Erin

Age: 25

City: Berlin

Can you introduce yourself?

My name is Erin. I’m from England. I’ve been living in Berlin for two and half years since graduating. I’m making art. And I have two part time jobs. One is studio manager for an artist, and the other one is - I’m a baker for a cafe.

Why did you move to Berlin?

I moved here with a friend. When we were studying I knew it wasn’t an option for me to move to London, because of the cost of living. I’d been in Berlin previous summer for couple of months, and we just said we’d move to Berlin together after the degree. So we did.

I had no plan at all. It took me quite a long time to find my feet. Then I did an internship at a gallery for three months, and during that time, that’s when I got the job with the artist David who I’m working for right now.

What do you have to do with the studio manager job?

Well, mainly I’ve been assisting David , (David Thorpe) making two large sculptures. And they are fantastic, I really love working on the sculptures. I think it’s a quite unusual job for an artist assistant. If you are working with an artist, you often have to do a lot of boring jobs like shipping, organizing and online stuff. But working for David is really great, ‘causeI’m mainly working hands-on, helping him make the sculptures, and that’s really great.

I also help him with other projects for instance I’ve helped him with some public sculpture commissions, and he’s got a show coming up in Karlsruhe and after that in New York. He’s doing lots of other projects and making works for art fairs as well, and I help him with some of the basic stuff for that too.

So now you are working for a more established artist and see what a “real” artist’s life is like?

Yeah, I think that’s been really helpful. There are different artists working in the building with David. So there is him, and there are two other British artists. One of them is a girl who’s in her 30s, and another guy who’s also in his 30s. And there is a guy who is a little bit older and further along in his career as well. So there are different stages to be mixing around.

Is that the kind of life you want for yourself later?

I would be really really pleased.

Are those artists all living on selling their works?

Yeah. Only one of them isn’t quite yet. He’s starting his master’s, and he had a part time job as an artist assistant for a Berlin-based artist. And the others, they are all making a living from their work. So it’s quite interesting to be around these discussions.

Two of the artists there are represented by the same gallery in Berlin, one of them is having a huge solo show in New York coming up, so he’s doing really well. So I do sometimes say to David, “You are an artist, David. You are doing it. This is amazing.” He just doesn’t have to do a part-time job, whereas the artists I met in London that were really established, represented by the White Cube gallery, which is one of the top commercial galleries in London, were still working and teaching in 3-4 different art schools to get by.

Besides the living expense being cheaper here in Berlin, what other things are different compared to London?

The living cost difference affects a lot. I’ve never lived in London, but people I know that are making art in London are doing so because they’ve got some incredibly jammy situation.

Maybe they have a very unusually low rent, or they have parents that give them an apartment so they don’t have to pay rent. Or there are also different kinds of schemes where you can get different organizations for spaces that place artists in accommodations, although the waiting list is really long. And there are some places where you can live for really really cheap rent but the contract you get is very uncertain in terms of how long you can stay there. So it’s mainly like buildings that are gonna be renovated at some point in future.

But I think you would have to have some kind of other means of income.

Do your parents support or understand what you are doing here?

I think they would rather I have a more secure future. Yeah, my dad doesn't really want me to do the art. I mean they are super supportive, but they would rather “Why don’t you just have a nice job, have some kids and die? Why don't you just do that?” (Laugh)… They didn’t really say that. It’s more subtle than that. I’m really thankful to them though; my parents help me a lot financially in Berlin despite their concerns!

How many of your classmates after graduation decided to try life as an artist? And what was it like when you first graduated from college?

I think there were like twenty of us in our year. And I think half of the class isn’t doing art anymore, and the other half still does, which is quite a high amount in our year.

It’s such an exciting time when you just finish, and you are like, there is the first experience of self-sufficiency, you know, going out into the world, it’s so exciting and so scary. I withdrew a lot. I think maybe being lost helps you in the long run. I don’t know… but I get the impression it gets harder to carry on the older you get.  It’ll be interesting to see how many of my class mates are still making art in 10 or 20 years from now.

You’ve been here for two and half years. Do you give yourself a deadline and say maybe I’m going to try a few years more, and if my art career doesn’t take off, then I’m going to do something else?

Yeah, I think it’s really important to have deadlines. And things like getting my application ready for doing the master’s has really helped a lot with the deadline, and wanting to do an exhibition, to have an experience to do that and to show that you are busy doing stuff, having deadlines for shows is helpful.

So I’m applying for master’s courses, because I don’t want to stay in Berlin much longer. I wanna be here for maybe one more year maximum, that’s my Berlin deadline.

Why do you want to leave Berlin?

Because I feel that it was a really really great place to come straight after undergraduate. It’s given me the chance to think about what I want to make, what I want to do. The city has such a slow pace of life. Even the streets are wider. There is so much more space to think. And I think this has really helped me a lot.

But I’m kind of conscious that if I want to make this art career happen, then I need to jump into something more challenging and fast-paced. I think I could make it work here, but for me, Berlin is just about having more time. I don’t want to place myself here as a professional artist. I wanna situate myself in a different place. For me, Berlin was about breathing time and working in a studio, meeting people, working stuff out.

So you think going back to school for a master’s degree will help with this artistic career?

Yeah, I think so. I think it will. It should. After that, if I don't get anywhere after the master’s, that’s when I can start panicking!

Is it like if you want to be a real artist, nowadays you have to have a master’s degree?

No, it’s not true. You don’t have to. You don’t have to at all if you are really well-connected already. Or if you are in a good place already, you will get seen. And I think a master’s can offer that exposure. A master’s can also be a really good time to focus on your work and have all the facilities as well. Things like that can really open a lot. There is so much more I have to learn about, practicing and getting feedback. I just think it would be really really fun as well.

How many days in a week do you come to work in the studio, and how many days do you spend working for your money job?

Well, I work about 4 days a week on my own art, 3 afternoon shifts for David, normally, and one morning shift a week in a cafe. It’s good to do something that’s totally outside the art bubble. I’ve been helping David with these two sculptures for two years, and we are about a third of the way through. It’s nice to go at such a slow pace in thinking progress, but it’s also nice to go to the café where you make a cake and it’s done, then you make another one. That’s also quite satisfying.

So you like the balance?

I like the balance at the moment, I do. Even though friends of mine are saying “Quit the bakery, that’s bullshit, it’s such a waste of time.” But now I’ve cut my hours down to just one day a week. And I think for me, that’s fine. When I go to the bakery, I always think I can go to the studio afterwards. But every time I work in the bakery, I haven’t come to the studio and had those good hours working in the studio. I’m always just delirious.

Are you able to pay your cost of living here with the part time jobs you have?

Yeah. The two part time jobs I have give me about 1100 Euros. I was also doing other random stuff as well. Like I was giving art lessons to kids. I was baking cakes for local cafes around Neukölln. So yeah, if you want more money, you can do that, that’s enough for me to survive. And then I get help from my dad as well, still. I’m saving that extra help for the master’s next year, ‘cause London is going to be very different.

What’s the basic living cost here in Berlin?

At the moment, I think you can live very comfortably on a thousand Euros a month. I mean I have been paying for my studio with 170 euros, and my apartment is around 380 euros a month. So around 600 euros for rent. You can have 100 euros a week for food and going out.

I guess it’s a good thing that there are so many artists and creative people living here in Berlin so you really get that sense of community. But does that also make you feel less special since you are just one of them?

Yeah, there is a bit of that definitely. But I think that doesn’t come to the surface that often for me. Maybe because the openings and stuff that I’ve been going to, there is very much a sort of expat community. And I see the same faces there all the time, and it’s only when I step outside of this small circlet, then I’m like “Oh my god!” 

There is UDK, the art school in Berlin. They have a HUGE party every year, and I had a really weird feeling there. There’s just thousands of young, good-looking hipsters or young creatives, thousands and thousands of them. All these people. And I’m like, who are these people? I haven’t seen any of these faces before. It was really overwhelming and I had to sit down. It’s too much.

I think there are different bubbles of art communities in Berlin and everywhere. For instance, the openings I go to, I barely hear Germen being spoken. I just hear American, Canadian accents. And I’m like, where is this German art scene? And my friend was telling me that the German artists here feel quite hurt that there is this expat community, these American and Canadians get visas for a couple of years and they come here with this mission to network the fuck out of it and do their projects, and those are the things that get written about in a lot of the magazines. And there is this German community…it’s like a different world, because there is such a huge influx of people from America and Canada, they come together in groups, and they just form this separate bubble. It’s strange.

Why do you feel like you want to be an artist?

Well, I grew up in a small conservative town in the South on England. So I think it’s easy to get excited when you start hearing stories about SOHO, and London in the 80s. This idea of bohemia where like gays mixing with straight, and there is no gender going on and there is no class going on, poor people mixing with aristocrats, all sorts of things and it’s all based on what you have to say. This magical idea of bohemia that is so appealing and seductive.

Coming from this very conservative town, it’s like, I want to be around people that are nuts, I want to be around people that are thinking about things. And that was the initial pull for me. I felt very much like an outsider. You have this idea that there is a place where you can do whatever you want and be whoever you want, all these kind of wonderful ideas.

I can also see that I was probably influenced by my high school. I felt it wasn’t cool to be clever but it was socially acceptable to be good at drawing and painting. It’s getting better now but these are the sort of biases that you pick up on as a young person. The same reason there just aren’t as many female engineers for example. So I think I was probably influenced by trying to fit in but I was competitive in art. I had this weird drive for making stuff. I found it hard but exciting and I felt really driven.

 And then I went to art school, I didn’t have ideas about art or what art was, or any idea of art history at all. And I still have huge gaps of culture, theory and these kinds of things. But that was when I got introduced to those ideas. I think the more and the further along that you go down this route, the more you have a clear idea of what it is.

What’s your clearer idea about art now? Is it as bohemian as you thought?

In a lot of ways, I think I was a bit surprised. I didn’t go to openings that much before I moved to Berlin. And at the openings you see certain people that are good in these social situations being very professional and having this social power, and how that is like, important. And that’s a whole side of being an artist that really wasn’t part of what I thought I would have to do. And I think maybe I don’t have to worry about these social power games. But I guess it was the first time that I was being made aware of it.

Seems like nowadays to be a professional artist, only making good artworks is not enough, you also have to be informed with art history/art theory, being intelligent and able to talk about your work. You also need studio management skills and social networking abilities.

You don’t have to, you could just work on your art and maybe get discovered when you’re dead or become an outsider artist. But you still need an income to do even that! I believe that most artists develop those business skills in order to have a better chance of earning money from their work, ultimately so they have more time in the studio. So I don’t knock it. It’s just annoying when artists, or anyone connected to the arts, appear to be driven only by social hierarchies, doing drugs with the right people to get ahead, or social climbing. That can actually work for a period of time but it seems to me that for a long-term success artists tend to have some combination of business-like skills. The difficulty is that artists have become more and more refined in these skills and it sadly takes energy away from your practice in order to compete. For me, right now I try not to think about all that too much I just need to be in the studio more.

But if you are only making art in your studio and no one knows about it…

I mean, you can just be in your studio, and maybe a curator’s car breaks down and they knock on the door, and you are the only person around. (Laugh) But I don’t wanna do that. I don’t really want to be friends with important people that will push my career. I wanna be talking to people in this way, with other artists and give this “art thing” a bloody good go. That would be ideal.

Interviewed in Neukölln, Berlin. August 20th, 2015