DJs have their USBs. What does a conceptual or experimental artist carry in their bag?
Luisa Ji | March 23, 2025 | Dispatch #5
If social media is a window into what culture looks like today, the most exciting arts experience is likely happening right now in someone’s living room. It’s small, elusive, and just secretive enough to avoid the legal and bureaucratic hurdles that arise when something isn’t quite a business, nor quite “art.” It resembles a gathering, a dinner party, where value is exchanged both out of necessity and appreciation for the experience.
Yes, you don’t always need much money to create art, despite the devotion of time and energy—especially for those who keep their practice private. However, for artists who share their work and seek responses from audiences, promoting it often requires far more resources than creating it. Sometimes, you discuss your project endlessly with different audiences. Showing up in various places to broaden your horizons can get expensive. Most project costs come from travel, lodging, venue fees, and installation of the works. Sometimes, a presenter pays your way, but opportunities like this are competitive, and most early-to-mid-career artists are shut out of accessing them.
Goblin Market explores ways to make artists' work portable—to carry your work with you, set up a shop, and share it in unconventional spaces. Sometimes, that means assessing what’s available where you're headed. Sometimes, it means asking friends for help. In Toronto and Montreal, we’ve decided to use more formal venues (which, honestly, are costly) to provide some structure and certainty amid the chaos of figuring things out. But ultimately, the vision is to show up with a suitcase (or pocket) full of tricks—or art—and let people know how to support your ephemeral, esoteric, and delightfully weird practice.
DJs have their USBs. What does a conceptual or experimental artist carry?
Hovering above every artist and arts worker is the ever-present anxiety of a limited runway—how long until you need to shut everything down and find a “normal” job? Ideally not in the arts, since arts-related jobs can be even more stressful than being an artist.