Ballads of Re-skilling: Composing Ballad for the Risk Class II

Ahead of its upcoming performance, I began rethinking Ballad for the Risk Class II [1]—its conditions of production, what the piece currently communicates, and the discussions it evokes for me. I decided, therefore, to say a few words about the key concepts behind the piece and the working conditions under which it was created.

As the pandemic unfolded, the demands of the market—and our dependence on it for survival— did not stop. Despite personal losses and institutional collapses, cultural workers had to adapt, often by acquiring new digital skills. It was a grim reminder that under capitalism, even mourning must be scheduled around productivity. Cultural workers collectively got better at video and audio production, started to use social media more strategically and actively, organized online concerts, and participated in virtual seminars and workshops. The content of their work and its relationship to technology was dramatically transformed. While many cultural workers could transform their skills, a substantial portion turned—temporarily or permanently—to other professions. Crucially, the capacity to adapt or resist re-skilling is unequally distributed, primarily conditioned by inherited class status, institutional support, and embedded networks of cultural capital.

With these in mind, I began to read extensively about precarious work, how governments and urban developers use art for capital accumulation, and how artists and other cultural workers aestheticize the gig economy. The Ballad for the Risk Class cycle was shaped as a reflection of this reading process.

By paraphrasing Ulrich Beck, Angela McRobbie defines the 'risk class' as an emerging portion of the middle class after the transformations in the work regime during the neo-liberalization in the 1980s. [2] According to her, this group of people associate themselves with the consuming habits of the traditional middle class; nevertheless, they do not live under the benefits attributed to the middle class: job security, social security, paid vacations, parental leave, etc.

I was increasingly drawn to the idea that the working conditions of the freelancing artist are considered by corporations as a prototype for the future of work: generalized precarity, flexible hours, the dismantling of salaried employment, and the erosion of social security systems. During the pandemic, it was not difficult to believe this, especially as the middle classes of imperial core economies and some of the semi-peripheral economies became heavily dependent on digitally mediated supply chains, precarity-driven delivery services, and subscription-based content platforms.

Looking back today, I realize I may have overestimated the cultural sector's role in reproducing capitalist relations. Far from being the main force driving the structure, the function of the cultural sector can be considered as a node within the broader ideological apparatus shaped by the operations of the labor market, institutional relations, and consumption patterns. We have largely inherited the emphasis on this 'importance' from the Frankfurt School's critique of the culture industry. As a member of a generation that grew up with that legacy, but increasingly skeptical of its claims, I can not help but think this overestimation is part of the ideological reproduction demands expected from cultural and intellectual producers—expectations driven not only by institutional values, but also by material conditions such as economic insecurity and the pressure to remain visible in competitive environments.

I composed Ballad for the Risk Class II in a time I was deeply involved with questions about whether the discourse of 're-skilling' was, in fact, aesthetic justification for the devaluation of labor. In this sense, the piece was a musical reaction to how intensive specialization is rendered redundant, inert, and eventually meaningless in the context of transformations in technology and labor regimes.

That said, such dynamics are not entirely new. Historically, technologies driven by profit motives have often displaced labor and undermined specialized skill sets. In that regard, the patterns we observe today are less a rupture than a continuation of capitalism's internal logic.

I would also like to point out that human beings are capable of developing multiple forms of expertise. It would be a serious mistake to position specialization and developing new skills against each other. My point, rather, is that the conditions under which new skills are acquired are shaped heavily—albeit not entirely—by market pressures. Additionally, transitioning from one area of specialization to another requires time—time that, in highly market-dependent sectors like the cultural industries, can often only be afforded by those with access to independent financial resources, such as inherited wealth. Without such support, individuals face significant obstacles in remaining competitive during periods of re-skilling.

While in many regions cultural workers were left almost entirely to market forces, some state-supported contexts offered alternative—but not unproblematic—models of adaptation. One notable case is the Germanophone Neue Musik scene.

In the German-speaking world, the cultural sector is more clearly divided between artistic and commercial branches. The artistic side operates within a form of 'state capitalism': although public funding partially insulates it from direct market pressures, private interests remain influential. Public support mechanisms for Neue Musik scene are often closely aligned with political agendas, shaping not only which projects are funded but also how 're-skilling' is framed—as a means of aligning artistic labor with evolving institutional and technological imperatives.

In this context, re-skilling functions less as a response to unregulated market pressures and more as a mechanism for aligning artistic labor with shifting institutional priorities. Artists are often encouraged to 'rediscover' their identities, develop new aesthetic paradigms, and integrate technological practices, thereby producing new forms of labor that can be valorized within funding structures. Institutional representatives, in turn, are tasked with legitimizing continued state support for Neue Musik by framing artistic innovation in terms of measurable social utility or contributions to cultural capital formation.

Thus, even in a less market-driven environment, re-skilling remains entangled with external imperatives, demonstrating that the pressures to adapt are never purely voluntary or autonomous.

Retrospectively, Ballad for the Risk Class II reads to me like a page from a diary chronicling my own re-skilling under contemporary labor conditions. Written for a small chamber group, the piece centers on the interaction between the live pianist and digitally produced and manipulated piano sounds. These two entities are positioned in such a way that the pianist—traditionally a figure of specialized expertise and high cultural capital—is reduced to the role of a button-pusher. However, the pianist here does not simply operate the machinery; rather, they embody a kind of split identity, one insists on the obtained professional expertise and the other one fetishizes the digitally attainable perfection of virtuosity by becoming a button pusher. This staged tension serves as a metaphor for the proletarianization of professionalized creative labor, raises questions about labor, automation, professionalization, and virtuosity.

A few last words: Technological innovation, whether market-driven or not, is irreversible, and workers —cultural workers among them— will always be required to adapt. This adaptation can take many diverse forms, depending on one’s class position and access to technology. A purely oppositional stance toward technological change —a form of neo-Ludditism— is ineffective. What is at stake is that when technological development is left to market forces alone, it proceeds without democratic participation. Working within the cultural sector, I find it necessary to emphasize that technological change is neither natural nor neutral; it is the outcome of political-economic structures and corporate strategies. Without mechanisms of democratic control over technological development, there can be no truly democratic future.

Notes:

[1] Click here for the recording of "Ballad for the Risk Class II."

[2]McRobbie, A. (2016b). Be creative: Making a Living in the New Culture Industries. Polity.