Solu

Are clubs and bars attractive to VJs as performance spaces?

i play nowadays at festivals, museums, events and my work is defined more as live AV than VJ, so im not the best person to answer the questions.

Many creators who start as VJs in their 20s, end up moving their work in arty contexts by their 30s, mainly because they get paid better and their work gets more respect and attention, which seldom happens in club environments. Few VJs have enough name to draw people in to clubs, so “the DJ takes it all”, also partly because the clubs dont promote the VJs in the same way. I dont know any clubs that promote themselves by having the best visuals in town and this starts a vicious circle: VJs dont get paid well enough to keep motivated to create amazing things that would eventually change the scene in their favor. There is a certain injustice also present as in my experience, the VJs work much harder for their gig than the DJs, as editing video clips takes a lot of time, not to mention to create the material from a scratch and still the end result is that they dont get paid even the half of what the DJs get. (Jeff Mills: 20,000 eur/gig > VJ: 300 eur/gig )

Click here to read Solu’s thoughts on the Spanish VJ scene.

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