once: political, marketable, gentle, radical, informative, moral and easy to digest. Social media intensifies this pressure; doomscrolling becomes routine, while the political right tries to erase anything feminine, “woke,” vulnerable, arrogant, or contradictory. Their aesthetics lag behind, their cultural attempts appear flat and loveless — yet their influence grows and is gradually normalized as the status quo in how we spend our limited time on this earth. Activism, too, often falls into cycles of anger, moral policing and exhaustion. People cling to rigid ideas, attack each other and lose the ability to hold contradictions and conflicts — a core artistic skill. At the same time, the ruling class remains the unspoken truth of the art world: many present themselves as working class while quietly relying on inherited wealth, assets or upper-middle-class security. Influence operates silently, shaping who is visible — and who is not. Diplomacy as a supposed medicine for democracy has become a form of lobbying for personal gain, now sold to right-wing protagonists and hollowing out the very structures it claims to protect.
We live in a collapsing world of simultaneity: mines in Congo powering your iPhone, bodies washing onto shores, authoritarian movements rising globally, children born without consent into systems of violence, women surviving 15 years of marriage to rapists who drugged them and shared them with strangers online. And Gaza continues to be made a martyr of “Never Again” lies, while people still claim neutrality or feel “obliged” to have an opinion only when it is comfortable. We know our position within these structures, including the privileges of skin color and geography. And some behave shamelessly, insisting all of this was “centuries ago.” People avoid responsibility and escape into endless consumption, new sects, believing the next dopamine hit will save them. Ego-victimhood becomes the norm, silencing those truly affected by racism or inequality and giving the political right more room to grow. Yet we believe that humans can reconnect, that contradictions and sensitivity matter, and that art can still open spaces of understanding — even when everything seems to fall apart.
Now the big question is: Why make art at all? Is it even needed when someone is bleeding out in front of you? Is art simply a condition for stability — ultimately a luxury, not a matter of survival?
What we offer: NOTHING.
So why keep going? Without poetry, care and love, there is no change — but do we have to be artists for that? Can you not simply insist on existing?
Demands
– The inclusion of assets as a criterion in funding structures, so artistic quality is not tied to inherited socioeconomic privilege.
– An end to cultural budget cuts, especially in times of inflation and rising fascist movements.
– A universal right to apply for funding, independent of employment status, prioritizing applicants with low income, no assets or structurally disadvantaged backgrounds.
– Transparent, fair and depoliticized funding structures.
– Legal protection for artistic freedom, especially when artists take political positions that may be censored. Art must remain a protected space for difficult, painful and socially necessary discourse.
– A basic income for artists.
– A model similar to the German Künstlersozialabgabe, in which companies that profit from artistic labor contribute financially. Large corporations must co-finance the arts; cultural funding must rely on public redistribution, not private patrons.
– A dedicated fund for artists from non-privileged backgrounds, addressing the structural divide between the educated middle class and those outside it.
– Locally: legal permission to earn additional income while receiving unemployment benefits (AMS) without punishment or restriction. The poverty of artists may be a cliché, but we must counteract it. Fees must be adjusted to current inflation.
– Public support for critics and journalists writing about contemporary, non-established art in Vienna and across Austria. Public newspapers should dedicate front-page space to contemporary, non-institutionalized artists. Exhibitions must be visited, reviewed and made accessible to people outside the established art world.
– Universities must prepare students for real-world conditions and the profession — grounded in autonomous art while critically examining and exposing market strategies and preparing them to navigate them.
– Galleries and private markets must once again cultivate artistic positions, show genuine interest and support them instead of relying on names whispered by elite circles. If they want state funding for fairs or related activities, they must demonstrate an inclusive approach.
– The relationship between animals and humans, as well as climate change in all its complexity, must be taught and fostered so that at least some generations can remember what it meant to be connected with nature as an equal partner.
I want autonomy for the arts. But to achieve this, we must understand our role in the world and insist on structures that enable genuine respect for being curious, unknowing human beings rather than ego-sect gods. We cannot change the consensus alone, but we can demand conditions that make artistic work possible without fear, unbearable precarity or ideological pressure.
I can only speak for myself and for what my colleagues keep discussing. I write this in a moment of transition in which I am living in precarity and have survived almost entirely from art-making since 2021. That is no longer possible — and that is okay. I will focus on gaining stability first. Because my friends gave me money to live on these past months, I want to share this with you as an act of gratitude. I know you believe in solidarity.
diary of a broken artist 05.12.2025
Off to BERUFUNG, the calling is here. Let me explain again, and picture it in a voice that’s like a German dubbing actor. So, I now have to decide whether to continue with art or take a completely new path. The calling, after all, doesn’t really work out for most people. They should have told me that during the admission process. It’s an illusion, but it’s one I have to keep up, because what’s the alternative? Then there are thoughts like: Am I interesting enough? Does society even care about me? Can I really do this alone in my own room? I can’t afford a studio anymore, not for a long time. Often, that’s the reality. But I have been lucky; I’ve received grants and prizes for being a good artist or by writing a proper concept paper. I can’t complain. I managed for six years, and now I’m facing ruin again. I can’t pay rent, electricity, or even buy food. That’s okay, because the welfare state steps in, and then it’s on to minimum income and unemployment benefits. But being self-employed is gone, meaning I can’t sell my work, or if I do, it’ll be deducted from what I receive. That’s a problem for many, because they rely on issuing invoices. It should be allowed, but no, not from January onward. This means more issues, and it will only get worse. You knew that by now, especially with COVID, it can affects everyone, no matter how rich or not.
I’m not a leftist; I’m just a silly feminist, or maybe just an annoying object.
It gets even better: I’ll go straight into kindergarten and whisper all these ideas into the children’s ears. I’ll make them so progressive that they might want to create art themselves, because after all, “Wir sind alle Künstlerinnen!” (spoken in a high pitch and still in that German dubbing voice) I actually expect the opposite. Unprofessional art is the most beautiful, the amateurish nature, the free wandering and realizing that everything can flow together. I am the object, and I am the desire behind it. That’s fine. In any case: Kunst ist eine Berufung! Ab zum Dienst Kolleg*innen!
08.12.2026
The Refiguration of the Body
Precarity as something strangely beautiful.
The unboxing, and how much power in capitalism still lies in risk;
the willingness to engage with it, and how deeply we long for the forbidden addiction. Now legally as market values and consumer datas.
Meanwhile, the eagle remains the ideal.
We believe in it, we appropriate it.
Labubu is like the golden nugget
we yearn for – and then everyday life intervenes:
cleaning,
cooking,
shopping,
the absence of social justice.
Here a paragraph should go, explaining more precisely what it means to simply live life through everyday routines.
Bohemian – oh, how beautiful that would be.
The term Bohemian describes an apparently free, artistic existence outside bourgeois norms – yet this freedom, historically as today, is only possible because the bourgeois romanticizes, consumes, and financially secures it.
How tempting it is to think from a place of rest about those who actually have to work:
construction workers,
Foodora couriers.
Student jobs disappear.
Everyone must be trained highly– for €1000 a month, and sometimes even less is paid.
The normalization of low and highly skilled lost potential
Bohemian with minimum social support.
I so want minimum support, then to rest, observe,
and laugh like someone who is poor.
There are gradations of laughter – from poor to very rich.
The rich want you at their table,
so they can say, “Look, a middle-class or perhaps poor person has been brought to the table through me.”
Talking about the unconditional.
Dust is class consciousness.
proper Lobster can only be inherited.
Bohemian with minimum social support.
I so want minimum support, then to rest, observe,
and laugh like someone who is poor –
laughing in all its forms: hahaha, hahahah, hihi, hehe,
jajaja, jejeje, kkkkk, rsrs, ㅋㅋㅋㅋ, ㅎㅎㅎ, wwwww, хахаха. There are gradations of laughter – from poor to very rich – and each of these gradations signals a STATUS, a position on the social scale. The rich want you at their table, so they can say, “Look, a middle-class or perhaps poor person has been brought to the table through me.”
This too is merely a reproduction of STATUS, a shift without change,
a performative acknowledgment of power, where the table itself becomes a symbol
And so we laugh, and laugh, and laugh – hahaha, hahahah, hihi, hehe,
jajaja, jejeje, kkkkk, rsrs, ㅋㅋㅋㅋ, ㅎㅎㅎ, wwwww, 55555, хахаха, ahahah, xaxaxa, jajajjj, xd, xddd, mdr, jajjj, 哈哈哈 – and the table, and the status, and the minimum support, and the laughter, and the table, and the status, and the minimum support, and the laughter, and the table, and the status…
hahaha, hahahah, hihi, hehe, jajaja, jejeje, kkkkk, rsrs, ㅋㅋㅋㅋ, ㅎㅎㅎ, wwwww…
and we laugh, we laugh, we laugh, the eagle, the cleaning, the cooking, the shopping, the dust, the lobster –hahaha, hahahah, hihi, hehe…laugh, laugh, laugh, hahaha, jajaja, xd, xddd, hahahah, jejeje, kkkkk, rsrs, ㅋㅋㅋㅋ, ㅎㅎ Bohemian with minimum social support.
I so want minimum support, then to rest, observe,
and laugh like someone who is poor. I inherited a house, a laughter, a good friend hahaha, hahahah, hihi, hehe, jajaja, jejeje, kkkkk, rsrs, ㅋㅋㅋㅋ, ㅎㅎㅎ, wwww, no sex, no lover, just cigarettes and dust hahaha, hahahah, hihi, hehe, jajaja, jejeje, kkkkk, rsrs, ㅋㅋㅋㅋ, ㅎㅎㅎ, wwww
