Another Busy Day: Cinemathque Loft, Place Vendôme.

Today: Creating a Video Response to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis which is a city in le States.

The following from today’s ARTFUL MANAGER at ART’S JOURNAL:

Tim Barrus: “Ones smiles. Two Worlds: My World. Their World.

[Example: below: yesterday’s Video Response posted at MoMA re: Cinematheque to Carroll Dunham]

My World is a lot more fun that Their World. In My World, you get to stay up all night (actually for three of four days) painting and filming painting. In Their World, you are required to go to bed by eight and there is no such thing as Scotch. In Their World, you Better have a job (they say it’s Who You Are). In My World, there is no such thing as a le job. You can Be whoever You Want To Be Today.

In Their World, there are Rulz and Relationships. In My World, we Make Things. Because We Want To. In Their World, you only make things there is a market for. In My World, color gets pushed and black and white is arrogant and funny in the shadows. In Their World, it all hangs on the wall like a dead animal. In My World, we threw the TV out the window into the alley. In Their World, watching it is pretty much what they do and then they go to bed so they can get up to go to work.

In My World, we ride bikes because it’s fun and makes us feel good. In Their World, they wait in traffic. A lot. In My World, we build fences to keep Their World out. In Their World, they build fences to keep one another out. In My World, Art is the World. It’s everywhere. It’s in the fridge. It’s blasting through the speakers. It lives in the shoes (if you wear them) your feet dance in. It gets sprayed on walls. In Their World, it’s auctioned at Christies.

In My World, we have Art Patrons. In Their World, they always have a le Boss or a le Master or they are One. In My World, you paint what you want to paint, you dance to music you want to hear, your clothes are second-hand and always have paint on them. You dress because if you don’t some policier will shoot you dead. In Their World, bondage is the rule but don’t call it that. Call it a tie. You may call them the Suits.

In My World, we make fun of the Suits a lot. Especially the Publishing and the Art Suits. Sometimes it’s sort of what we do. In My World, it’s an Art Form. We call it Guerrilla Messing With Them. In Their World, Guerrilla Messing With Them is punishable by public execution. It’s a Big No No No. The Suits are serious Suits. They manage The World. Well, Their World. Their World Art is Advertising. They own Everything and Everywhere so Advertising is everything and everywhere. It’s on the signs. It’s plastered on the websites. It’s at the le bus stop. In their World, it costs a lot of le money. In My World, we spray paint over it at the le bus stops. And we’ve been known to tear it down if we can without being arrested. In Our World, jail is an abstraction and we Hope to keep it one. Their World is a jail.

My World lives in and around Our World. Like a planet and the sun. Their World is some lonely cold gas planet of little substance that goes round and round but little else. The Inhabitants of Their World Endure. That’s all she Wrote. In Our World, there are too many Other Our Worlders Making Things to have time to Endure. We’re way too busy Making Art to Endure Anyone or Anything.

The dialogue between Our World and Their World is almost nonexistent. 1.) Because Passion is not allowed in Their World, and 2.) We despise them and they fundamentally hate us even if the denial they live in does not allow them to articulate that. It’s not love that make the world go round. It’s hate that makes the world go round. Sometimes for effect we’ll lob a brick through their Museum windows and sometimes for effect their policier will chase us down the alley. But they don’t like us and we don’t like them and Both Worlds Pretend the Other One is Irrelevant. Our World is a turbulent, chaotic mash of Passion, Blogs, Voices, Personalities, Music, light, film, Sex, marijuana, Scotch, Paint, and Sex. You had better stick to the le Subject (or what they say it is) in Their World or they will ban you at the same time they will applaud the virtues of free speech and the dissemination of ideas.

In Our World and My World, we go Out of Our Way to not Humiliate People (unless they’re Politicians or Publishers or Gallery Managers who tell us to Go Away or Curators whose email address is a secret). In Their World, Humiliating People with extraordinary disdain and Contempt is the Paint they paint their canvas with. Both our World and Their World share some attributes and liabilities. But we don’t talk to Each Other much because Their World has the Art Policier and the Art gatekeepers and the Guillotine but what they really spend most of their energy on is marginalizing us where we spend far too much time looking for bricks to throw. A.) We insist: there’s a Culture War going on and managing it (like any other war) is mainly an illusion. B.) They insist: there is no Culture War and everything is fine (it can all be managed if Everyone would simply follow the rules) and if you disagree with that premise (especially with any Passion Whatsoever) your head can be severed from Your le Neck.

My World and Our World are both viscerally cognizant that there is a Culture War Slugging It Out out There. Example: The Walker Art Center has Provoked Us (this in a good way) on le Tube to respond to issues such as What is Art (which is the Real Issue if you can get past all the minor stuff) and what is a museum and what is Transparency and what is Access. This has Stumped Us and we are currently pounding our Heads against le loft’s walls in the Angst that we are Compelled to Create Something — a narrative of Ideas — to respond with (Artfully, the gods help us) and the issues are Important even if we’re not and last night we had a Rave in the loft and we’re tired. But Time is Time. In Their World. In Our World. And what Time is telling us is that today we’re going to have to tiptoe over to the walls and gates and Policier Lines and Peer Over at Them to try and See What They are About and we are not sure we can understand either Them or their Language.

The two Worlds Meet. And we are Afraid. 1.) They could say in their usual attempt to marginalize us that Our World and My World is imaginary and it’s not. It’s quite real; all too Real. 2.) We could say They’re not Really worthy of our time.

Both One and Two are the very things they do to us and the very things we do to them.

Will there ever be a connection. Only Time and le Tube will tell. What is Art. I’m not sure that we’re sure. But I think we’re Living It as fast as we can.”

– For Arts Journal: Tim Barrus, Cinematheque Films’ Loft, Place Vendôme.

And this is now our official youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/walkerartcenter.