Ann Klefstad
Posts:
48
From:
Duluth
Registered:
Feb 25, 2003
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Re: Feedback on Articles
Posted:
Apr 9, 2003 3:47 PM
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Lauren--
When I said "working on some features" I meant mostly commissioning other writers to work on articles. Though I do write as well, I try to avoid posting too many of my own pieces on mnartists, so as to increase the number and variety of voices on the site. I will be doing an interview on this topic, though, and I'd like to gather enough information to generate an editorial on the subject.
My writing process? I run across things, they make me think, and I write down what I think. Mostly. (I am also working, at the moment, on a big prose-poem/fiction thing, a sort of "Paris Spleen" for rural Minnesota. Woo hoo.)
For instance, the germ of this grants/sales idea is from my previous residence in Los Angeles as contrasted with my life here--art in LA is almost completely sales-supported; in Minnesota, things are more grants-oriented. Granted, the times are different, but I've been watching what's coming out of LA and it's not _that_ different from when I was there. Another seed for this idea is Dave Hickey's idea that art is made better by the strong desire of people for it--that is, if the primary mechanism of support for art is that people desire it enough to pay actual cash money for it, then the art and artists that survive are probably going to be pretty good; if they're not, no one will part with that cash money. Grants money, on the other hand, is there for whatever turns up--of course, the process is highly selective, not just any crap gets funded, but the mechanism of relation between money, desire, and art is different in a grants economy. There are other indexes of difference as well--grants-funded art tends to be by intention and selection what you might call pro-social--seen as good for people. Sales-funded art needs to address not needs but wants--it tends to be more involved with appetites, prettier or more beautiful, sexier, tastier, that sort of thing.
Different ideas are engaged by the two structures as well. If you've ever read a final report form and answered those questions, think about the contrast between those goals and the goals of a painting that you bought because you couldn't stand to live without it. They're different.
I do think both forms of funding are good; I think we could do with a more sales-driven artworld in MN.
Shit. Now I've gone and stepped on my own lines. Lauren, you are so naughty.
AK
Message was edited by: Ann Klefstad at Apr 9, 2003 3:52 PM
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