“At least that’s what I heard”

I keep hearing about projects headed by famous artists and blockbuster curators who, I am told, I should work with.

I am told the projects are relevant, but the subtext of this is usually the relevance of the person heading the project – a person with a grand vision, at least that’s what I heard. I usually begin by the doubting the former while believing the latter. By the end, I am usually more convinced that the opposite is true for both. 

I keep hearing about projects headed by Famous Artists and Blockbuster Curators who, in what might be their last gasps of relevance, end up passing most of the grunt work to whoever may be working directly under them. Whoever that may be goes by different names: assistant curator, scholar, coordinator, exhibition intern, sister, daughter, son. I once heard about one such person refer to one of his whoevers as “his conscience.” 

”Whoever” usually refers to a woman. So, as a woman, I keep hearing about people I should work with. These are often followed by warnings about people I should stay away from: just matters of reportage and reputation, big names with big egos. I keep hearing about them, which means it keeps happening, which goes without saying that it keeps happening to women. The good news (if there was any) is that it rarely ever happens to the same woman twice. 

I kept thinking it could not happen to me. I had heard enough warnings. I thought I had avoided the wrong people and worked only with the right ones. But when it happens, it happens slowly: once we are too far in, too deep in a heap of delayed contracts, and too close to impending deadlines to be able to quit. Like anyone else in a similar position (the women and whoevers before me) I found myself simply making the best of an unpleasant thing and making compromises for a lack of a better option.

I kept thinking it could not happen to me,
but what was it exactly?

I did not always think of other ways my gender might signal that I was an exploitable resource—that I would not only have to work with you, but that I would have to do your work for you, only to get blamed for the compromises, the missteps, and the ways the project failed.

In this way, what usually begins as a collective dream will eventually show its bones as a grand vision built on sand. A project is a collective dream until we really examine our place in it. This also means seeing the parts from which we were rewritten or erased altogether; but by the time we are able to process this, the world has already moved on. Onward to the next project: new directors, new curators, new coordinators, researchers, interns, scholars, assistants, a new conscience, or whatever they want to call it, new, new, new. And we, the whoevers, are just left with fragments, with anecdotes about who we should work with and who we should stay away from.

It’s so easy for a new project to become a new world altogether, you just need new people in it. And there is a long line of new people waiting for a place in this new world. Art does pose that lofty proposition that “another world is possible,” but we say this without the footnotes. We say it without the glaring disclaimer that art cannot make another world if the one it builds around itself is so profoundly broken.
Fiction, however, provides a unique opportunity to build new worlds. There is that disclaimer that usually appears at the beginning of books, movies, or TV shows: the one that says

THE FOLLOWING IS A WORK OF FICTION
ANY RESEMBLANCE TO ACTUAL EVENTS, PLACES, OR
PERSONS, LIVING OR DEAD, IS ENTIRELY COINCIDENTAL

or something like that.

That said, I need you to remember that, while these stories might contain similarities to actual events, places, or people, each instance is entirely coincidental. Similarities to actual events, places, or people might also just mean we all have the same stories.

All we have are stories, after all.

I heard that he refuses to have anyone call him “boss” or “sir.”

He claimed to believe in a “horizontal” organizational structure, even with temporary organizations. No leaders, just collective dreaming and doing. This was part of what he called the “ethics” of “acting and doing ‘collectively’” and it made me very optimistic about working with him. At least that’s what I heard.

I hated calling people “sir” as much as I disliked being called ma’am. So when I heard he felt the same, I jumped at the opportunity to work together. We would all call each other by name. We called each other by name, but in practice we were definitely Sirs and Ma’ams. A project – even a project born of collective dreaming, still demands a hierarchy to get done. For the purposes of this story, however, I will call him “Not Sir.” I, on the other hand, eventually adopted another name.
There’s a loaded term for it in Filipino: Maritess.

It is also used as both a noun and verb, as in to be a Maritess is to be someone who enjoys gossip; while to Maritess, is to engage in gossip, along with all the adjacent terms, like to eavesdrop, to share, to spread the word, and to devour it likewise. It’s also a woman’s name, a nickname for Maria Teresa, as in the saintly one; divine medium for the Holy Ghost, spiller of heavenly tea. A woman’s name, thus exposing its pejorative use: as in “don’t be that girl,” as in, “Mind your own damn business, Maritess.”

If we had to choose though, to Maritess (verb) was far more preferable to being a Maritess (noun), in that you are being that girl, but only for the moment. A full-time Maritess would never have been given the job, but to Maritess out of necessity was vital to getting the job done. How else would we know what we know?
It’s all business, it’s part of the work, especially if what counts as gossip to the network of Maritesses that forms in the wake of a project, is reduced to a single line in a CV to the Not Sirs of the world.

A CV is a balancing act of dropping big names and places while excluding the bit players that made up the labor force, or the support system that makes projects possible: the installers who worked overtime while we scratched our heads and repeatedly changed our minds over placement of objects and equipment, the secretariat waiting for accurate email addresses, those lingering in the background, awaiting direction from the top, the coordinators who did the curating over video calls with the actual curators.

All those names would demand an entire paragraph to be properly acknowledged, but for the purposes of a CV, would need to be erased in order for the project to take up the single line it is afforded. For the Not-Sirs of the world, that single line is all you need to build a career.

The part-time Maritesses of the art world, on the other hand, thrived on what the bit players had to say. In the encrypted privacy of group chats and coffee shops, we ate up what was erased from the CV and corroborated the details through the participation of the supporting cast.

I heard
he got away with not paying his assistant for years on end by claiming that his assistant was actually a distant relative; and as family, his assistant/distant relative received free room and board which, in his words, was “more than enough.”

I heard
one of his interns stopped showing up to work because he had sold nude sketches of her that he promised would be kept between the both of them.

I heard
they were sold under the table, without her consent, at the non-profit art space where she was interning. They were then exhibited for some time at another gallery, owned by a famous collector, until the intern’s parents complained.

I heard
she does short-term contractual work now in the corporate world, preferring the “no employer-employee relationship” clause usually forced upon independent contractors, to the pre-tense of friendship and family used in the arts and culture sector.

I heard
he removed an artist from the selection for a big project by repeatedly blocking the artist’s attempts to coordinate with the head installer (who also happened to be his assistant/distant relative). He also refused to confirm a venue for the artist’s work, first through a number of seemingly harmless ways, such as ending meetings with the curators too early or too late, by saying they would “talk about it later” or that they were “out of time.” When the artist wrote to Not-Sir, saying he was already on the bus bound for the small town where the project was being mounted, Not-Sir threw a tantrum in front of the rest of the staff.

I heard
he later claimed he was never consulted about the artist’s participation.

I heard
he eventually cancelled the said artist’s accommodations at the local hotel, then left it to one of the curators to break the news.

I heard
he had inserted his own work into that same project by claiming it was the work of a local collective. On opening night, he replaced the caption written by the curators with another caption that listed a different set of names.

I heard
that a guest had pointed out an unfamiliar name that had unexpectedly turned up in the new caption. A member of the collective then admitted to the curators that it was actually Not Sir’s artist name.

I heard
one of his coordinators on a recent project had only received half of the fee she was promised, after waiting five months to receive it. This was after a year’s worth of working with no contract, only a verbal agreement she had accepted based on trust. We were also afraid to call it anything aside from “collectivity”, because what would it say about us to rename it? Would we be discrediting the potential of the collective? Did it mean we were incapable of collaboration? On multiple occasions, he refused to meet for a civil discussion. Finally, after a month and two weeks of postponed meetings and unanswered calls, she took her complaints to Facebook, the people’s court.

I heard
this finally got his attention, comparing her post to a “public lynching,” before he claimed that she wasn’t actually a coordinator, but a volunteer. She should have thanked him that she was paid at all.

I heard
this was one of his tactics: to keep roles porous and to get those working with him to agree upon them verbally. “We are all friends here,” he would say. “I chose to work with you because I trust you!” This was what he called “collectivity,” but never on paper.

He wouldn’t dare write any of this down. Meetings were never recorded. “What mattered,” according to him, “is that we were present.” Else, it was merely hearsay, all gossip.

We were also afraid to call it anything aside from “collectivity”, because what would it say about us to rename it? Would we be discrediting the potential of the collective? Did it mean we were incapable of collaboration?

We wanted to believe this was a worthwhile alternative to institutional work; but even in this collective endeavor, we were just the whoevers that made up the team. We held no big titles – if we held titles at all.

We were just lucky to work with him.

I heard he will be directing the next edition as well. Same project, same names at the top of the non-hierarchy, different town, new interns, new coordinators, new staff, old conscience wiped clean to make way for the new, new, new. At least… well, you know the rest.

I heard that he still refuses to have anyone call him “boss” or “sir.”

He still claims to believe in a “horizontal” organizational structure, even with temporary organizations. No leaders, just all in it together. At least that’s what I heard. This is still part of what he calls the “ethics” of “acting and doing ‘collectively’.”

I had worked under people whose ethics I had questioned – or had questioned under my breath, whispering to myself, to confirm what I just heard; muttering to myself when nothing needed confirmation, but I still needed convincing. It never ended well.

There are those who work ethically and those who use ethics as material in their work. I had hoped he would be the former, after all there are so many of him.

Throughout our lives, we are taught that ethical and moral behavior can only be learned through fables or the good book, themselves progenitors of GMRC, or the Good Manners and Right Conduct that we expect within polite society. The rest is noise. There are good Gs and bad Gs.

Gossip, especially, takes on a particularly bitter aftertaste – something to be spat out, ignored, or disregarded. At least that’s what we are taught: Don’t engage in gossip. Don’t be that girl.

To turn information into allegation, that information must first be defined as fact, then as knowledge; only then can it belong to us, can be a matter of what we know instead of what I know.

What if I claim it as fiction, instead? As if to say, this is what I heard, but also what I think and feel and believe. In a sense, it is what I know. And any resemblance to actual events, places, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Fiction is an opportunity to create new worlds, but it is also labor – the work of turning stories into conversations and conversations into collective dreaming.

THIS WAS A STORY.
THIS IS A STORY.

That said, I need you to blur the lines between what I just heard and what I just made up. Treat what I said like a fable, a finger pointed in a specific direction, the direction towards another world. And if we are to get there, we need to keep telling these stories.

ALL WE HAVE ARE STORIES, AFTER ALL.