Art Here and Now » Society

Kurt Vonnegut’s Letters Home After Release from Nazi Prison

Trout Monfalco — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 17:07:01 +0000

Kurt Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse Five as his own science fiction take on his experiences as a prisoner of war in World War II. Letters of Note prints his letters home after being released from his German camp, Schlachthof Fünf – Slaughterhouse Five.

In December of 1944, whilst behind enemy lines during the Rhineland Campaign, Private Kurt Vonnegut was captured by Wehrmacht troops and subsequently became a prisoner of war. A month later, Vonnegut and his fellow POWs reached a Dresden work camp where they were imprisoned in an underground slaughterhouse known by German soldiers as Schlachthof Fünf (Slaughterhouse Five). The next month – February – the subterranean nature of the prison saved their lives during the highly controversial and devastating bombing of Dresden, the aftermath of which Vonnegut and the remaining survivors helped to clear up.

Now interviews Kurt Vonnegut about his experience in World War II. “People always fail to recognize when they are happy.”

HowardFair goes to Germany and visits the site of Slaughterhouse Five.

I had no idea what Vonnegut had gone through. The letters are amazing and touching.

Read scans of Kurt Vonnegut’s original letters at Letters of Note.

Get the books of Kurt Vonnegut.

Medici Bank Minister Pleads “No More Art, Please” in Newly Discovered Letters

“Please Don’t Touch the (Touchable) Art.”

Trout Monfalco — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 16:00:57 +0000

I’ve had friends who collected Star Wars toys and kept them in the original packaging to protect their value. This certainly protects the monetary value, but doesn’t it deprive you of getting everything out of that toy it was created for? If you want to spark your imagination, have a fun afternoon, and play with your friends, you need to rip open that package and start shooting storm troopers and levitating x-wings. It’s almost impossible to experience all the joy, fun, creativity and bonding with friends those toy-makers intended if you leave the toys in their package.

For much of the art in the world, you can look at it or listen to it and get everything the artist intended. It doesn’t matter if most paintings are behind glass, you can still see it just fine and get the full effect. Like a baseball card collector who keeps his cards in plastic sleeves, you can still see the cards just fine and enjoy them to their full effect. Their monetary value is still protected too.

But more and more contemporary art is created by artists who intend you to play with it. The full meaning and experience of the work requires you to interact, contributing your ideas and sometimes even physically building what the work becomes. This work needs to be touched for it to have any significant form, emotion and meaning.

Most museums and galleries are the stewards of the art in their collections. All objects are treated as historic artifacts, and must be maintained, restored, protected and studied. Museums must also protect all the money they’ve invested in building and maintaining the collection. Insurers, donors and the community, also understandably want to protect their own investments. Insurance rates may go up if art isn’t thoroughly protected from accidents, wear and theft. Many museums and galleries sometimes borrow work from other organizations. Obviously they want to return any work leant to them in the same condition it arrived, and want the same for their own work that’s been let out into the world.

Unfortunately, for that growing collection of contemporary artwork that gets its primary meaning, emotion and significance from interacting with it, keeping it locked behind glass isn’t good enough. Most museums and galleries have not caught up to this idea, even though this type of work has existed for almost a hundred years. All objects, regardless of the artist’s intent, are treated the same.

I first noticed this when I attended a Yoko Ono retrospective in the ’90s. In most of her work, Yoko gives direct instructions to be completed, sometimes completely in the reader’s imagination, other times interacting with objects she’s made. In this exhibition, though, there were guards and watchers in each room who would stop anyone from touching anything, even when Yoko’s instructions told you to. One example is Play It By Trust, a long table with 10 completely white chessboards. In Montreal, 2009, it happened as it should:

Yoko Ono’s idea of license, the setting up of a situation where others could complete a work of art instead of the artist, was a radical departure from the existing concept of the role of the artist. – Jon Hendricks

Yoko Ono’s work continues to cause interaction problems for museums. In August of this year, the Seattle Art Museum fired a security guard who interacted with Painting to Hammer a Nail In, a piece which asks you to hammer a nail into the painting. On the wall next to the painting was this text placed by the museum, along with a box of nails:

Museum visitors are invited to pound a nail into this painting. Like so
much of the work in this exhibition, while the idea might at first seem a
destructive, physically aggressive act against the accepted traditions of
painting and museums in general, in the end the concept opens up new
potentials for painting, and for bringing others besides the artist into
the creative act.

Yoko Ono herself poetically states her intentions.

What I’m trying to do is make something happen by throwing a pebble into the water and creating ripples…I don’t want to control the ripples. – Yoko Ono

In 1957, Paris, a group of “reactionary nihilist intellectuals” stormed a Dada exhibition and grabbed Man Ray’s piece titled Object to Destroy. They threw it on the ground and shot it with a pistol before police arrived and arrested them for doing just as the title commanded. Time Magazine wrote about the incident at the time in The Theater: Battle of the Nihilists.

How do we know what’s allowed and what isn’t? Should we do what the artist tells us or follow the rules of a museum? Who gets to decide? A simple, direct solution is presented by The Onion in Struggling Museum Now Allowing Patrons To Touch Paintings:

“Though it contains more than two million pieces and represents a profound legacy of artistic achievement, most people remain completely indifferent to our museum,” Met director Thomas P. Campbell said. “So we decided to try something a little different and give visitors a chance to experience our timeless works of art up close and personal.”
“You can’t grasp the brilliance of a great painting just by looking at it,” said Phil Brehm, 32, who acknowledged that he hadn’t set foot inside a museum since a mandatory field trip in high school. “To truly appreciate fine art, you need to be able to run your fingers over its surface and explore its range of textures.”
“Or just rub your face all over it, like I do,” Brehm added.

Of course, In the real world, I hope for a middle ground. Museums need to determine which pieces derive a large part of their meaning and significance from interaction. For these pieces, the museum’s primary purpose should no longer be to simply protect their objects. They must protect the full artistic experience, so that people can feel for themselves the art’s purpose and meaning.

One museum that gets this is the Tate Modern. I visited several years ago and found the five-story swirly-slide by artist Carsten Höller. Laughter echoed around the large room as people slid down the tubes.

In 1971, the Tate exhibited a very interactive artwork, Bodyspacemotionthings, by artist Robert Morris. After only four days, and many splinters and bruises, the artwork was broken by all the interaction and then closed. Last May, a new version of the work was exhibited, and this is what it looked like:

Even knowing the potential for destruction, possibly higher insurance rates and injured patrons, Tate did it anyway.

So what’s the answer? And why should we care?

I forgot to mention that I had lots of Star Wars toys when I was growing up. I played with them all the time. They ended up with broken arms, unrecognizable dog-chewed heads, peeling paint and caked-in mud. Every dent and scrape added more to their made-up history in my imagination, making them even more fun and interesting. Today, I no longer have them. If I did, I certainly couldn’t sell them for any money. No one would want them.

I don’t want irreplaceable, important parts of our history destroyed. But in the museum’s Star Wars collector zeal, preserving every piece of art behind plastic and glass, we lose the art’s spirit, we lose it’s importance, the very reason it’s worth collecting to begin with. And the people visiting this work are disconnected from it. They don’t get it, shrug and move on. This is the very work that has the most potential to deeply connect with people in our modern world.

I think there must be a middle way.
Maybe museums can have artists build two copies of each work. One to protect for value and history, the other to take out of the box, to get dirty and broken. That’s what the most passionate toy collectors do.

Time Magazine, The Theater: Battle of the Nihilists, April 1957
Yoko Ono’s Official Site
More about Man Ray
What is Conceptual Art?
The Seattle Art Museum
The Stranger Slog, Dear Yoko: This is an Intervention
Tate Modern, Bodyspacemotionthings
BBC, What Closed Tate’s 1971 Art Show?
Artists Robert Morris and Carsten Höller

Buy stuff:

Art, Artists, & Climate Change, Resources and Inspiration – Blog Action Day 2009

Trout Monfalco — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:30:44 +0000

This is a post for Blog Action Day 2009: Climate Change.

A few years ago, I wrote a post for Blog Action Day presenting ideas for creating art in more environmentally friendly ways – Making Art Without Unmaking the Environment. Art supplies and other byproducts of our work is notoriously toxic. Just like businesses and construction are changing to be more green, artists must update their ways of working as well, to minimize their long term affects on our planet.

But artists are more than businesses manufacturing a product. We are cultural messengers. We are here to speak about and reflect things that are important to us and our cultures. One common message we have been signaling, regardless of our country or medium, is that we must pay more attention and care to our planet. The Earth’s climate is changing, and we must take action to stop or reverse it. According to the United Nations, “There is alarming evidence that important tipping points, leading to irreversible changes in major ecosystems and the planetary climate system, may already have been reached or passed.” The Earth is the only home we have, along with the millions of other species who share it with us.

If you disagree with the idea that the climate is changing, or that humans are causing it, I would only ask you to consider the odds and the consequences. Many scientists believe this is happening and it is caused by human action. But what if you’re right, and it was only a 50/50 chance we were responsible. Do you think humanity’s fate, and the fate of many other species, should be decided by the toss of a coin?

So what are artists doing to make a difference? Here are some stories about artists affecting our collective approach to climate change through their work. There are many great stories of well known musicians and filmmakers putting together concerts, films and other events to make a big difference. But I wanted to shine a light on people you might not have heard of.

Portrait of an artist as a climate activist from Grist magazine. Senator Barbara Boxer held up a photograph by Subhankar Banerjee to the full floor of the Senate, to prove the Alaska refuge was not a “flat white nothingness.”
Early artists key to Yellowstone Park’s preservation, helenair.com. The paintings of Thomas Moran and photographs of Henry Jackson were critical to the U.S. Congress creation of Yellowstone, the first national park.
In 2005, Grist pleaded What the warming world needs now is art, sweet art and four years later, followed it up with Climate Art is Hot.
SEED Magazine says The Arts Community is Responding to Climate Change, and Changing the Conversation in the Process.
Green Theater Initiative talks about Addressing Climate Change One Theatre Artist at a Time.
Here is an entire episode of the PBS series Art:21 devoted to Ecology and art.
Climate Change Education has a great Media and Arts section, including great lists of artwork and artists broken down by discipline: painting, sculpture, video and new media, and more.

Now, how can you make a difference? Here are pointers to more information about grants and funding, exhibitions, shows and more. If you know of other resources, or other stories about artists making great work, post a comment below and I’ll continue to update this post.

Climate Change Art Resources

Green Museum informs, inspires and connects people through environmental art and encourages the creation of new work that serves communities and ecosystems.
Ars Natura, nature in art, art in nature.
Strange Weather, a resource hub about climate change for artists, writers and activists.
Landscape and Arts Network brings together landscape architects, engineers, architects, artists, educationalists and ecologists who feel passionate about improving and sustaining the quality of our urban and natural environment.
Free Soil, an international hybrid collaboration of artists, activists, researchers and gardeners who take a participatory role in the transformation of our environment.
Ear to the Earth heightens environmental awareness through sound, inspires engagement in environmental issues, and sustains engagement through ongoing activities. The website is a forum for composers, sound artists, and everyone interested in sound to listen and participate.
RANE – Research in Art Nature and Environment actively seeks creative methods through which art can impact on our current environmental predicament. Using artistic practice the group aims to offer interpretations and models of thinking about the natural world that help to promote a sustainable future.
Eco Arts Online brings together science, environmental, arts, indigenous, and other organizations to offer you a wide variety of events – performances, exhibits, talks, tours, films, fairs, and more.
The Ashden Directory, bringing together environmentalism and the performing arts.

Climate Change Art Exhibitions, shows, festivals

Participate or Die, Wooloo.org. Wooloo.org is organizing the people of Copenhagen to open their homes to thousands of environmental artists during the United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference in Denmark this December. By asking artists to develop happenings and reflections for a new life – and then request that thousands of participants implement them – Wooloo.org aims beyond the traditional art exhibition to become an active organizer of experiments in civic engagement and social empowerment.
Lake, a journal which publishes contemporary art that engages with ecological issues.
ecoartspace, promotes a diverse range of artworks that are participatory, collaborative, interdisciplinary and uniquely educational. “Our philosophy embodies a broader concept of art in its relationship to the world and seeks to connect human beings aesthetically with the awareness of larger ecological systems.”

Climate Change Opportunities for Artists
Calls for Artists, Grants, Residencies, Commissions and more

Green Museum, Calls for Artists
Artists Project Earth Funding
Artist as Citizen, connecting art students with donors to help them create projects on social issues.

Get the work of Thomas Moran, Henry Jackson and Subhankar Banerjee.

Amanda Palmer is Not Afraid to Take Your Money

Trout Monfalco — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 02:45:14 +0000

Most people have no idea what it takes to make good art, whether it’s music, film, painting or anything else. They don’t know how much training and study has gone into building the artist’s skills, and how much practice of that skill it took to allow them to make something, especially if it’s great. A lot of people take it for granted.

Most artists have other jobs that sustains their artistic habit. But time is a finite resource. The more time you spend at another job, the less time you have for practicing, studying, marketing and, most importantly, Making your work. The less time you have to make work, the less income you could possibly make from it. The less you make from it, the more likely you’ll continue to work in another job, keeping you further from practicing, studying and making. Over the course of 10 years, working another job that keeps you from practicing your art will keep you from becoming great at it. (This doesn’t even take into account when you reach a time in your life where you might want to have kids.)

This is a vicious cycle, a catch-22.
This is why I believe many successful artists got in most of their 10,000 hours of training before they left home and had to start paying rent.

This misunderstanding about the time and skills required to make art makes the audience less likely to pay for it. (So does how relevant they think it is to their own lives, but that’s a whole other story.)

As new technology has taken hold, many of the middle-men who used to be the ones asking for the audience’s money (publishers, record labels, magazines, promoters, distributors, stores, studios) are disappearing. The artist is the one who’s now asking for money to live from, and some of the audience isn’t used to it, and doesn’t like it. It doesn’t help that as distribution becomes cheaper and cheaper, internet culture at large wants everything for free.

Amanda Palmer, artist best known as the lead of The Dresden Dolls, says:

artists need to make money to eat and to continue to make art.
artists used to rely on middlemen to collect their money on their behalf, thereby rendering themselves innocent of cash-handling in the public eye.
artists will now be coming straight to you (yes YOU, you who want their music, their films, their books) for their paychecks…
dead serious: this is the way shit is going to work from now on and it will work best if we all embrace it and don’t fight it…
it’s also not a matter of whether an artist is starving or cruising on a yacht.
i would hate to see my fans turn on me once i actually have money in the bank with a “well, i would support you if you were starving, but now that you’re eating, no way.”
fuck that…
feel ok about giving your money directly to paul mccartney. he may be rich, but he still rocks. show you care.
feel ok about giving it to fucking lady gaga if you’ve been guiltily downloading her dance tracks for free.
rejoice in the fact that you are directly responsible for several threads in her new spandex spacesuit.
it shouldn’t matter.
it’s about empowerment and it’s about SIMPLICITY: fan loves art, artist needs money, fan gives artist money, artist says thank you.

She is experimenting with ways to make a living, from paid live video to auctioning her artwork. What are other new ways artists are making a living from their work?
Do you feel ok helping to pay their rent?

Read the entire post from Amanda Palmer – Why I Am Not Afraid To Take Your Money

Get the work of Amanda Palmer.

Everybody’s Gotta Live, from Who Killed Amanda Palmer

Thank you Richard Florida for giving The Bohemians so much power. Now please tell us – when will we ever benefit from it?

Medici Bank Minister Pleads “No More Art, Please” in Newly Discovered Letters

Trout Monfalco — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:30:53 +0000

In these recently uncovered fake letters, imagined to have come from the archives of the fake University of Italy School of the Arts at Florence (UISAF), the Minister of Medici Bank, Francesco Sassetti, pleads with the head of the Medici Family and defacto ruler of the Florentine Republic, Lorenzo de’ Medici, to stop spending the bank’s and family’s holdings on the arts.
Available exclusively on Art Here and Now.

From: Francesco Sassetti, Minister – Medici Bank
To: Lorenzo de’ Medici, The Magnificent

Dear Lorenzo,
Though your family has a long history of supporting artists, because of the recent financial and political difficulties, I must request that you consider abandoning this legacy of extravagance.
As I have been balancing this year’s expenditures, I can’t help but notice the exorbitant amounts it requires to not only pay for artworks, but to also house and feed these artists. Michelangelo Buonarroti has been living in your household for five years, in excess of $90,000 per year [currency adjusted to equivelant U.S. Dollars -ed.]. Surely he could rent his own apartment, and you could simply purchase any artwork from him you liked once completed? Must we be responsible for an artist’s entire livelihood and every material need?

We must protect the assets of The Bank and the Medici trust, for the bank’s members and the family, both current and future. These creative works and artist supports are a drain on these financial resources, deprive these members from larger profits, and serve no purpose except the pursuit of notoriety.

I plead with you. We must stop this reckless spending. The livelihoods of bank stakeholders and future Medicis depend on it.

Sincerely,
Francesco Sassetti, Minister – Medici Bank

Dear Francesco,
Your bold pleading is certainly brave. Perhaps you have a death wish.
Ah, ha, just a joke!
You have a long history with me, and my father before me. Only from someone so dedicated to our cause would these words be tolerated. Yet I am sure you are not the first to think them.

Even if I accepted your argument that art was wasteful, you act as though we aren’t losing money in more ridiculous, costly ways. May I ask, how many horses do you own? How many rooms are in your house? How many banquets have you held this year? How many guests have you fed? I’m sure you like to be questioned about your expenses as much as anyone. I mention this purely for example, not from any plan to deprive you of your lifestyle.

In contrast to The Bank’s and Family’s complete holdings, housing a few artists and funding their work is a handful of pebbles freed from a mountain. We could indeed just buy completed works, but if so, then where would the artist live and work to make them? Michelangelo’s last work took a year to complete. The Dome took almost a lifetime. By what means should they live to make this work we would later buy? If they took to the trades to sustain themselves, then when would they have time to make this work?

I find your logic faulty.
-Lorenzo

From: Francesco Sassetti, Minister – Medici Bank
To: Lorenzo de’ Medici, The Magnificent

Dear Lorenzo,
It is my wish to eliminate all waste, regardless of size, so that we may all realize our maximum profits and potential. You must agree that over time, these types of expenditures throughout your history add up to far more than pebbles from a mountain.
You righteously question my horses, even though we have never once questioned The Giraffe? How much did the buildings, heating, feeding and men cost for that one? And to what end?

It is not my concern, and should not be yours, where, when and how these artists produce the work. Men must choose their paths. If they cannot succeed to secure a living from one trade, they must pursue another. If the quality of their work cannot attract enough buyers to support more in the future, then perhaps their work is not of a quality worth making.

Please invest this money in important endeavors, instead of supporting those who cannot support themselves.

Sincerely,
Francesco Sassetti, Minister – Medici Bank

Francesco,

Enough. Go no further.

I am the highest power of this family, the Republic of Florence and places beyond.
In this area, we will continue in our family’s tradition.
I owe you no explanation or justification. As our Minister, you will do as I command you.

For future clarity, to end this discussion, and out of some respect of your long service, I will conclude with these thoughts.

You have gall to demand we not support those who in their trade cannot support themselves,
when for all of your life we have done the same for you.
Do you think counting our money is more important work than creating The Basilica?

When we are all dead and buried, very few people will remember you and I.

They will remember Michelangelo and Leonardo. They will remember Sandro and Brunelleschi.
They will remember Florence as the place those artists lived. And they will remember us, if at all, as the people who helped them.

From vague, unsure memory they may believe we were kings. In some ways we are kings, because we are wealthy and powerful.
And like kings, we have some duty to our country and its people. Through learning, engineering and art, this duty is fulfilled, bettering the people, and making Florence a destination for others who seek an enlightened life.

Without this impulse, our money and power amount to nothing.
The Bank is not important and will not be remembered. The money’s only real worth is the lasting affect it has on our country and our world.

Midas follows all the others:
Turns to gold the things he touches.
Where’s the joy in owning treasure,
If it doesn’t give you pleasure?
And where’s the sweet taste for a man
Who only feels his thirst forever?
Who’d be happy, let him be so:
Nothing’s sure about tomorrow.

The Medicis will one day be gone, but the art will remain forever.

- Lorenzo de’ Medici

David Byrne’s Perfect City

Trout Monfalco — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:32:23 +0000

For The Wall Street Journal, David Byrne talks about his version of a perfect city.

There’s an old joke that you know you’re in heaven if the cooks are Italian and the engineering is German. If it’s the other way around you’re in hell.

Read more from The Wall Street Journal: A Talking Head Dreams of a Perfect City

United States Candidates – positions on The Arts

Trout Monfalco — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:54:45 +0000

This isn’t intended to be a partisan blog… I wanted to link to each of the candidate’s positions on The Arts. I could only find a position on Barack Obama’s site, so that’s what I’m linking to. If anyone has links to information about Hillary Clinton’s or John McCain’s positions on the arts, please post in the comments. (At this point Hillary is now supporting Barack Obama, but feel free to post this info anyway – it was my own fault for not posting this sooner.)

Barack Obama’s plan for the arts.

Thank you Richard Florida for giving The Bohemians so much power. Now please tell us – when will we ever benefit from it?

Trout Monfalco — Fri, 30 May 2008 10:00:19 +0000

Richard Florida’s latest book, Who’s Your City?, has a lot of interesting ideas. It is a continuation of his work which started with the often quoted, celebrated and vilified Rise of the Creative Class.

In essence, the original book argues that economic greatness in any given place depends on the place’s ability to attract creative people. Creative people like openness, night life, authentic culture and great aesthetics (interesting architecture and grand natural beauty). At the time the original book came out, cities were not focused on these things. Instead they were erecting bigger shopping malls.

To Richard Florida’s credit, ever since the release of Rise of the Creative Class, there has been a big discussion about the quality of life in the places we live, and that this quality does not come from shopping and big business. I think this is true for whatever your passion is, and whatever you do for a living. This is a good discussion to have.

But I have always felt some nagging problem with his approach that I couldn’t quite pull into focus. There seems to be some things that are missing in his big equations. After reading Who’s Your City?, I finally started seeing what they were.

Who’s Your City? shows, through extensive research, that despite first impressions of the global economy, where you live is very important to your happiness and well being. This is a simple idea that seems like common sense. The details springing from this premise are more surprising.

The world has spiky places which are, like ever-growing magnets, attracting more and more creative, innovative people and capital into themselves. This means places like New York City, London, Tokyo and Paris will continue to suck in innovation and capital exponentially, and thus have larger engines to create even more innovation and capital. This also leads to most places outside of these spiky regions to specialize in various industries. Basic examples that you may be familiar with – if you want to be an actor, your chances for making a living at it are very slim unless you are in New York or Los Angeles. If you’re a technology innovator or developer, your greatest success would be found in the San Francisco or Boston areas. There is a lot of interesting detail in this, and if you want to learn more about it I recommend you read the book.

Now for a short break to watch Richard Florida’s appearance on The Colbert Report, because Stephen Colbert sums it up best.

The Gay-Bohemian Index mentioned by Mr. Colbert (“Which may sound like another name for the San Francisco phone book”), which supports some of Florida’s work, sounds like a great endowment of power handed down to anyone who is bohemian, artistic or gay. But in fact, this power to indicate or create new magnetic, economic engines usually benefits people besides the creators, and besides the businesses and families that long lived in the neighborhood before them. Who’s Your City? says

Albert Ratner, cochairman of the board at Forest City Enterprises, one of the biggest real estate companies in the world, likes to remind me that he alone has promoted The Rise of the Creative Class enough to secure its spot on the bestseller list. Another real estate investor once said of my work, “You have provided a map of where to invest.”

Anyone who has lived in a medium sized or larger city for any period of time recognizes a familiar pattern.

A neighborhood is a thriving community. Some type of economic hardship or shift happens in the city, and many neighborhood residents move away quickly. This leaves less sense of community and neighborhood, and as eyes on the street dwindle, crime can rise. At some point, the neighborhood is a shadow of itself, rents are cheap, but the authentic architecture and feeling of community still resonates. So artists and other creative people, who don’t have much money but have a need for space to create in, move to the neighborhood. This creates energy, public artwork (sanctioned or not), new venues to show or perform, and basic renovations. This energy, creativity and center of cultural amenities attracts more people from outside the area to visit and eventually move to. As more people move in, natural supply and demand occurs, causing rent and purchase prices to rise. Larger investors and realtors take note, seeing an opportunity to begin at the ground level, building new condos and luxury apartments. At some point, housing prices become out of reach for the families and businesses that have long been in the neighborhood, and for the artists and bohemians that sparked the neighborhood’s revitalization. They move on to the next neighborhood, or the next city, where the cycle starts again.

King of the Hill covered this in an entire episode, Lady and Gentrification.

Though Richard Florida now speaks to this issue – that a spiky region’s great success often leaves behind a large swath of the population – he doesn’t give it the gravity it deserves. Economic disparities can affect anyone in a region, but the irony is that the families, businesses, non-profits, artists and others who lead the front line of a neighborhood’s revitalization are often the first people to be kicked out by exorbitant housing prices when the fruit of their creative efforts finally appear. The very people that Florida claims are so important to an area’s success often have to move out of the area once that success arrives.

This also applies to businesses that help define an area, and more importantly non-profits. Non-profits find cheap commercial space to grow in, and help a community become a better place. But right when that better arrives, real estate investors buy up the historic building the non-profit lived in, raises their rent by 300%, and off they go to find a new home or shut down completely. This happens time and time again.

So Mr. Florida, how can the people who create so much value, so much aesthetic, creative energy and economic growth benefit from their investments of creativity, and stay where they live to continue helping their neighborhoods and cities grow? Or is it ok that this investment of time, effort, love and creativity in the end only benefits real estate developers and chain restaurants?

Who’s Your City? comes close to diving into this issue. When I read this part of the book, I was on the edge of my seat.

Escalating real estate prices can inhibit innovation. Many forms of innovative and creative activity – whether they are new high-tech businesses, art galleries, or musical groups – require the same thing: cheap space. That’s what Jane Jacobs was getting at when she famously wrote: “New ideas require old buildings.” These spaces, formerly abundant in places like Silicon Valley, San Diego, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and downtown New York City, are where everyone from Steve Jobs to Bob Dylan got their start. Cheap space in these towns is now hard to come by. Several Silicon Valley garages that witnesses high-tech start-ups in the 1990s have been turned into museums. When housing prices rise and buildings are converted into expensive condos or high-end retail shops, venues for fostering creativity disappear…
…They’re forced to move from apartment to apartment as their rentals turn into condos. When creative, productive regions become the province of affluent people who have already made their money (usually elsewhere), the cycle of local wealth building falls apart. At that point, Jacobs once presciently told me, “When a place gets boring, even the rich people leave.”

I have read this section to many friends because it strikes a chord with what we are living with every day. Condos are springing up like ivy, and fewer and fewer people can afford to live here anymore. Or they feel the place is losing it’s vitality and authenticity, as art cars become scarce and BMW’s are more prominent.

Even BMW knows its place in this equation. In this campaign, they appeal to the Creative Class (by name). The thing is most of this class could never afford a BMW, nor could the many other people in the city who help make it tick. This campaign is really aimed at the 2nd wave, wishing to benefit from what the others built.

In the end, what’s left out of these theories, for individuals and communities, is all the stuff that isn’t about money. Regional economic growth and might are the big measurements of success in the creative class model. But how does the majority of the population benefit? Are their lives better? Are they happier and more fulfilled? In many studies, Denmark is often cited as the happiest place on Earth. They are certainly not the biggest economic engine.

And what of human zugunruhe, the desire to move on, and experience something new? What explains some people’s strong desire to quit well paying jobs, giving up money and comfort, to take up teaching, social work or long term travel? It’s definitely not Economics.

This strong human drive for betterment, growth, new experience and beauty is the thing left out of these extensive studies, which ironically focus on the very people who revere these aspects of life most. The reason bohemians mostly do not profit from their action is that profit is not the point. It is instead small accumulating betterment of their own lives and the community around them. This is no different than other people who live in and care about a place. It’s only when other people arrive to try and transform that creativity into profit, causing displacement for the people who were there all along, that an Economic Flag shows up in the study, noting a success, a spiky place.

Why should the benefit and success be measured only when money is made?

Ultimately, it’s much less important what we measure than what we do. Maybe the earlier question should not be directed at Richard Florida at all.

So- bohemians, artists, gays, how can you, who create so much value, so much aesthetic, creative energy and economic growth, benefit from your own investments of creativity, and stay where you live to continue helping your neighborhoods and cities grow? Or is it ok that your investment of time, effort, love and creativity in the end only benefits real estate developers and chain restaurants?

buy the books of Richard Florida

read Richard Florida’s Blog.

Graffiti Artists at the Bethlehem Wall

Trout Monfalco — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 23:54:23 +0000

In Bethlehem, artists from all over the world, including local artists, have been making art on the barrier wall separating Israel and Palestine.

Video from the BBC:

David Byrne – How to be a Musician in a Digital World

Trout Monfalco — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 23:02:54 +0000

Last week, David Byrne interviewed Thom Yorke of Radiohead for Wired, about their battle with record companies and their ultimate decision to produce and distribute their own music. This was punctuated a few months ago by releasing their latest album, In Rainbows, through their own site, and allowed fans to name their own price for the album. In the interview I am particularly happy with Thom Yorke’s invocation of the book No Logo by Naomi Klein.

At the same time, David Byrne wrote an amazing piece about being a musician in the digital world. As someone who has owned his own label and been a musician himself under different levels of label control, he has perspective to see the good and bad from all the types of musical situations available. This piece is the most concise and informative I’ve seen on the music business. If you are a musician it is a great read. The only option I think he leaves out are services like TuneCore, who allow you to place music on iTunes and other digital services with no withholding whatsoever. You just pay the hosting fee per year and per song (not very much) and they get you on the music stores.

Read: The music industry article for musicians by David Byrne or
David Byrne’s interview with Thom Yorke

Buy work by Radiohead, Thom Yorke or David Byrne (and Talking Heads).

Get No Logo by Naomi Klein.

No Art, Only Entertainment

Trout Monfalco — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:18:22 +0000

I’ve noticed for quite some time that most media web sites and newspapers do not have an Arts section. The closest you find is Entertainment. The meaning of these two is of course very different, not because art can’t be entertaining, it can be. But art often has more purpose to it than that. By sticking only to “Entertainment,” the media avoids discussion of any of the other reasons for art, or the cultural criticisms it might be presenting. It takes the easy route, sticking to celebrity gossip and celebrity fashion, and not a bigger cultural context, or inclusion of any artwork whose main purpose may be something other than Entertaining.

If your TV station or newspaper covers only Entertainment and not the Arts, write them and ask why, and ask them to change it (not just the name of the section, but what they cover.)

Some examples of “Entertainment” and no “Arts”:

Some great papers that still have an Arts section:

Artist Astronauts, Artist Cosmonauts, Artists in Space

Trout Monfalco — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 11:23:17 +0000

I have all kinds of crazy dreams. I’ve had one of them for a long time, and I’ve never told anyone about it until now. Even for me it’s a nutty one. My secret dream was to be the first artist in space.

I had such a strong desire for this, I think, because all of our missions to space are so technical or militaristic. Yet if you’ve ever known anyone working in space travel (like NASA), you know how poetic they can be. My dream to be an artist in space is nowhere near as crazy as actually trying to get anyone into space at all. There is a certain long term humanity, a looking back on ourselves as a whole, a historic something that runs through these spaceborne intentions — from astronauts and engineers alike. Somehow though, that all gets lost. This is exactly the kind of thing artists explore. For much the same reasons artists are sent into combat, they should be sent into space. (And if you’re asking why do we go at all, isn’t there something better to spend money on? the answer in the short term is always yes. But long term, our planet’s species, including our own, have a much higher chance of surviving if we become interplanetary. This is covered in The Drake Equation.)

My heart skipped a beat when first hearing Laurie Anderson had been chosen as the first artist in residence for NASA. She’s the perfect candidate for this. Unfortunately when she asked “Do I get to go up?!” the answer was “No.” Sadly, she was the first and last NASA artist in residence. Representative Chris Chocola introduced and passed a bill specifically prohibiting NASA from having an artist in residence.

Little did I know that the first artists in space had already travelled long ago. The first was Russian cosmonaut Alexey Leonov in 1965 and the second was United States astronaut Alan Bean in 1969. Up until writing this post, I didn’t know that a small tile artwork titled The Moon Museum by Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Claus Oldenberg and John Chamerlain was left on the moon by the crew of Apollo 12. There have been many other artist cosmonauts since then, of many nationalities, and many pieces of art flown into space.

This is in fact such a frequently pondered idea that there are several non-profits in existence solely to get artists into space programs throughout the world and get artists creating work for the context of space travel.

And Tate Modern, one of the top museums in the world, has plans in motion to create it’s next museum location in Earth orbit.

Organizations exploring art and artists in space: The MIR Network, The OURS Foundation at Ars Astronautica, and Tate Modern Space.

A great list of artwork taken to or created in space.

Artist-Astronaut: What the Future Told Us, a project by artist Debra Solomon.

Two blogs by on duty combat artists: Fire and Ice and Sketchpad Warrior.

In the Press: The Globe and Mail – Greetings, art lovers. We come in peace and The Times UK – Blast off: artistic adventures in time and space.

Buy related work: In the Stream of Stars: The Soviet-American Space Art Book (by Alexey Leonov and others), Apollo : An Eyewitness Account By Astronaut/Explorer Artist/Moonwalker by Alan Bean, Baghdad Journal: An Artist in Occupied Iraq, by combat artist Steve Mumford, They Drew Fire – a documentary about combat artists in World War II; and work by Laurie Anderson.

Travel to space on Virgin Galactic or Space Adventures.

Japan Ink – Inside the Manga-Industrial Complex

Trout Monfalco — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 23:54:58 +0000

The current issue of Wired is all about manga – how the industry works and how it conquered America.

Two stories:

(pdf) How Manga Conquered the U.S., a Graphic Guide to Japan’s Coolest Export, the story of Manga in the US told using Manga.
Japan, Ink: Inside the Manga Industrial Complex

Read some manga and learn how to draw it in these books, and a favorite from my childhood.

Take a a trip to Japan, it’s beautiful.

The Rare Director’s Cut – Alan Smithee, Across the Universe, Blade Runner

Trout Monfalco — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 23:13:51 +0000

The other day, though not in the rest of the post, I linked to the New York Times story discussing that the studio had tested their own cut of Across the Universe without Julie Taymor’s knowledge. I don’t know how that turned out, but it must be mostly ok because her name is still on the film.

Most director contracts do not include right of final cut. Their only final resolution if they are unhappy with a cut the studio has created is to remove their name from the film. When this happens, in the past the film was credited as “directed by Alan Smithee.” As of 1997, the pseudonym changes from film to film. If a film isn’t complete, the studio can replace the director and the new name appears on the film, even when the first director may have originated the concepts and their work may be in the film.

Later, if rights to the film change, or a director gets more clout, a Director’s Cut might be released to theaters or DVD. Sometimes though even these Director’s Cuts are not the work of the original director.

Some directors, like Ridley Scott with Blade Runner, have worked most of their careers to get their cut of a film finally made.

Read more about director’s cut, Alan Smithee and a list of films recut by studios.

Buy films mired in artistic miasma:
Directed by Alan Smithee, Dune, Superman II, Poltergeist, American History X, and Blade Runner. Also check out An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn, a movie premised on Alan Smithee starring Eric Idle.

Across the Universe, The Power of Myth, 1967

Negativland Compilation

Trout Monfalco — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 00:27:41 +0000

Negativland is a group that creates mash-ups of existing music, sound and video. They have been sued for this, but believe firmly that art belongs to society. They are releasing a compilation of their work, Our Favorite Things, which properly has been mashed up yet again by other artists. They started doing this pre-YouTube and pre-filesharing lawsuits. Adding to yesterday’s post, this is more to show what can be done once work hits the public domain and can be mixed, used and cut up to make something new. (Though Negativland doesn’t wait for the public domain to kick in.)

Read about Our Favorite Things in Wired.

Buy work by Negativland.

Japan Ink – Inside the Manga-Industrial Complex