QOQQOON #4: Compromise

QOQQOON Issue 4 asks, what is artistic compromise? On one hand, it’s true that the phrase has critical connotations, like selling out or betraying one’s principles. Our current economic paradigm constantly begs the question: is artistic autonomy anything other than an idealist fantasy? What sacrifices should or should not be made as an artist attempts to balance their practice and their bills? But on the other hand, without neglecting precarious working conditions, it seems more interesting to consider compromise from a different vantage point. Doesn’t compromise also describe the ways in which an artist’s intentions are always (inevitably) altered by an audience’s interpretation? What of the everyday compromise of vision beholden to material capabilities? How does one negotiate the limits of control in artistic practice? For Issue 4, the editors invited artists to consider compromise in all of its facets: politically, ideologically, materially; as a productive dialogue with the unknown, a DIY collaboration with peers, or as a supplicative alignment with capital. Contents: “Artistic Compromise” by Steven Cottingham, “On Absences” by Alannah Clamp, “Blended Marks” by Aileen Bahmanipour, “Season 1” by sophia bartholomew and Emma Hicks, “Broadcasting as compromise: radio atelier and research art on air” by Benjamin J. Allard, “Performer/Spectator Relationships: A Dynamic of Equilibrium” by Marilyn Volkman, and “Clinique (of less compromise)” by Leigh Tennant.