Say, like, "Its a stifling situation in which many outlets are controlled by not only uninterested people - more interested in tweeting about [but self-censor here for fear of repercussions] than in art - but powerless people.
Say how you've come to realize young people have no reason to line up for it. The youth seem standoffish or hotheaded, or too cool, or whatever, when in reality its simply that all the young interesting artists have firmly decided to work outside of what they see as a boring rewardless system that involves giving in to a professionalization that garners nothing in return for its loss of freedom.
Say how there has to be something to be exchanged.
Say, Like, That while MNartists.org, the MAEP, SoapFactory, StarTrib, etc. ad nauseum, all ask artists to come with CV in hand, and a head shot, they are able to give nothing in return besides a short ego burst. Money comes with a headache, and freedom is free.
Explain that that's why we all got into this in the first place.
If anyone says you should be grateful for these opportunities explain to them that they should be grateful that you even decided to show up tonight.
Say how this type of needed legimation is what moved art to the sidelines of culture to begin with.
Tell them that you can’t quite figure it out, but applying to the MAEP is somehow the most belittling infantilizing condescending process possibly devised.
Explain how these Institutions aren't connected to anything, they aren't interested in your long term survival.
Say something like "these institutions do not fulfill the definition of 'care' for artists."
To these people to whom you are talking re-explain the OED definition of Care. explain it as "the provision of what is necessary for the health, welfare, maintenance, and protection of someone;”
Then repeat, "these institutions do not fulfill the definition of 'care' for artists."
Then explain how these institutions, as far as everyone can tell who as worked with any of them, are mostly concerned with care for their brand, more concerned with their brand than with they are with artists. Others care for nothing.
Explain that all the work is in the hands of the artists, that artists are responsible for almost every part.
Tell them that bad democracy is way of abdicating responsibility, dispersing it to oblivion.
Explain how Mary Abbe almost ruined an non-MN artist's career. Ruined it by publishing tabloid style hyperbole about a performance she had never even seen, still talked about in terms of this Artist’s career, and which she has never apologized for, or even acknowledges in writing about this artist work now, totally absconding history.
Get them to explain that you.
Then explain to people, that and so of course artists are going to use/abuse these institutions in the same way they are being used/abuse by the institutions. Institutions get upset because artists aren't bending over for it, and artists get upset because these institutions provide little support.
Are you saying these things to people who ask you?
Say, "It’s comical that no one acknowledges this, but MNartists is simply a way for the Walker to purge MN from itself. Or say it another way: its a response that serves to negate it, or ghettoize it. Explain that there is the Public Walker Art Center Website - centered around the capital A Artworld - and then there is MNartists. Totally seperate. Ask, Why aren't walker curators writing for it? then say "Exactly. It is a ghetto." Say Its given to the TC to shut them up, or something to get them yapping on about, or on some platform that does not matter.
Say, "Its just a way to get rid of something." Then ask What could that something be?
Then state, "MNartists.org even looks like a basement."
But be sure to qualify this, explaining, "You think its smart of the Walker to do this." Explain The Walker is an Artworld institution, not a MN one, and of course if they are going to maintain image and Brand, and they can't have MN trash mucking the well fonted front page, their pristine image. Say, "The Walker cannot help MN, until MN helps itself."
Then as a joke, say how lately the Walker can't even help itself.
But then get serious and say, " but Then you have institutions who actually have a little to give. like say, Midway and Petersen, one of whom heaps symbolic wreaths of credibility onto you, and another who is trying to actually help support you, giving you an advisable shot at a career without having to pay NYC rents, travelling for you to deliver you outside, to people who buy and people who matter." say "These people ‘care.’”
Say then "you've also got Bindery maybe, and then these little startup galleries, and these people in ‘mn-power' give two shits about these."
Say how you’re tired of everyone holding their breath in the grandstands watching Peterson with his stationary exercise bike in the middle of the pool pedaling to stay afloat amidst the grand gallery stands of silent salted stoic peanuts, holding their breath to spare themselves the same fate as what they expect as the outcome, sitting on their hands.
Explain how all your harsh criticism of Midway exhibitions was simply to prove you as being capable of doing the cliche negative Midway review a thousand times better than all the writers who had attempted to slaughter the dead pig a thousand times before, killing something you misunderstand like attacking a ghost with a longsword, that if it had mattered it would have been different.
Tell them about that one Judith Butler quote you like so much.
Tell them that everyday is a battle against censoring yourself from that one thing that one person didn't like.
How most of the scene is comprised by free beers.
Say how These other institutions see artists interested in these spaces, and mock them, they call them "Very Serious Artists" dismissively calling it a cool factor, or insider, or whatever any of the adjectives that point out that they are outsiders (wielding truth about the scary cool kids, Emperial hipsters new clothes) but that its really that they, wielding their institutions "power" think people should be opening up to them, coming to them, to get them on their side when really no one gives two shits about their "power" and no one wants to be written up on MNartists save to make fun of it, and that Adam Caillier actually has a T-shirt with his Abbe review printed on it and everyone gives him high-fives when they see him wearing it, and so they have to deal with it and they too have to stand around outside like everyone with all the other smokers at openings and actually hang around and have some fun and put in the hours at the mall and feel awkward and drink too much and get in an argument with some administrative Walker Lame-'O, in a heated drunken argument over nothing, in the cold, in front of everyone, smoking, in front of the gallerist and the next day wake-up with a headfull of regret, just like everyone else, and actually just take part in the scene that is not any scene besides the troops who show up daily to grind it out.
Finally, Say how they should all go fuck themselves.
....
but yah make sure you say something like that. If anyone asks.
