Informal proposal concerning what's next

It's been requested that we create informal proposals for what we will be studying over the summer and next year. I will do that here, but I will also analyze some of what has happened this year.

Originally I had wanted starting a business that sold religion in grad school. My friend, Jordan, and I were going to do this but, in the end, decided we to go to separate schools. I quickly became disinterested in using metaphors to make statements, prove points, or manipulate ideologies. I began looking inward to find my own perspective on how I feel about things like paid wages, leisure, and the assignment of various types of value. Some of my ideas were manifest in projects like Looking Out The Window where people joined with me in a so-called useless activity.

I've also been toying with not allowing myself to have full authorship of "my" art. I began doing things that other people have done, assisting others in their work, asking others to participate in projects that were less and less mediated (as in the Utopia Night), selling my ideas off to other people, and also through collaboration (as in The Committee, the Meet and Greet BBQ, and the upcoming project at City Hall). I have realized through these endeavors that I am more of an idea person. I like to brainstorm, conceptualize, and consult. This is not true for all my projects but it is a large trend in my work. Even in the collaborative group The Committee, that I am a part of, we are an ideation team but we do not perform any back-end work. I have had to spend time rethinking and redefining what labor means. I heard that someone criticized my Utopia night, even though they didn't come to it, saying it was ridiculous because we just watched movies. For me, the utopian/dystopian science fiction movies were a visual representation of the presentations that happened earlier that night as well as for the publication that supplemented the event. In a sense the elements of the night all supplemented and added to each other. Watching movies is not only very enjoyable, but if watched within a predetermined context, such as in a group of people thinking about the enactment of their ideals into society, the movie becomes more than relevant for facilitating discussion around those topics. Where was I going with this? Oh yes, labor. Labor can mean ideation, brainstorming, facilitation, conversation, curation, and yes, movie watching and beer drinking.

At the time I conducted the Utopia Night I had been inspired by the pedagogical works of Pawel Althamer (At the Center Pompidou), Thomas Hirschhorn (24 Hour Focault and Bataille Monument) and Utopia Station by Rirkrit Tiravanija, Molly Nesbit and Hans Ulrich Obrist. I was also excited to hear that Anthony Marcellini and Matthew David Rana, social practice students at CCA, had a similar utopia project and had also been studying pedagogy.

So, what do I want to do next year?

I would like to continue with a few things. The first being researching alternative systems of economics and consumption. I have learned about gift economies and artists that employ them, alternative education centers around Portland, cars that run off used grease, and other utopian visions of the way the world should work. This is all fascinating to me and I really enjoyed the Utopia Night in that it served as some creative and pedagogical mode for releasing this information and learning new ideas. With that said, pedagogy also interests me and I would like to continue to explore models for teaching.

I have only begun exploring how I might actually make a living from being an idea person through projects like Laurelwood, selling my ideas, and The Committee. I would like to spend more time consulting as part of my work. And in an attempt to affirm what I am doing, I will begin applying for more proposals and residencies. It's not that I don't believe in what I'm doing, actually it's quite the opposite; I believe that I should be paid for my work and so I need to figure out how that's going to happen. Maybe art systems are not the best route for this? Maybe they are? Whatever system(s) I end up utilizing I am less concerned with adapting to their standards and more interested in using their systems for leveraging my own interests (ie. making a living from my work).