Morgan v P Pecelli and Andy Horwitz (aka "I'd rather watch the fat kid dance" and "Culturebot") have a couple posts up in response to this year's TCG conference.
http://culturebot.org
http://idratherwatchthefatkiddance.blogspot.com/
I was there for several hours, accepting an award given to ERS for innovation in the field.
Taken together, Morgan and Andy's posts, plus my quick window on the conference can perhaps offer a good measure of several field-wide issues:
1. No one knows quite what to do. Many of the ideas trotted out at the conference seemed dated, but not all of them. And there was so much going on that there's no one person who could really take a complete pulse. It's too easy to be cynical, though. And it's clear we're not there yet.
2. Everyone making work is scared of losing what is most important - funding, audience, risk, buildings, staff, etc. This could be for financial reasons, reasons of larger culture irrelevancy, or other.
3. There is still a huge gap between the way those of us making work outside the confines of the regional or off-Broadway and Broadway worlds think of the process and function of the art form, from the way those inside that particular, teeny tiny beltway think about it.
4. But the parties are beginning to recognize the need to come closer together.
It was a real honor for ERS to get an award. Part of our increased visibility comes from the fact that we've been able to work both within and without more mainstream institutions. We're becoming equally at home at NYTW as we are at PS122 or the Collapsable Hole.
My hope is that the company's success navigating these several worlds can be an example that other large theaters can follow when working with ensembles and vice-versa. As I said at the awards ceremony, somewhere in every city there are a bunch of ambitious, scrappy dorks who could use a hand. If you have a theater space and it is part of a more mainstream establishment in that town, offering those dorky scrappy kids some space, a little bit of dough, some outreach, will make both your lives richer. You'll have new audiences and new ideas about the form; they'll have a chance to fall down a little bit without breaking the bank, pick themselves up again, and make the work sing its own song.
6/07/2009
5/24/2009
Text from the Smackdown
Here is what I said in my 'prepared' statement at The Field's Smackdown event last week, as a couple people have asked to see it.
**
"It used to be that the arts were, or seemed to be, an exceptional and broken economy. So many people were making so much money out there while we were taking a loss. It must have just been our fault. But now a lot of systems are in disrepair – education, banking, and health care for instance. So what has changed, and what do we do?
Here are two small things: 1. we address the scarcity model; and we submit the work’s real cost and value.
A few months ago I was at an ART-NY fundraising roundtable. When the subject of funding cuts came up, people started saying, “we gotta learn how to do more with less.” I think that every year since 1993, whether the economy was booming, busting or staying just the same, I have heard someone – an artist, development person, funder, presenter – say that. I can almost hear a kind of relief in it, like crisis mode can keep us from having to risk real failure or real transcendance. So I want to advocate doing less with more. Make fewer, more brilliant shows, don’t put them up until they’re ready, and ask for enough to get them done right.
For presenters and funders, this can be tough. You’ve got all these fabulous artists who want your help. You’ve got a staff who needs a salary. You’ve got grantors or legislators or boards asking you to justify everything in terms of artistic excellence, community engagement, access, education, and diversity, all for $3,200 a year. And no one raises an eyebrow when you say you’re “commissionng” a piece for $5,000 that really costs 70 grand. But until we address this then maybe the system’s functioning just as it should: people are making a lot of art, labor costs are incredibly low-- this is what the market has borne.
So, do we want to try and change the game? And if so, how?
For starters we could make budgets that reflect real cost of the work, including the amount we are all subsidizing the field via dayjobs, credit cards trust funds or partners.
I think that freeing up the truth by doing the numbers right ultimately allows us to advocate in a new way. We can stop relying too heavily on a skewed notion of economic impact that arises out of how much we agree to do for how little.
And then we can start being citizens with allies in other fields that are also asked to do more with less, who are also driven by a mission. Teachers, death row lawyers, journalists, rural doctors, etc.
And then we can start addressing creativity as a core human trait, and the articulated imagination as one of the few things that separates us from other species. "
**
"It used to be that the arts were, or seemed to be, an exceptional and broken economy. So many people were making so much money out there while we were taking a loss. It must have just been our fault. But now a lot of systems are in disrepair – education, banking, and health care for instance. So what has changed, and what do we do?
Here are two small things: 1. we address the scarcity model; and we submit the work’s real cost and value.
A few months ago I was at an ART-NY fundraising roundtable. When the subject of funding cuts came up, people started saying, “we gotta learn how to do more with less.” I think that every year since 1993, whether the economy was booming, busting or staying just the same, I have heard someone – an artist, development person, funder, presenter – say that. I can almost hear a kind of relief in it, like crisis mode can keep us from having to risk real failure or real transcendance. So I want to advocate doing less with more. Make fewer, more brilliant shows, don’t put them up until they’re ready, and ask for enough to get them done right.
For presenters and funders, this can be tough. You’ve got all these fabulous artists who want your help. You’ve got a staff who needs a salary. You’ve got grantors or legislators or boards asking you to justify everything in terms of artistic excellence, community engagement, access, education, and diversity, all for $3,200 a year. And no one raises an eyebrow when you say you’re “commissionng” a piece for $5,000 that really costs 70 grand. But until we address this then maybe the system’s functioning just as it should: people are making a lot of art, labor costs are incredibly low-- this is what the market has borne.
So, do we want to try and change the game? And if so, how?
For starters we could make budgets that reflect real cost of the work, including the amount we are all subsidizing the field via dayjobs, credit cards trust funds or partners.
I think that freeing up the truth by doing the numbers right ultimately allows us to advocate in a new way. We can stop relying too heavily on a skewed notion of economic impact that arises out of how much we agree to do for how little.
And then we can start being citizens with allies in other fields that are also asked to do more with less, who are also driven by a mission. Teachers, death row lawyers, journalists, rural doctors, etc.
And then we can start addressing creativity as a core human trait, and the articulated imagination as one of the few things that separates us from other species. "
5/14/2009
New Economy "Smackdown" is Smackdone
I was on a panel that was part of The Field's New Economy Smackdown last night. It was fun and smart and too long, but there's a lot to say. An encouraging thing I'm seeing in discussions like this is that they are including many stakeholders at once - from artists to presenters to funders to journalists, and this is really important, so that none of us is working in a vacuum.
Read about it here.
I think one could go to a panel like this ("what is the new economy? what is the new model? what is broken? what can we do?") in the arts about every day this month. I think it's a good thing. The system for funding and presenting the arts has been busted for a long time so it's great we're all getting out and trying to frame it, deal with it, take responsibility for it and so on.
I will say that I kind of lost my shit with a guy in the audience and I wish I hadn't. Having worked in the arts a long time, I have increasingly lost patience with people who wait until the end of what in this case was a fairly constructive event, and then shoot it down for not being what that person thought the event should be (which in this case was not entirely clear).
At the same time, I let it get under my skin more than I should have, and sort of played into a dynamic that was also counter productive. I think we argued about whether we panelists were spiritually or politically engaged enough with the larger economic crisis, but I can't be entirely sure based on what was said.
I know also that as a radical artist I totally aspire to be middle class, because I think earning the bourgeois trappings by doing wacky unsettling cultural work is highly political, especially if you're from a more marginalized demographic.
Thought for the day: how helpful is it for any one person to tell a group of other people what we "should" or "must" do? Yes it's a rhetorical question. Kind of. I ask because I think I respond more to statements about what IS happening, and what are the consequences. "When we do this, this is the result. What does that mean going forward."
Read about it here.
I think one could go to a panel like this ("what is the new economy? what is the new model? what is broken? what can we do?") in the arts about every day this month. I think it's a good thing. The system for funding and presenting the arts has been busted for a long time so it's great we're all getting out and trying to frame it, deal with it, take responsibility for it and so on.
I will say that I kind of lost my shit with a guy in the audience and I wish I hadn't. Having worked in the arts a long time, I have increasingly lost patience with people who wait until the end of what in this case was a fairly constructive event, and then shoot it down for not being what that person thought the event should be (which in this case was not entirely clear).
At the same time, I let it get under my skin more than I should have, and sort of played into a dynamic that was also counter productive. I think we argued about whether we panelists were spiritually or politically engaged enough with the larger economic crisis, but I can't be entirely sure based on what was said.
I know also that as a radical artist I totally aspire to be middle class, because I think earning the bourgeois trappings by doing wacky unsettling cultural work is highly political, especially if you're from a more marginalized demographic.
Thought for the day: how helpful is it for any one person to tell a group of other people what we "should" or "must" do? Yes it's a rhetorical question. Kind of. I ask because I think I respond more to statements about what IS happening, and what are the consequences. "When we do this, this is the result. What does that mean going forward."
5/10/2009
Mother's Day Politiku
My friend Susanna Speier asked me to write some political haikus for mother's day, which have been posted on her Huffington Post blog.
Please enjoy, Mom.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susanna-speier/politiku-for-mothers-day_b_201060.html
Please enjoy, Mom.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susanna-speier/politiku-for-mothers-day_b_201060.html
4/11/2009
Interesting conversation about arts funding...
I couldn't sleep the other night so posted onto Claudia LaRocco's blog conversation about arts funding. To read what went down, go HERE
Hopefully more conversations like this are going to go on. Will keep you posted about that. Thanks to Claudia, and to Morgan Von Prelle Pecelli, who provided the sourdough starter of substance for the whole thing.
Hopefully more conversations like this are going to go on. Will keep you posted about that. Thanks to Claudia, and to Morgan Von Prelle Pecelli, who provided the sourdough starter of substance for the whole thing.
4/02/2009
Kansas City
I just spent a weekend teaching in Kansas City. I go a lot of places to do workshops, often for a day or a weekend at a time; I rarely feel like I know a city or an arts community. Even worse, I rarely feel that curious. As much as I don't approve of positing NYC as the center of American art, I do find myself really happy here.
But Kansas City makes me ache for a small, savvy, rocking, open place. The artists there are fantastic, rigorous, adventurous and intrepid. The houses are cheap and big. The food is great. The city supports the arts.
If you are there, and want to know what's happening - mostly it's visual art that predominates, though theater is making a play, too - go to http://www.charlottestreet.org/. David Hughes has his finger on the pulse.
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