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.