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Last night we went to a screening and discussion of the film “Examined Life” as part of our Pickpocket Alamanack class.  The film is a philosophy discussion with thinkers across the country in an engaging and easy on the eyes format.

In the followup discussion, Astra Taylor, the director/filmaker, talked a bit about how much fear people had towards the idea of a movie about philosophy, how even her well educated friends would recoil at the idea, considering themselves much too uneducated to even approach or engage the subject matter.

I feel like I have been saying the same thing for years about art.  Where does this fear come from?  Why is our society so fearful of expressing their thoughts about a subject?  And why does so often this fear prevent us from experiencing or engaging at all?

The YBCA has started a free series to address it. Looks fun.

Yesterday Oliver and I spoke at CCA for a little bit about The Present Group.  The class is a really neat investigation of different systems of exchange co-taught by TPG#5 critic Scott Oliver and Rachel Robinette.

One of the underlying questions was whether our project, as commendable as it may be, is sustainable.  Can the desire to learn about art be a powerful enough tool in marketing?  Can people wrap their heads around collecting artwork for the sake of learning about it rather than it be an investment, or a chosen work to keep in your home?

We’re still not sure.  We are still a small project, and we haven’t had as much success financially as some of our competitors.  But we believe that the system already exists for people to support artists whose work they know and like and collect their artwork in particular.   We know that we are asking a lot of people when we ask them to think that what they are supporting is the creation of art in general, not just the result that they receive.

The funny thing to me is that it doesn’t seem foreign.    Museum memberships and Season Pass holders to theatres work under this same assumption, and for a similar price point.    The main difference is that they aren’t filling up their home with anything.   Perhaps what we need to focus on is a way for people to support us without having to keep the pieces once they’ve learned about them.

Just some musings…

sometimes things are just determined to grow.

“Why go on? I believe in art and artist as perhaps society’s last free agents.  Artists and children augur change, and no one listens to children.”

from “Personal Economy #11” by Anonymous
included in “Art Work: A National Conversation about Art, Labor, and Economics“