More than Just Another Piece of the Puzzle

Cultural and Art Mediation as Part of Musicians’ Portfolio Careers and How it Affects their Social Situation: Quantitative-Empirical Findings from Austria

Abstract

This article offers an empirically based description and analysis of the social situation of musicians living and working in Austria whose activities include engagement in cultural and art mediation. The quantitative-empirical data confirms existing findings on the portfolio careers of musicians today: the vast majority of the musicians surveyed are en-gaged in a mix of activities (sometimes close to, sometimes distant from their artistic practice) in their everyday life as “artrepreneurs”, as a way to make their living in a chal-lenging, neoliberalised working environment. Not only the range of their professional activities along real-time, ideal-time and economic dimensions are addressed, but also forms of employment, educational background, average annual net income and stress levels in the music profession. These musicians are compared with another group of mu-sicians from the same data sample who were not active in cultural and art mediation at the time of the survey. In their interrelation, the results show how the handling of a pref-erably broad mix of activities and skills is rewarded in the musical field in economic terms, although the social situation nevertheless remains fundamentally difficult and precarious for many of the respondents. Finally, the extent to which practices of cultural and art mediation may contribute to the emergence of a new, socially and civically en-gaged type of musician of the future is discussed.