This weeks text is "Easier" by Tao Wells which also features texts from Chris Kraus, Murdoch Stephens and Laura Wells.
Copies of the texts will be provided, as well as tea and coffee (thanks to EightThirty).
Tao Wells was born in Colorado USA and at a young age with his family,
two white middle class professionals and a younger brother, immigrated
to New Plymouth, New Zealand. At 17 after being a high school art star,
he quit his after school job at Woolworth’s to attend art school at
Canterbury University. Where he was kicked out after, as class rep, he
was asked to present class criticism to the head of the school about the
inadequacy of the courses content (cripplingly out of touch
with both where the industry was and where art was with the medium,
Photography).
1995 he went back after completing half a BA in American Contemporary Literature and film. Ending up at Teachers college in Wellington and working as a Entertainer/host at Te Papa. He then started to teach at Massey University in the department of art and design. This went on for five years, part time; doing a full time Masters and being exclusively invited to perform and exhibit during this time in half a dozen or more shows every year. At this point he helped start Enjoy Public Art Gallery, on Cuba St. in Wellington, before a long bout of unemployment or poor employment.
In 2007 he was successful with a CNZ grant to attend a residency in Australia where his project to implement a single local indigenous word into local media, or protect the proposed last sign of the Kulin Nation’s physical habitation in Melbourne (the rotting exposed Scared Tree trunk, in a down town public park) failed. In 2009 Peter McLeavey granted him his galleries 500th show at 147 Cuba st.
And in 2010 after an effort to find work in Taiwan, Tao launched the Wells Group and “The Beneficiary’s Office”, with Letting Space, a team of art brokers. The “Office” performance gained national attention while also appearing to “dry up” invitations to perform and exhibit in the New Zealand art scene.
In 2018, Wells finished an artists book, for the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, of over thirty years of work. “Easier” features an essay by Chris Kraus that she also published in her new book “Social Practice” for MIT Press. Today he’s a single Father of two and a happy Beneficiary of a Co-op with New Zealand’s Democratic State.
1995 he went back after completing half a BA in American Contemporary Literature and film. Ending up at Teachers college in Wellington and working as a Entertainer/host at Te Papa. He then started to teach at Massey University in the department of art and design. This went on for five years, part time; doing a full time Masters and being exclusively invited to perform and exhibit during this time in half a dozen or more shows every year. At this point he helped start Enjoy Public Art Gallery, on Cuba St. in Wellington, before a long bout of unemployment or poor employment.
In 2007 he was successful with a CNZ grant to attend a residency in Australia where his project to implement a single local indigenous word into local media, or protect the proposed last sign of the Kulin Nation’s physical habitation in Melbourne (the rotting exposed Scared Tree trunk, in a down town public park) failed. In 2009 Peter McLeavey granted him his galleries 500th show at 147 Cuba st.
And in 2010 after an effort to find work in Taiwan, Tao launched the Wells Group and “The Beneficiary’s Office”, with Letting Space, a team of art brokers. The “Office” performance gained national attention while also appearing to “dry up” invitations to perform and exhibit in the New Zealand art scene.
In 2018, Wells finished an artists book, for the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, of over thirty years of work. “Easier” features an essay by Chris Kraus that she also published in her new book “Social Practice” for MIT Press. Today he’s a single Father of two and a happy Beneficiary of a Co-op with New Zealand’s Democratic State.
I spoke for eleven hours to the people working for the new Green Deal, thank you - T. Wells
TAO
WELLS: It's the exploitation of the work ethic. That's what we're
talking about. And we're not allowed to have someone at the bottom
actually be happy. Because the idea runs on oppression. If they are
miserable, then they will want what is at the top. And they will use
whatever means necessary to get that position at the top.
IAN CASSELLS: I don't think anybody seriously wants people to be miserable as a position. Not really.
TAO WELLS: I don't think we want that. And that's why I ask these questions. Why are we perpetuating something that actually is just generating misery, at both ends.
- The Happy Bene, Documentary of the Performance "The Beneficary's Office"
IAN CASSELLS: I don't think anybody seriously wants people to be miserable as a position. Not really.
TAO WELLS: I don't think we want that. And that's why I ask these questions. Why are we perpetuating something that actually is just generating misery, at both ends.
- The Happy Bene, Documentary of the Performance "The Beneficary's Office"
This I feel, is a great accessible grasp of Marx's critique of Capitalism, and what we could be doing instead of the big C - T. Wells
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