corporate welfare
“ecosystemic feedback loop”
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBx2Y5HhplI]
organistic or artistic
Is a performance an artistic event or an organization event? Both, but…and there is always a but…after the initial creation of the artistic event all that is left is the organizational event. Following this line of thought, could we then say that famous touring artists are not necessarily successful artists, but products of successful organizers?
The artistic feats of Cafe Müller, Glacial Decoy or Content with Content (to put myself in lofty company) happened but once, the initial birthing of them. But every other iteration of them is an organizational feat, not an artistic feat.
After taking a workshop here in Berlin about funding bodies and grant, and hearing about another workshop about international touring and funding, I began to wonder about organizing and creating. Creating something is definitely more fun than organizing something that is already. And as we all have a finite amount of time on this earth we can only do so much. Is it an either or situation? Do I have to pick one or the other? Or can I do both? It as of now has to be me doing both as no one is organizing for me. Haven’t sparked the interest of an agent or a funder to do that part for me. And I do not have the natural tendency to organize.
The creating of a piece has to come first, no? Not necessarily. One can apply to make a piece and then the funds to make it. But then should one wait to make a piece until the funds are there? I say no.
Often after I make a piece and perform it a few times, I lose interest in revisiting that idea or experience again. That road has been traveled and I do not want to travel down that path again. This lack of interest in repetition prevents me from creating situations(applying to festivals, etc.) to show my work multiple times. I would rather spend the time, money, energy investigating something new, making something new. At least when I make it I know that I will have some measure of success. By making something I do not necessarily mean a whole production with lights camera action and audience. But thinking and encorporealizing it for myself. Exploring those neural pathways.
Maybe then, moving to Marfa and building a studio will be a viable option for me.
Make, make, make. Let the organizers sort them out!
(or maybe this is all just rationalization for someone who can’t organize!)
Blame
Corporations, corporations, corporation…the root of all evil. Faceless disembodied entities that are ruining the world, the environment and now the political system in the United States by their ability to funnel unlimited amounts of cash into the coffers of willing politicians. The Supreme Court of the United States blocked a ban limiting how much corporations could spend on political campaigns.
It is all the fault of corporations. These mindless soulless beings that wreck havoc in the world, utterly uncontrollable.
But what a minute…don’t these corporations have presidents and CEOs and board members?!?
Aren’t those the people who are actually making the decisions, the bad decisions that we all hate?
And isn’t it possible to find out who these people are?
So why don’t we go after these people more? Instead of saying that corporations are ruining the political system, why not actually name the people who are making the decisions? Why not put a face to those actions?
Yes, that would be harder to do. It is much easier to say that the corporations are at fault as opposed to naming every Tom, Dick and Harriet who sits on the board of those harbingers of doom. It is much easier to blame(and here I will automatically lose this argument, some say, by invoking Hitler) Hitler than all the generals, colonels, captains, corporals who also decided to kill people.
Corporations…Hitler…it is much easier to demonize a single entity than all the actual individuals involved.
Is it any more effective?
National Debts
The population of Germany according to the CIA is 81,471,834 (July 2011 est.)
The national debt of Germany is € 1,895,561,620,931 according to nationaldebtclocks.com
The population of the United States according to the CIA is 313,232,044 (July 2011 est.)
The national debt of the United States is $ 15,091,192,666,470, also according to national debt clocks.com.
Dividing the debt by the population gives us a €23,266.47/German debt and a $48,178.96/American debt. Converting the Euros to dollars with an exchange rate of €1=$1.36, gives us $31,642.40.
This gives us a difference of $16,536.56, that each American owes MORE to whomever than each German owes.
What have you gotten for your $16,536.56?
Tour vs. Make
Hot off the mental press, coming at you live. As I ponder more and more of late about what to do in life, what path to follow or forge, all due to grad school and the birth of my first child, I think now about a binary of touring vs. making work. Is it even a binary? All these thoughts could be because I am just lazy and don’t want to do the work of getting my work out there. Writing grants, making packets, sending them out, schmoozing with presenters is a lot of work. Work that scares me. Maybe scares me is the wrong word.
I see other artists who tour and get presented and looking at their work, I don’t understand why they were presented, why the director of theater X gave them a 6 month residency. Must be in the documentation the artist presented, or maybe the kind of work s/he does is more easily marketable. Could be that my work is just not interesting. Don’t get bitter, don’t get bitter, don’t get bitter.
And grad school, context, context, context. Shit in on context smell, a different context helps make food. So maybe I need to rewrite all my performance blurbs so the context is sexier. And then write the grants, make the packets, and hound the presenters. But for whom am I making the work? Because I work in a time based medium that can be viewed as performative, does that mean the work is made for other people? How many painters make work for themselves, and have studios full of canvasses not meant for general consumption?
And now a child! What a wonderful bundle of joy and confusion. Her laughter, smiles and cries make everything, all my frustrations disappear. But then they come back. Provide, provide, provide…that is what a parent, a father is supposed to do. Hack away at performing, etc to make money to provide. But then touring could conflict with schooling. School is still a couple years off yet.
So, do I finish this schooling, get my MA then jump out of the artistic realm into the academic realm to get health insurance, income to provide? Just as much chance of getting a big grant. Both require applications and schmoozing.
Maybe this is all justification for laziness. Artistic high road and all that. Even now all these thoughts/emotions I don’t want to bother to craft into a polished blog post. But isn’t this more just for me as a place to vent?
No one reads this anyways…
waaah
waaah
waaah
Federal Oversight
I am not sure about the Republican argument against Obama’s socialist takeover/makeover of healthcare in the United States, something about how the Constitution doesn’t allow for the Federal Government to require people to have health insurance.
SIDE NOTE – Please check what the Constitution has to say about marijuana (nothing, yes?) and the internet (nothing).
And from what I know, the Federal Government has the right to oversee and regulate businesses that cross state lines. I don’t think there is a national health care commission. There is a person who oversees insurance in California. Maybe other states have such an office.
I can’t imagine that the health care in any state does not cross state lines in many ways. The doctors are educated in another state. The test tubes, pipettes and needles are probably made in China. All the diagnostic equipment – MRIs, Ultrasounds etcs – if not made in another state of the Union or Germany are probably made in China. The billing services that the health insurance companies use probably are involved in more than one company and one state. The patients who get sick are crossing state lines bringing illness home from other states. Food, a known vehicle of pathogens (spinach, eggs to name a couple of recent vectors) crosses many states lines.
With all of this interstate business involved in the business of health care, shouldn’t the Feds be involved to make sure it all runs smoothly? Maybe they already are, but if so, they sure are doing a crappy job.
Equal representation before law
States are having financial trouble in all areas. One such area is funding for public defenders. After reading this article about the trouble in Missouri, I started thinking about lawyers and equal representation before the law. Party A and Party B are in a legal dispute. Party A is very wealthy and can afford a top law firm and all the research teams, expert witnesses, and investigative teams that come along with it. Party B is poor and not so well off, think small family farm fighting a developer. I am sure John Grisham has written a book about this.
Due to the financial divide, Party A is essentially getting better representation to the law than Party B. Unfair, no?
What I propose is that both parties put the amount of money they were going to spend on legal fees into a pot and then that amount is divided in half. Each party would then have, in theory, equal representation before the law.
Taxes for Veterans
Some people argue that American foreign policy is largely governed by the United States insatiable thirst for oil. Please note we invaded Iraq to save them from Saddam, but haven’t given as much of a concerted effort in other troubled locations – Rwanda, Somalia – to name a couple. And in our foreign policy efforts, we send many troops into harm’s way. Then veterans come back home physically and mentally harmed.
What I propose is a 1¢/gallon tax increase on gasoline. The more gas you buy/use the more you pay. And these extra funds go to help veterans. I would like to see the right try to talk down the idea of increased aid for veterans.