A presentation at the "ArtWorker's Coalition", after it was
opened up to all artists, where previously I was excluded from meetings at my
own loft,
which included Takis, Hans Haacke and Carl Andre.
Do we want to concern ourselves with the administration and organization necessary in establishing a strong power block for purposes of issuing ultimatums to institutions for private satisfactions? What is truly private and personal is usually generally applicable. The artist, nay even the non-artist knows that his destiny is his own right. The man of yesterday had only hopes for a good life. The man who now still hopes is putting his lifestyle in other’s hands. Making art is the artist’s responsibility; its care and exposure should be by command of its maker.
To free those energies that are otherwise diverted, the artist should be entitled to life’s basic necessities: food, shelter and clothing. We can get this money from the profits of dead artists. We should demand, from exorbitantly priced works sold by institutions, a cut for the living. Wealthy living artists, as well as wealthy non-artists should contribute to the income of their contemporaries; not by hiring them as lackeys, but by buying their art for their own collections or buying their art to give it away as gifts to institutions or their poorer relations. A trust fund should be started whereby wealthy artists can contribute money and or a work for sale. Stipends awarded on the basis of need.
Artists use their dead compatriots as heroes, to keep them company in their waiting. There is a great choice of dead heroes. I wish to keep the dead alive for the moments of waiting; and to delegate the interested living to spend time making lists of the dying. The artists needs a more viable, open, immediate situation; more opportunities to present, with dignity, the thing s/he is doing.
Functional Institutions are great warehouses. We should encourage them to store our works for us. But neither do we want a dumping ground. Facilities should be available to those who wish to store large works.
The institution can provide a computer system listing all dead and living artists, with coffee table top read-outs to eliminate art book clutter. Information is not art. To experience art one has to have time for an arrested moment. The non-artist, the non-maker of art, the art lover, is a radar scan, a shopper. Provide the information and a place for people to search, to hear, to touch, when they are in their in between times. Find places to put art where there were none. To see art when in the in between times, you need to put art in the in between places. Call these places museums.
2005 – Artist’s note: After writing and presenting this essay, I decided to use “s/he” and “s/him” instead of “he” and “him”.