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A gallery in Berlin asked if they could document my studio as it is right now. Dust, the collapsed table, the half-finished thing from 2019 I keep meaning to throw out. I said yes so theyd stop asking, and now they want to show it as an installation. Somebody else's trash is art, your own is a mess. I worked decades to get out of rooms like this and now they want to put the room in a room. I should be flattered, probably. Instead I am thinking about which corner to clean and hating myself for thinking it.

I got a commission last year for a new piece at a decent European museum. 12k seemed like real money when I signed. Then I priced the steel, the timber, the electronics for the sound element, the rented van to haul it all, the two assistants I had to pay properly because I'm not an exploitative prick. By the time the thing was built and installed I'd spent about seven and a half. The rest covered four months of my life. I ate it because the work was good and I wanted it to exist and I'll probably do it again. The math never works if you count your own time. You have to not count it. That's the trick. You make art because you're compelled to and you finance it however you can and you pretend the hours don't exist. But sometimes late at night you do the math anyway and it's genuinely funny how bad it is. Like actually funny. I laughed out loud when I worked it out. Younger artists ask me how to price things. I tell them charge more than feels comfortable and then double it. Then I watch them not do that and I understand completely because I also don't do that.