Viva!

Last week I attended a panel discussion at MIT. It involved 3 artists discussing their work as it pertains to "Parody, Politics and Perfomativity", which, coincidentally was the name of the panel! For the most part the panel involved the artists perseverating about their work and how it does or does not fit into the artistic community. I was really put off by several of them, namely Tino Seghal. He made some shitty comment about how Boston was the kind of place that everyone was trying to get away from and I kind of wanted to punt his face. Also he did that shitty thing where he refused to answer questions by throwing the same question out to someone else. Or he'd make a joke, which were never that funny. But in reality I think I'm just stung about the snarky Boston comment so he could have cured world hunger up there and I would have pouted and stuck my bottom lip out. Aside from the inflated artist egoes there were two major themes that struck me as important. I'm going to discuss the first one right now and the second on in a later post. It's kind of late and I get sleepy...

One of the panelists was Cuban performance and interdisciplinary artist Tania Bruguera. Her work is mostly public and throws into question the viewer's role in the artistic process. She said that she wants to stop thinking about the art viewer as an "audience" but rather as a "citizen". She seemed pretty defensive on this point which generally causes me to lose interest. If your points can't stand up to argument then you don't believe in them then nor do I. One thing she said did say struck me though, and I thought about it long after I walked out of the building. Having been raised in Cuba she grew up understanding art differently that our Capitalist economy does. She said that the Socialist model of the art market sees art as objects of "desire and antiquity" rather than "something to be acquired". Her work isn't something that can be bought. She can't ever make any money from the performances and situations she stages, so to her our frenzy over selling and acquiring art doesn't apply. In Cuba everything was state-sponsored so there was never the frenzy to sell art like there is in the states. The American art market has kind of gone bat shit. Maybe it always has been, but throw in an economic collapse for good measure and things are not pretty. Art has become all about making money and it's causing galleries and artists to compromise themselves in order to stay competitive. Instead of seeking out and displaying the artists that are creating genius and groundbreaking work, gallerists are forced to show what sells. Artists are pissed because it looks like the gallerists are selling out, and they sort of are because everybody has to make money somehow. Most artists can't get into galleries, no matter how good they are, so they're not making ends meet and even artists who DO get shows in galleries are fucked because the economy is shit and art isn't really selling like it used to. And don't even get me started on the art fairs. The image in this post is a visual reference from our good buddy W. Powhida. Basically everybody is sort of miserable and considering overthrowing the government and it's all because of money. Which makes right now a VERY interesting and exciting time, as long as you don't distribute torches in Brooklyn before a solution is reached.

The miserable state of the art world currently mirrors the state of my personal life market, which is why my ears perked up at this idea of a Socialist slant on the art market. I'm currently unemployed but interning/volunteering at a couple of places and trying to write. I'm probably the most fulfilled I've ever been in my life. I look forward to waking up every morning and I'm excited but also totally fucking terrified of the future. I never could have said any of these things when I was working just to get a paycheck. But wait, let me back up a little bit, I look forward to waking up every morning except, that is, on rent day. I just started writing so nobody is paying me for anything I write and the places I intern with love the shit out of me but can't afford to pay me because either they're getting likewise fucked by the shitty economy or the grant they applied for hasn't come through. So I have to get a waitressing job. Again. I have to pay my bills. I'm going to try and just keep it part time so that I can keep on fighting the good fight, but these money making jobs have a way of taking over your life. And then what happens when I finally grow up and want to move into a house where I don't share a bathroom with 4 other people? No fucking WAY I can afford that on a part-time waitressing salary. Should I go back to grad school and get and advanced degree so that I can get a better job? I can't really afford that either and it's not even close to a guarantee because that's everyone's plan. So when I'm laying in bed at night digging my fingernails into palms in a cold panic and whispering "WHAT THE FUCK AM I GOING TO DO" into the darkness, the idea of a government that subsidizes those of us in creative professions seems REAL nice.

Okay, sorry, just a personal tale that might make it acceptable for you to understand why I'm turning into a Commie. In Cube when the socio-economic shit hit the fan in the early 90s state-run organizations were closed and the export of art objects was legalized. This resulted in the inflation of prices of Cuban art thus making it prohibitively expensive for anyone in the domestic market. As the economy regulated the government made huge efforts to bolster the Cuban artistic economy by re-opening museums and creating a centralized gallery system called Genesis. In an effort to get domestic entities to become collectors of Cuba art the government urged that state run organizations allocate some portion of their budget to art acquisition. Moreover, the Ministry has provided better copyright protection for individual artists, and established benefit programs dealing with disability, maternity leave, pensions and death.
Artists may be entitled to retain 12 percent of their salary as a benefit, pegged
at 200 to 500 pesos taken per month, depending on the value of their sales. So not only is the government trying to help you to sell art, it's creating legislation that will make sure you don't go totally broke if you can't work for awhile. Also the centralized gallery system was meant to cut down on the competition between artists for wall space. The galleries get government money so they have some leeway regarding what artists they choose to show. In theory it could be a great way to foster serious creativity. Okay, obviously this all sounds GREAT in theory but it's not the magic bullet. The art world in Cuba is still pretty wonky, and its screwing up the identity of the artists there. Whereas before their art was very often politically charged they now seek to distance themselves from that paradigm. When you're getting benefits from the man it's in pretty poor taste to stage a performance piece about government oppression. (I'll talk a little more about this in my next post) The Genesis galleries were in theory a great idea, however oftentimes the art in these galleries was chosen based on government discretion. SLIPPERY. FUCKING. SLOPE. Essentially the artists of Cuba are sort of government employees but now there's the added complication of trying to stay competitive in the ever-present international art market. What is sold for $500 in NYC is snapped up for $50 in Havana, so what are the benefits of trying to sell in a local economy? It's clearly not perfect down there.

I'm not the first person that's proposed the ideas of picking things piecemeal from a Socialist economic model and applying them to our Capitalist one. Obviously there are all sorts of road blocks and barriers and pros and cons. And what is a couple of failed artists and writers to the vast meat grinder that is the American Dream? Some people are making it big, and they're successful. Many creative people are finding a way to make ends meet without having to get a shitty desk job that pays the bills. I seriously hope I can hold it together to be one of them and I hope we don't lose more talented artists than myself to an economy which emphasizes wealth and prestige over facilitation those who seek to enhance the daily life of the people around them by creating beautiful or thought provoking art. (Oh my God that was so passive aggressive. Whatever. I'm tired...ZZZZZZZ)