Arts Marketing, Picking Your Voice and The Privilege of Being Known for My Transness

Who the hell am I doing this for anyway?

Some time ago I sat with a young artist (I have a habit of adopting emerging-artist-odd-ducks and mentoring them as best I can). We talked about the art they create, the things that inspire them, the audience they’re speaking to.

You see, in addition to a plethora of undiagnosed-ADHD-inspired interests, I have a marketing background. I work specifically for artists and arts organisations, ranging from the just emerging through to the juggernauts of the industry. In my time in the biz, I’ve found that the overwhelming majority of education institutions that take young people’s money in order to teach them “how to be artists” do an incredibly shit job of showing them how to sell their art once they’ve learned how to make it.

I’m not overly surprised, to be honest. 

Don’t get me wrong, the relationship between art and marketing is something that constantly jostles up against my own artistic sensibilities. I share the expected discomfort between “saying something provocative” and “saying something promotable”. It’s a constant struggle; rarely do the two overlap. Rarely does the truly provocative ever do anything other than make people uncomfortable and confronted and the majority of the population don’t open their wallet for the certain experience of discomfort and confrontation.

The relationship between art and commerce is at best fraught and at worst a toxic fucking wasteland of mediocrity. It is a hostile environment that rewards shallow, eye-catching bombast whilst driving the interesting work into the middle of the road, which is the perfect place to ignore it. The perfect place for compelling challenges of the status quo to be interned in the convenient, conservative tomb of There Just Wasn’t That Much Audience Interest Sorry!

Anyway, I sat with this young artist giving them advice on how to market their work.

We had wide ranging ramblings about which social media avenue was the best fit, how much did they want to be directly engaged or hidden behind a wall of anonymity. We talked about crafting the voice of their communication of the art. Was it sassy? Was it fun? Was it serious? Was it jovial? Conspiratorial maybe? Intimate even? This voice would be speaking directly to the audience from their point of view. It’s genuinely important when you are trying to write the gazzillionth social media post about your art; the copy needs to be a smidge more sophisticated than “Thinking about carpets? Come on down to Gary’s Carpet Hut!”

This isn’t the same as the voice of the art mind you. That’s something different.

The voice of the seller it isn’t necessarily the voice of the creator. Conflating these two is one of the first pitfalls of marketing for the arts. You don’t need to compress everything that The Art (capital T, capital A) does and present it to the audience in a snappy sound bite. If I was trying to make you buy… shit, I dunno… socks… I wouldn’t attempt marketing that makes you feel warm and comfy. My marketing should ultimately convince you that this product is your avenue to feeling warm and comfy. For the low, low price of nine-ninety-five you too can feel all the comfort that you’ve been missing out on! Comfort that others are already enjoying! Look at the attractive people in socks loving their lives! That could be you!

This is marketing. 

This is advertising. 

At times it makes me sick to my stomach, but this is the way the world works (dismantling the systems that lead us here is a post for another time). For me the adage always rings true: “If you don’t feel at least a little gross about your marketing then you aren’t working hard enough.”

Sadly, it is no different when selling art. 

Sure, we have lofty ideals and the veneer of high minded culture. But the poster for Hamlet shouldn’t try to make you feel the crushing weight of hereditary obligation, of being so torn up that you wish you could just cease to exist, that your too-solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew to be absorbed into the cold, quite, peace of the earth. No. The poster is meant to make you think, “that looks like a ripper of a show, I wonder if they will have sword fights!?”.

The sale of The Art and the sale of a ticket to experience The Art are intertwined but they are not the same things. If the poster gave you the same feelings as the show then why the fuck would you bother paying to see it? You’ve just felt the feels for free. 

While I sat there with this young artist we turned our conversation to queerness. Inevitable really since we are both fruity as fuck. They were of the opinion that while their art certainly had queer themes they didn’t want to be known as a queer artist, they just wanted to be known as an artist. 

It’s laudable. It’s noble. It’s reasonable.

It’s likely never going to happen.

That isn’t how art works anymore. And yes, we can skip to the end and say that the culprit is capitalism. Well, technically, late capitalism. This globalised, post-industrial economy, where everything – not just material resources and products but also immaterial dimensions, such as the arts – has become commodified and consumable.

That’s what we make now. Art to meet funding KPI’s. Art that can be promoted for profit, not art made for the sole purpose of speaking to your very soul (though it is a bonus if it can do that, but let’s be clear that it is far from a requirement). We are preaching to the converted or the choir or whatever that old saying is about telling the congregation what they want to hear. Or, at least, we package up the indictment of the congregation in such a way that they don’t feel like it’s directed at them personally so they can pat themselves on the back that they were enlightened enough to attend and that is enough effort in itself.

I wish my audiences were people who hated me. 

I wish that the only people who read my words were the most die-hard, anti-trans shitheads imaginable. I wish that the people packed into the venue for my theatrical work sat in seething silence as I strutted and fretted my time on the boards. Sat there while I chiselled away at their resentment and confusion about “what I am”. Sat there while I slowly convinced them that I’m not a monster, not actually an abomination and even help them to accept that any features I possess which they may find monstrous are in fact nothing to fear and might even be something to celebrate. 

But that is not the case.

The majority of people who experience my work are those who are already on board or at the least on the fence. Everyone engaging in my work has at the very least already been convinced to try and understand what all this “gender nonsense” is about.

Just like that young artist, I see now that notable transgender film stars are publicly declaring their wish to not be cast as transgender characters. It’s a wonderful sentiment. And like them and my emerging-odd-duck-artist, I wish I could just be known for the thing I make and not for the minority identity that sits behind and informs it. Like those trans starlets, I long for the day that I might be cast to play a cis-woman. I don’t know how many roles there are for women with a face like mine, a voice like mine, a body like mine. But hey, let me know if you hear anything about someone needing a tall, middle-aged, burly-looking, muscular women who is over 40% covered in tattoos and can pick a man up and yeet him out a window. I would be the perfect casting as long as you can, you know, overlook that I have a penis. 

Maybe for these transfemme stars the world is different than it is for someone like me. They transitioned in their youth. They are thin, beautiful and the picture of Hollywood femininity. So, if they can’t even get cast as a cis-woman what hope do I have?

No matter what, I will always be known for being trans.

I can’t escape it. The Art I create will always be tied to it. Tied to when I first started to feel different from everyone else. Tied to when I first understood these feelings as being what they are. Tied to how many days since I started taking the pills. 1,053 days and counting by the way. Not a single one of them gone by where I didn’t consider it, where it wasn’t present in my mind. It’d be wonderful to just be and not think about it. But it isn’t possible. 

And as such my audiences won’t be rabid haters, but other people just like me, seeing versions of themselves on the stage. Or the families and loved ones of people like me, seeking understanding. As much as I wish to reach further, it genuinely is enough. It would be an honour to sway minds, to stand before “the enemy” and feel the calcified armour around their hearts crack and crumble. But if all I ever am is representation for someone who feels alone and unseen in the world, then this really is enough.

To be only known for my transness, would in fact, be a privilege. 

When I clack away at the keyboard, or when I step out into the footlights, there are two parts of my mind at work: The Marketing Operative part of my brain is always challenging me to consider who this is for, pushing me to consider the broad swathe of people who will (hopefully pay to) witness The Art. The other part of me, The Artist part is focused on one specific person, just one audience member. A small boy, his hair always a jumbled mess hanging down over his soft blue eyes. He’s quiet, he’s shy, and he’s skilled at hiding in plain sight. He’s always sitting out there somewhere, in the darkness watching me, this shadow still stuck in a life where he is not quite yet aware of who he really is.

And all I can think about is my hope that he would be proud of the thing that people have come to know him as.

–S