Living an Expensive Life

Image: Maja Björk

Gambler

During the spring of 2021 the consultant for the student fund of the COVID-19 pandemic called me on the phone to evaluate my situation. I didn’t sign up for this call, but some other people in my fine arts master program had leaked my situation with good intentions. The questions were about my situation in terms of groceries and housing, then my plan for graduation and my savings. I did not cooperate and questioned back if the school had any clear idea of the required criteria for receiving support from the crisis fund.

“Ja, well, hmmm… We still need to know more about the general picture of all students and see who are most urgent…”

After receiving the same vague answer in loops, I told him I had savings from a study loan from my country, but I needed to pay it back later. I wanted to save it for emergencies, such as a ticket to fly home when the lockdown was over.

“I see. How are your parents’ finances back in Taiwan? Can they support you?”

The conversation paused a bit. Briefly, I told him that I was not interested in the fund anyways and hung up the phone.

I felt irritated. I know how they see us, the international students. It was not my first time meeting this projection and I usually build up anger by rehearsing alternative responses like: “Sorry, but not sorry. I am not that ‘Crazy Rich Asian’ type of international student who loves art because of passion and has family money to sponsor myself abroad. No, I am not coming for life experience enrichment to live my best youth before I settle for some decent job. All my life, I have wished so hard that I was, and particularly during this phone call, so never would I need to listen to a confused guy checking a 31-year-old international student whether their parents are rich.”

No, I didn’t get to say this to him. Not anywhere in other similar situations either. Probably because I felt way worse than the stereotype. I felt like an addicted gambler in the global pyramid scheme of “art education.” I borrowed more money from the banker of the system, right after I got even from the first debt, just to rejoin the game that was not in my favor.

I was already struggling with my finances during my bachelor art education for theatre directing in Taiwan. My family was having a hard time supporting my study, so we turned to interest free study loans supported by the government. I could see clearly how slow the process would have been if I had tried to pay up the loan as a “cultural worker” in Taiwan. So right after graduation, I went on a ”working holiday” in Australia. I got my bachelor’s debt repaid by working 6 different jobs over 20 months but lost the network I had built up in art school. The gap year made a gap in my work path.

Coming back to Taiwan, I had a challenging time finding my way back into the work scene. Without the soil of being “a recent graduate,” I felt so lost networking. All the work opportunities I rejected had their replacement. I didn’t develop as much in fund-writing skills as my peers. Worst of all, I felt extra emptiness about the low payment. Doing general labor in Australia got paid way better than my professional work in Taiwan. I felt exploited by the reality of the currency.

Like gamblers always do, we keep coming back to the game. I started planning to study for a master’s program abroad. I convinced myself it would be the best investment for my life. In the evenings, I attended a cram school for the mandatory English language IELTS tests. I told myself this was a good investment. At the time, a famous UK school agency bragged about how high profile their school is, and I pinched myself: just an investment. There were difficult times: when I missed the deadline for a scholarship application and had a panic attack, the days I was running for visa paperwork under 35-degree tropical sun, and, especially, the heart-pounding moment I signed up for a study loan for 1 million New Taiwan dollars, 28 000 euro. I told myself again and again: This is the investment.

Again and again, the question from that phone call was lingering around in my twelve square-meter room of the first lockdown: “How are your parents’ finances back in Taiwan? Can they support you?” A level of soberness and a bigger level of homesickness kicked into my brain, exactly like the withdrawal from an addiction during forced isolation. There was not much I could do at that time but endure in the restless stillness. Later, I spent all my loans during the lockdown that continued on and off for 1,5 years in the Netherlands. It took me another year after graduation to gather savings for a flight ticket and the costs of quarantine. I remember when I finally met my mom, we couldn’t hug. I also remember that only one non-EU student out of the whole school got the crisis fund.

Number

Being good at math doesn’t mean you are good at gambling. If only I could have been humble enough to take this saying seriously. The numbers mean way more than the simple operations of arithmetic in gambling. At least in the game that I am in, the game of “Getting a Master in Fine Arts & Becoming an International Artist,” numbers were converted to devour time, space, energy, and emotions, pulling the nerves of homesickness, frustration, and shame.

Tuition fees for non-EU students, which are 4–6 times more than EU citizens’, were just the entrance to the game. Then it comes to the notorious financial proof, which requires you to send your whole year’s living cost to the school before you land. The housing crisis will drag you down with increasing rent and moving costs. Bizarrely, as an international student, you don’t get any benefits on transportation fees but instead pay the plan as any other working person. We are at art school, but the materials are paid from a personal budget, even when you are just learning new techniques.

In the Netherlands, you can have 16 working hours per week besides school, as long as you can find an employer who is willing to apply for a non-EU student working permit for you. Many teachers had no chance to know about this in advance, and school administration usually will not bother to help with this, since many EU students are in need of a job as well. Some creative tricks of money channeling were developed in the past by my school community. A surprising lesson that I will be forever grateful for receiving.

Graduation marks another turning moment in resources. Many people are kicked out of student housing, non-EU students should expect 3 visa applications in 3 years if they wish to stay, and close friends might become competitors because you are applying for the same funds. It was the pandemic crisis in my graduation year, so my family needed support due to their work loss. My savings, energy, and talents – if there were some at the beginning – were squeezed to their last drops during my studies. Yet, I found ways to drain them even more for these new challenges.

My weekends were always busy with work, cultural or not. Labor is most needed on a common day off. My weekdays were busy as well with extra work shifts, and a lot of desk work for funding applications, emails, editing, assistant work and all kinds of work that you can do on “flexible hours.” There were times I checked 5 schedule platforms for my various part-time jobs, self-initiate business, and unpaid volunteer shifts.

Volunteering as host in exhibitions, or helper in events, is one strategy to get close to an institution. In this way, they get to know you and you will get to know them. Then, you can develop a project together, and potentially, we can arrange the assignment letters that are essential for my visa application. Another way to get these letters is via open-call applications, which requires time as an investment, as another bet in the game.

Paid work is not enough for being an artist. Some essential resources require more than finance. Paid work is never enough anyway for a migrant artist. After I had paid off a big visa fee, I started my 6-year journey to pay off my study loan from the master’s program, the education abroad that ended with online courses.

At the moment, I commute 2 hours to work because I can’t afford the housing where my main-income job is located. I eat the same food all the time to save time and money. I memorize all the travel plans, and I put down all the expenses every day in sheets. I collect the receipt of a friend’s dinner out to deduct VAT. I smile more at work to get tips. And I am still not working enough.

I keep canceling social meetings. My artwork is basically referencing my other non-art works because I have no time for other kinds of life. No time to read, no time to date, no time to connect to something else that can inspire differently. I keep postponing my home visit. I tell my mom that next season, maybe, I will have money to get the ticket home. I have missed 3 family funerals and lost friendships in various ways. I once called a friend in front of grocery scanners for some instant transfer, because the train just deducted the payment with all my savings. I panicked all day calculating the same formation, worrying I might not have met the income requirements for the next visa application.[1] I burst out from time to time because I feel so tired that I am always working and moving.

I am living an expensive life that I can’t afford.
But I feel pity to pull back. I feel ashamed to give up.

I feel torn between the numbers to be filled and the tasks to be clicked. My bank account turns into a black hole, vacuuming not only money but also all the effort I put in and other possibilities in life. I can’t even save a piece of my mind to hope for what benefits can convert back from the loss, besides the constant fear and anger for numbers.

Image from M.C. Julie Yu’s artwork Failure to Care (Self-care and Giving) / air WG residency and Solo Exhibition at punt WG, NL (2022), curated by Àngels Miralda. Photo: Ilya Rabnovich. // “I do massages for a living, and my artwork is also about massage. I am proud to be economical with my mental capacity.”

Game

Based on all it takes for the entrance, what kind of player can win in this game? What kind of artist can succeed in this system of the art world, based on the complex requirements including academic status and residence permit?

Besides your artwork, which is already demanding, there are many hidden expectations: Socializing in the exhibition openings. Appearing unique in the crowd. Having a nice attitude while being a strong personality. Staying open-minded to the outside world. Remaining connected to your roots. Engaging in collectivity, and at the same time, keeping individual practices active. These expectations seem inconsistent but somehow corresponding. They are masked behind the idea of art, demanding the artist to place bets from all aspects of life and, at the same time, mocking what they bring to the table.

I pushed myself to cope with these expectations, while suspiciously observing what position everyone else is playing in the game – who is putting in more bets, who is dealing the cards, who has a solid sponsor and who is at the end of their chips, who is losing, and who can eventually win some. Strangely, I somehow never asked who the banker was. I felt like we all lost the clue somehow.

Scandals of various art schools got exposed massively in the Netherlands around my graduation years. A famous art academy was involved in a series of sexual assaults, rapes, and other abusing behavior perpetrated by a young yet already established artist. The story disclosed how a “Golden Boy Group” was formed among teachers, alumni and students, which helped cover the predator and even supported him for his future career. On the other side of the country, fashion students had been humiliated because of referencing non-white people in their works. They experienced burnout all the time with zero care from the school.

Discussions were developed, reflecting on the problematic dynamic between art education and the market. The artists being white, Western, and cis men, as the privileged, succeed in their careers earlier, easier, and longer than other people. They’d later hold positions of power in the institution – like director, lecturer, or just well-funded artists – and convoy the artists that embed their privileged mindset in the market. On the other hand, artists that are outside of this group, especially the ones that are against them, are suppressed. Via this manipulation, the utterance-power of the art world is secured within the same group, which dominates the price of the market.

I finally had a glimpse of what was going wrong with the game. The privileged players win via rules of bias, later becoming the card-dealers to help maintain the unfair game. This game is not designed for artists like me. We are examined on all scales with the standards of this “Golden Boy Group” – on finance capacity, residentship status, aesthetic preferences, political ideology, and even personalities. If we can’t fit in these standards, we should at least serve to maintain them – free labor for the exhibitions, cultural representation at the events, or show some exotic concept in our work for the Western male-centric gaze. Peeking behind the gaze, the bankers of the game keep asking: What can my world do for their game? They couldn’t care about what their game could do for me and has done to my world.

One time, I had a chance to be at a fancy dinner at a museum. Sitting in front of me were the owner of a gallery and her husband, whom I knew nothing about. I overheard him somehow claiming that European art education is different from other places, more conceptual and progressive, assumingly better. We inevitably had to chat because I interrupted him. Stuttering in anger, I mentioned the sexual scandals and the “Golden Boy Group” from the famous school. “So, there is a lot to reflect in the art education here, you know”, I said. The man seemed numb immediately after I had finished talking, and his wife gently smiled and said: ”We should go home.” A few minutes later, someone at the table told me that he was working in that specific school, and he had gotten fired due to this scandal.

After the dinner, my friend and I went to a crazy celebration for my accidental heroinic move of speaking up against the man. I got drunk and danced, just like the gamblers who finally had a little reward in the casino. I ended up throwing up on the streets. Mumbling how much hatred I have in my body. Didn’t feel like winning at all.

Text: M.C. Julie Yu

Images: Maja Björk, M.C. Julie Yu, Ilya Rabnovich

M.C. Julie Yu is an interdisciplinary artist, and freelance masseur who is currently based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Julie’s artistic practices revolve around the senses of othering under postcolonial and capitalist cultural phenomena, specifically based on the experience as a migrant and interdisciplinary worker. She reflects on these experiences through various sub-culture inspirations and addresses the reflection with a good dose of humor.

Reference

[1] Read more about unofficial tips for visa application as artists in the Netherlands here: https://mutualsupport.hotglue.me/