the proliferation and total dominance of the academic and bureaucratic rituals being used to solicit, conceive and execute art shows.

 

An impression crystallized for me this morning. I don't get to many shows, art shows, the culture of thinly disguised capitalist hedonists generally repulses me, and having children I can't make many openings. But, with the total absence of anything else, I have persisted to visit the odd thing here and there. 

 

I thought the randomness would not be conducive to an over all impression but I was wrong. During my time at Enjoy Public Art Gallery, now called something similar but entirely different, I had made the application for shows entirely open. No form given, no c.v's needed, no references, nothing but an attempt to covey what it was you wanted to do. I loved this approach for I knew that it let in those that were repulsed as I was at the bureaucracy that feigned it was neutral; that really was killing off an already extremely vulnerable section of our community. This approach didn't last long, or past my direct involvement, for it demands time and attention of the institution, trust in due process a relationship built on a host of relative arts. 

 

The shows I've been seeing over the last 5 years down here in Dunedin, Õtepoti resemble a striking example to the detritus left over from trade show displays. Budgets secured, props invested in, arranged in exceedingly obvious ways designed for maximum pick up from a un interested public, dumb and barely looking. 

 

I in no way would like suggest that this is some how unique to Õtepoti but I would like to fatally tag it to the proliferation and total dominance of the academic and bureaucratic rituals being used to solicit, conceive and execute shows. That this completely shuts out all except the most privileged of an already stacked game of privileged is boringly shocking. And yes the wonderful saturation of recent years of maligned indigenous and perhaps also Feminist content is something, that is good to recognize, hoping that this influence is also being felt on the machinery, the systems being used to deploy cultural conformity. 

 

But a second of examining the way capitalism works, it's careful rotation of one or more issues, while it whiles away, untouched, is how the look and feel of these shows, seemingly un related unconnected, are. Brutally. They represent a lack of faith in the the artist. The are the imprint of a boot, that says lick here. While purporting to contain essences true and much needed, it's my assertion that they have already given away the very ability to discover what that might be, by the application process screening such vulnerabilities, out. 

 

What I am left with is, trade show whomp and aplomb over subjective misgivings, personal stories draped over funding grants pronouncing sponsors great deeds. In a sense, work with out an audience, work that acts like there isn't one, that it's all a show to some adjudicator who is evaluating documented records of how it all sounds and looks. NO loose ends, no experimentation. NOthing learned, risked. All guaranteed. Paid for and for my part abandoned. 

 

Of course there will be exceptions. But it's the rule here that I am publicly challenging. The streamlining of art bureaucracy to suit it's own career paths has in my experience, harmed the lives of the artists in it's direct reach and reinforced prejudice (myself included) at the dumb, or widely put, the non academic. This has enforced a way of existing that plucks only the most likely to succeed in a status quo signaled from other bureaucracies miles away, laboring under their own forms of capitalist delusion. 

 

Artists, for my money, don't want to be capitalists, a great many people don't. But we are driven, forced to think that there is no other option, by obeying the institutions that suit themselves rather than serve their citizens, we get structures that re create the exclusivity of capitalist hierarchy not the open access of democratic practice. 

 

Something to think about.

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Despite a life time of articulating a specific cultural, political, economic context, My work continues to be treated like it's wrong.

 

"A sock stretched over a badly made wooden frame, it’s a smart conceptualist riposte to modernism’s pretensions."

Badly made? I made it perfectly. It is perfect. It's not a plane it's not suppose to fly. How can my work be badly made? Compared to what? A 'normal' work of art? These I guess are some the questions I wish were asked about my work. The craft of the capitalist commodity, where do these airs come from? Riposte? Modernist pretensions? Since when, in what era ever is effortlessness bad? Machine like grace is our highest ideal, effortlessness and endlessness happens to be it, look around at Capitalists efforts to attain this. Isn't mine actually closer, closer to a 'human' version?

Since when is perfect economic and physical exertion retaliation? How is it not leadership and an existing modelling of the ideal? Recycled found materials, tacked effortlessly together to find significant/ undenied form is something, still everything that capitalist art and it's total domination of all art psyche rejects, deeply, instinctively.

Art market, where the 'craft' is to separate and destroy the history of it's making, the politics of its economic material phenomenon, creating the uber important 'glamour' (as in without genitalia), positing my efforts of a new path into the subversive and forever titillating 'bad' other; that will never be visited for it pulls down the 'wrong path". But "that's what we love about you Tao!"

No, you don't know me at all. Strange how my work is not seen in the context I have so publicly made, yet I'm constantly criticized for standing in front of the work! You've just shoved the work shoddily into conveniently provided roles that maintain a certain lid on the too hard to ask basket of questions. That basket of capitalist status quo, I am not a part of, (but you are Tao you are! Yeah Like Cuba is to the US).

Even today welfarians are considered a threat to capitalism, yet we heroically controlled inflation, now you'r gonna pay. To bridge over this, is to smother it, to deny it exists. Let's say the bad are smart, but wrong. Let's clap their critique of our silly pretensions, while we return to worshiping at the alter of silly pretensions. It's convenient. Not badly made, but perfect. A frame that re-frames ALL the other art. Forever.

Hey Mark Amery, thanks so much for daring to touch the hot spot. Sincerely thank you, I do love to respond. Much love. T

LINK TO ARTICLE
stuff.co.nz
Te hīkoi toi: The art that’s close to you
Mark Amery invites you over to his house to have a peek at the art that adorns his walls.

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Wells Tao
Stretched ankle sock, retired. Over kindling.


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Ross Forbes
The wierd, wierd thing is that I recognised Megan's work .She painted it 25 years back when we lived together in a warehouse in Grey Lynn. We were together 8 years and then one day she was gone. No disrespect Tao...your work is great...
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Wells Tao
Far out so sorry to hear that.

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Wells Tao
No disrespect felt at all, I remember seeing her work and feeling it at Mark's place, probably what made me want to give him one of my works, to be cared for the way he cared for her work... thanks for the compliment.

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Mark Amery
Love to you Ross!!!

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Mark Amery
Tao this is exactly why I love it. Wy would it hang there for 10 years if it was "badly made" in quote marks. I think my word is wrong - though wrongly made might be worse - beautifully badly made better. So here's the point - it's difficult to describe because it doesn't conform. I'll give up again now. (PS I want to know what's happening anon with your good film)

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Murtle Presence
Makes me think of the term 'Mis-competence', defined by Bruce Russell as “the ability to do something both deliberately wrongly, and well”. https://soundbleedjournal.wordpress.com/.../antique-bird.../

SOUNDBLEEDJOURNAL.WORDPRESS.COM
‘Antique bird-like chatter’: mis-competence in New Zealand electronic music – Bruce Russell
‘Antique bird-like chatter’: mis-competence in New Zealand electronic music – Bruce Russell

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Wells Tao
Cheers Mark! Yeah nice Murtle, technically better, but still doesn't suggest to me a ring of confidence, which is what I think it has. Assemblage isn't looked at like a mistake, the mistake is intentional, there is no mistake. It's a dialectical or dichotomy that the status quo uses to dominate and profit from. it's no small thing.
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Wells Tao
How it was made was chosen and executed perfectly. It's something of a mystery to me why the viewer wouldn't accept that. Embrace that. Promote that. But as I said above, there are many reasons.

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Wells Tao
From my limited vocab, I would say that it is "brutalist /assemblage/ art povera"

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Andrew Clifford
This reminds me of a conversation with Chris Knox, who once corrected me that his music is not lo-fi - it is low-tech. Lo-fi suggests it's badly recorded. There's nothing wrong with the way it is recorded, which perfectly captures the low-tech instruments that he uses. Or maybe my memory has merged some of Bruce's writing and Chris's comments - different arguments, same conclusion

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Mark Amery
Murtle Presence totally!!!!!!!!!
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Mark Amery
Andrew Clifford and again correct. Its clear I didn't find the right words for what was meant as a compliment

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Wells Tao
Andrew Clifford there is a kin kind of correlation for sure, but again it doesn't speak to the degree of economic segregation/ oppression that is an intimate part of the mode. It doesn't talk about the threat it represents. How convenient

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