one sheep looked up

An old acquaintance of mine saw my letter in the straight and wrote me this:

"I just noticed your letter about art/business. Three tangential thoughts occurred to me that you might find of some small interest.

First, I went to first year art school in 67-68 when it was still downtown. On fridays we had a history class, occasionally a field trip, and sometimes a guest artist speaker. One speaker was Jack Wise, a guy whose work I liked and whom I later came to know on Texada Island. He spoke and then asked for questions. One was, 'how do you price your work and how do you make a living at art?' His reply, rather sadly, was that every artist he knew who actually succeeded spent more time marketing, schmoozing, and hustling than they did producing art. The class went pretty quiet and glum. He noticed this and said that he was only telling us the sad truth.

Second, I have heard from numerous artists that the surest way to get a Canada Council Grant is to show that you don't really need one. In other words, they are overly cautious and give grants to proven successes. A strange logic.

Third, there still is a fairly healthy art scene, society, support network here. Some of it is apparent on Culture Crawl especially in some of the more obscure ateliers. One of the recurring conversations I have heard over the last few years is how often artists are giving up because whatever vision they had just won't sell. This may be because the work isn't of a high enough standard, or it doesn't receive enough exposure, or the potential market is not enlightened enough to appreciate. But for whatever reason among these or others, until the society appreciates the unique contributions and is willing to provide some funding, it is a brutally hard way to try and make a living. I don't see such a funding attitude changing anytime soon unless there is a much more broad social change."


What a strange dichotomy! There is funding but only for already successful artists while other artists are giving up because there is not enough funding, plus, it's not your work that lets you succeed but your schmoozing.

I give up, it's just too confusing.

Sheep Don't Look Up

This is what the Georgia Straight printed:

Letters
Only the naive don't see art as a business
Publish Date: November 22, 2007

Re: Arts Notes [Nov. 15-22]

Treat art like a business? Excuse me, but this is what young artists are being trained to do as part and parcel of being an artist.

Whereas becoming an artist a few years ago meant learning history, technique, and mediums, it now means networking, competition, business proposals, and commodification. Artists have been bought off by the Canada Council and other arts councils for so long they no longer have any integrity as a community.

> Lenore Herb / Vancouver

This is what I sent last week:

only naive etc.

Last week you printed the first and last statements in my letter and left out the points I made to substantiate my almost outrageous claims.

1. that the peer group system of the CC is flawed and
2. artists in Vancouver have been bought out by millions of dollars in Olympic money which will keep them silent when it comes to eco/social issues.

This is what I originally wrote:

Re: Arts ire for canadian taxpayers federation

Treat art like a business?, excuse me, but this is what young artists are being trained to do as part and parcel of being an artist. To think the right wing isn't going to use this in it's fight to destroy free will or the depiction of free will is delusional. Whereas becoming an artist a few years ago meant learning history, technique and mediums, it now means networking, competition, business proposals and tragically commodification. It exists as an institution now, there are few, if any, real alternative galleries, people get shows through who they know and who they are connected to, it's all about 'networking' with your friends. The so called 'peer' process is in reality a highly networked group using the Canada Council, which is part of the institution of art 'business'. Use your logic, a small group of 'artists' in charge of distributing hundreds of thousands of dollars, is going to sit there and give up all their personal prejudices, opinions and connected friends to make a fair decision? I don't think so, they would have be bordering on sainthood to do that, which does not describe the majority of people in the arts. Artists have been bought off by the Canada Council for so long they no longer have any integrity as a community, they have sold out to the Olympics and every other source of government or business funding that requires them to be eco/socially silent.

The Proposal

A lot of you won't believe me, but the Canada Council was started with agents from the British Secret Service. You have to remember your history here, because the sixties were not just a time of flowers, peace and lsd, it was a time of radical political change. There were socialist agitators around the world, it looked at one point, that the movement of the people for a just society was going to win. Artists were the most visually active, we were coming out of the McCarthy era, the american right wing hated artists and there was an enormous cross border cultural exchange going on all over the world. When the Canada Council for the Arts started we were still at Her Majesty's Service, we were still in the cold war, England was an old power and something had to be done about those commies in the National Film Board. More on this later in, "Understanding the Complicity of Artists" which is still under constuction.

Meanwhile I would like to apologize for likening chronically multi-funded artists to pigs feeding at the trough of the Canada Council. What is actually happening is that there are big huge fat pigs sitting right in the trough with a few mean leanies that they allow to get the occasional feed in order to remain loyal.

Noone seems to recognize the damage this does to other artists, their work or even recognition of the enormous output of artists everywhere. The system discourages art as a career, proping it up with a network of art welfare to the chosen few who have volunteered to maintain this selective structure, that has nothing to do with good or bad art.

So my proposal, which follows, for a women's art history project, was turned down, for whatever reason they thought of this time. The excuse for turning down the previous eco/art proposal was it "wasn't conceptualized enough". I wrote them back and asked what they specifically meant by this vague catch all phrase and they haven't answered, yet, it has been about a month. They did this to me last year, as well. I think the problem is that they don't know what they mean, they really are arrogant.

PART C - DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM OF WORK

My project is to research and document the women identified below, as well as Marsha Stone, Rene Rodin and Marie Baker, to achieve a better historical record that reflects a more accurate view of west coast culture, by producing one hour per artist of edited material, in order to prepare a proposal for the production of a film and/or digital media that would include more women artists from this period and to exhibit and disseminate this material.

From a historical perspective, prior to Canada Council funding, Vancouver was a community of artists, working together, organizing shows, festivals and readings, perhaps 'artists colony' would be the best description, it was a cool place to be in the early sixties, having attracted literary luminaries like Malcolm Lowry and for many years before that a pretty hip music scene. At this time there was equality for women artists, who were not inhibited in producing their art, for example, prior to Intermedia, Jone Payne did pyrotechnics at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Jeanie Kamins made community art, Maxine Gadd and Judith Copithorn, readings at the Sound Gallery.

By introducing a structure for distribution of funding, sold to us under the guise of more freedom to make art, the Canada Council undermined the community by removing the incentive for the production of art for the self, and replaced it with production of art for the state, and a funding hierarchy, dominated by men of course, this being the sexist sixties. At that point, alternative art became institutionalized, artists economically controlled by their "peers", through the funding. 

At the Visual Poetry Festival at UBC in 1967, all the media attention was diverted to Michael Morris and Gary Lee Nova, the "stars" of Intermedia. Other male artists of Intermedia went on to teaching in major educational facilities, young women training as art workers were subjected to this same attitude. Most of the contemporary women artists, were ignored, forgotten or marginalized by the nature of their work which was often organic. Helen Goodwin, exhausted by the years of unsuccessful funding for her dance group, eventually walked into the ocean. The traditions of that aesthetic and subsequent power structure continue to this day. Conveniently, one history is written and another is entirely forgotten with the aid of Canada Council funded art history books.


Many of the women I knew from that earlier period, could be classified as "behind the scenes" women. The vibrant artists scene could not have existed without these women, who made up the audience, cooked and provided food and support, gave birth to the children, contributed ideas, worked on the projects without getting credit, but most of all, were discouraged by the prevailing chauvinist climate to be artists in their own right. Some women became wives or partners and due to their connection in this way, seemed to garner more credibility. The other way for women media artists to become accepted was to become part of the groups who were offshoots of Intermedia, such as the Western Front or the Video Inn and later, during the seventies, Pumps. It is interesting to note that while the "men" belong to "schools" of art during this period, artists like Gathie Falk and Martha Sturdy stand out as individuals.

Women artists working in the fields of social justice or textiles were not considered important. Their work was not seen as a contribution to art or culture, but instead was taken for granted. One example of these women was Melissa Gibbs who was part of the New Era Social Club collective along with Roy Kiyooka and Glen Lewis and who worked at the Georgia Straight during the early seventies. She assisted Dan McLeod during a very difficult period when he was close to losing a newspaper that is now highly successful and cannot be ignored as part of the west coast identity. Her presence within the art scene is difficult to define, but the whole culture of the late sixties and seventies in Vancouver is impossible to keep within the bounds of art history, but is more suitable to an anthro-social scrutiny. For instance, why does the Museum of Anthropology contain works of art?

Melissa recently died and within two months of her death every vestige of her life has been erased. Many of her old friends were not notified of her death, and, with the exception of the antique dealer's cherry picking, the remaining antiques, collectables and works of art that she had amassed for 40 years were thrown into bags, hauled out to the back yard and sold in a yard sale, what ever was left over was thrown back in the house or left outside in garbage bags in the rain. Her collection wasn't something a million people couldn't replace, but it was the way she made the essence or quality or that object become more understood, in juxtaposition to the objects around. This ability to "appreciate" is also what she did for the many artists and musicians she knew. It was possible to have made some record for what she contributed, but because she was not "recognized" her life was unimportant, her estate decimated by people who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. The pieces of her that are left in peoples memory will soon also be gone. It was amidst the broken pieces of Melissa's house that I achingly wandered through, in a search for a bead loom that she had designed and that I found by some miracle in the bottom of a closet in the wreckage of her sewing room, on the second day of my search.

It is these women's depth of relationship to the community and their art form that I wish to translate into the digital medium. These women are full of stories, they deserve to be passed on.

The project will include a trip to Porpoise Bay in August, to interview Jone Pane, to Victoria in July, for Marsha Stone and to the interior of B.C. for Marie Baker in September. Some time will be needed to spend with all of these artists, their friends and their families. I have included an honorarium for each of the artists or their families to compensate for their time.

I will be acquiring documentation and conducting interviews prior to the filming. This grant will assist me in my pre production research through the subsistence portion of the budget.

bite critics

(COMING SOON:
UNDERSTANDING THE COMPLICITY OF ARTISTS
You can thank Larissa Lai for inspiring this one..............)

My first love, David Wisdom, has this social group that meets every Wednesday at a certain bar. It's kind of a big boys business club, and the business is art. In fact, these guys inspired me to create the term, "Art Businessman Bastard Degree". Don't get me wrong, I respect these men, it's a hard world out there and you have to make a living somehow, but at the same time, there is something sinisterly wrong in that success, that is almost too hard to explain.

Should artists and critics be friends?
Thursday January 18, 2007
The Guardian

It might be different for music or film critics, but for an art critic in Britain in the 21st century it has become an urgent question: critics have become so close to artists, they practically do their laundry.
Jonathan Jones, art critic

Critics and artists live within a narrow geographical and cultural environment, which is reinforced by the art-school tenet: "If you want to make it, go and live in London." Two recent articles about Hockney included the critics' musings on their experiences of travelling up t'north to interview him as if they were travelling to an alien, philistine world. The whole thing is self-defining and self-reinforcing, and it is hardly surprising that the contemporary visual arts seem so stale, unremarkable and repetitive.
Fifibear

Artists and writers on art are always going to know each other, and it would be sad and impracticable if two groups of people with the same basic interest didn't. It's no use complaining that this tempts the writers to be uncritical. Temptation is endemic, and it's part of a writer's job to rise above it.
digit

Critics know the artists they write about because they are all in the same world, orbiting around like satellites.
Freddie8

Critics are "friends" with most of the artists they write about because it is only their "friends" whom they seem willing to define as artists in the first place.
Ortho

A friendship between a critic and an artist could provide a deeper understanding of the artist's work, an insight they may not otherwise gain. It's the responsibility of the critic to remain honest to their profession and not be corrupted.
Smalblogger

Reading art critics is a waste of time: they never say anything intelligent about art and they never highlight a new, interesting artist. They are in cahoots with dealers and their artists.
petrifiedprozac

SURVIVOR: Canada Council

We owe Jeff Probst and Mark Burnett a huge vote of thanks for the way they have encapsulated the human condition, present in all echelons of society. How much of every day is taken up by office politics? A lot, not including the stress and verbal abuse agonized over after work. I think that is one of the reasons I work alone and it's also from artists that I learned to make mean and nasty remarks. I was so naive when I started making art, influenced by the community art practice of the sixties, my delusion, was that arts funding wasn't controlled by the same despotic nepotism that runs everything else. What looks like a free lunch, isn't really.

To be honest, I've been making these same criticisms for years, which is why I may not get a Canada Council grant again. For instance, another critic had his application summarily dismissed by a "success story" who was on the jury and it was rejected before the jury even started deliberation. To assume that politics, cliques or influence doesn't exist is to be extremely naive. It is not about art, it is about control of the money. Any criticism of the Canada Council is looked upon as a complete betrayal by the arts community. One does not question or argue with these people, if one wishes to have a career in the arts.

I think it's time for more disclosure, currently, artists are given no answers as to why they are turned down. The decisions are made in a secret consultation process by a "peer" jury that is never made public, chosen by undisclosed Council employees. I think that when a jury awards, the reasons for that decision should also be available so that other unsuccessful "peers" and the public can see why it was awarded. Is this so difficult? Every juror I have ever talked to has told me how much they learned from being on the jury.

1. Artists who have their applications turned down, should be entitled to commentary from each of the jurors on why their work failed to meet the jurors approval and

2. have the option of having their project listed on the Canada Council web site.

3. Jurors for each category should have their names listed on the Canada Council site and an archive of jurors lists should also be available.

beware of greeks bearing gifts

One of the biggest problems with the present structure is that it tends to leave out individual artists who aren't established within a clique or a group. A lot of artists/writers/creators tend to work on their own, they need that time to themselves to think/work things through. Groups tend to weld a little more power and being in a group is a stronger structure for an artist, but not always possible. It is often the nature of the work and/or the personality of the artist that sets the artist apart. We can't all schmooze our way to "success".

Once the group is established, usually the funding is as well, as long as those applications go in with the attendant bible of rhetoric. I use the word, usually, because funding for groups who produced social and environmental justice media were eliminated when Tom Sherman came in as head of arts and media and changed the name to Media Arts. It was during a period when there were a lot of cutbacks. For students of history, does any of this sound familiar?

but what do we actually get for our money?

We get great value from theatre, dance, writing and music, it's the media arts that turned into coal, video art being the most corrupted. As one writer girlfriend put it, "art about art about artists........" there was more but it would be rude, but take for instance this example she gave: a group of mean nasty people find the dead body of a homeless person in the alley next to their media centre where they all have paid jobs, they then proceed to make a video financed by the Canada Council, of a group of BEAUTIFUL, mean nasty people who find a dead body in the alley murder mystery.

I think the above is self explanatory in a "what's wrong with this picture" sort of way.

You can't expect people to comment in this forum, without destroying their careers, so I'll try to report the gist of others opinions without including the expletives.

"success stories" by the canada council

so who are all the rest of us, "failure stories"? I see that the CC has beefed up its site somewhat since my original "bite the hand" posting, with a fine display of their "success stories". What we need now is an academic, who gets paid for this sort of thing, to dig into the archives and give us the total amounts these artists have been funded over the years to see who really is a "success story".

The site has also brought the media arts grants awards up to date, not so yet with the rest. We still don't have listings of past and present juries and their backgrounds or backgrounds of artists who have no search results.

I don't know how it has been for all of us failures, for myself, it was fortunate that my focus moved to the environment and the subject of garbage. And as this blog began as a result of the non funding of eco art to illustrate the destructive results of any incineration project, I will elucidate my "failure" as an artist. For two years (amongst the 6 I spent fighting for waste reduction in the GVRD) I was fighting the refuse derived fuel plant planned for the Strathcona neighbourhood by the engineers of Vancouver and the GVRD. They had already colluded to install the stinking, pollluting so called "waste to energy" garbage incinerator in Burnaby and now they wanted to squeeze unsorted garbage from North and West Vancouver in addition to our own, into toxic fuel pellets for burning in some other unfortunate community. If you think the Downtown Eastside is bad now can you imagine what it would be like with some facility like that next to the community gardens and garbage trucks gunning down into this area from all directions.

in the beginning...

it was during the Trudeau era, lots of money was being spent on social initiatives and we thought it was a great idea to receive money from the government to support art, but it wasn't until a few years later that the effect of this government funding on the arts community started to become really apparent. I mean, how can you, as an artist, criticize government policies with your mouth stuffed with greasy chicken. The government knew this when it started to fund experimental / social / media art. Who is going to agitate against government policies when that's what pays the bills every month. This should be obvious to everyone.

buy the complicity of artists? no problem

and then find out that you don't get the money anyway

…...Promises were made without the money in place. And I think that when the money wasn't in place and wasn't forthcoming, there was a total lack of communication with the arts community at large.” - David Pay, artistic director of the new Music on Main series
......So are the promises being lived up to in terms of four years of performance? Absolutely not.… - Heather Redfern, executive director of the Vancouver East Cultural Centre
.......I was talking to a colleague the other day about the fact the Cultural Olympiad is not starting till 2008 and it was promised to start in 2006. So that's very telling right there. Another concern is that if you are part of the Olympics and you have sponsorships for your piece of work or your company, you can't actually acknowledge them because your company or show sponsors cannot be associated with the Olympics. Only the Olympic sponsors can be. So where does that leave us? What, do we blow off our show sponsors? It just seems completely not thought through. And with the [provincial] Liberal budget, I'm not sure where the money's going to come from to include local arts in their [the Olympics] programming, - Diane Brown, artistic director and cofounder of Ruby Slippers Theatre
By Brian Lynch and Janet Smith Publish Date: March 1, 2007, Georgia Straight

And only two years earlier...

So, in this context, arts is a $96-million-plus deal at the 2010 Olympics. Most of that money is currently administered by Taylor, who was director of the City of Vancouver's Office of Cultural Affairs for 16 years. He and colleague Marti Kulich (ceremonies expert) are the only two VANOC staffers dedicated to arts and culture, out of a total staff of about 90.
Taylor and Kulich are a small team with a big job. There are no supporting committees or advisory groups yet. While the VANOC-based arts initiatives are still on their marks, the starting pistol has already fired for other Olympic arts initiatives.
For example, the dense-and- confusing new arts funding. It comes in six pots.
Pot of money No. 1 is in the hands of VANOC, and is worth $96 million. That's the money for the four-year Cultural Olympiad, the Torino Olympics closing ceremonies, education and youth programs, the torch relay, and the 2010 opening and closing ceremonies.
Pot of money No. 2 is distributed through the new nonprofit ArtsNow. This organization, which is completely separate from VANOC, must distribute $12 million before July 2007. The mandate: to increase the capacity of B.C. arts organizations so they can participate fully in the Olympics.
Pot of money No. 3 is the Spirit of BC Arts Fund, $20 million administered by the B.C. Arts Council. Its mandate also includes capacity-building and the commissioning of new works.
Three other pots of money are not formally Olympics-related, but coincidentally arrived just in time for the event: the B.C. government's $25-million gift to the Vancouver Foundation; the additional $3 million per year to the B.C. Arts Council; plus the $6 million in increases to Vancouver's Office of Cultural Affairs.
In spite of flashy new money and human resources, at least one arts advocate is watching closely. "At past events, the danger is that the money gets diverted from cultural programming to sport [as budgets run over]," Heather Redfern, executive director of the Alliance for Arts and Culture, told the Straight. "We will be vigilant in making sure that doesn't happen."
Art has a history of getting steamrollered by sport at the Olympics, as Anne Popma points out in her excellent research piece, "Potential Impact of the 2010 Olympic Games on Local Arts and Culture in the Sea-to-Sky Corridor: Lessons Learned From Previous Host Communities". In Sydney, for example, the arts budget at the 2000 games was reduced from $51 million to $21 million.
(Popma's 58-page report, which was commissioned by the Whistler Arts Council, should be required reading for any artist or arts organization hoping to capitalize on, resist, or spoof the 2010 games. It's available at www.whistlerartscouncil.com/updates/pdf/research.pdf.)
(The above pdf seems to be no longer available.)

However, the arts at the 2010 Olympics might be in trouble if their support depends on a strong arts passion among members of VANOC. Oddly, not one of the 20 members on the committee is primarily an arts person, according to the biographies they submitted to Vancouver2010 .com. ........Arts planning for the 2010 Olympics is just a sketch right now. But with more than $120 million in new arts funding to be spent in the next five years, the hurricane is poised to hit our province hard.

Olympic arts plan sketchy, Arts By Pieta Woolley
Publish Date: May 19, 2005, Georgia Straight

who are you?

I'm not lazy, I have chronic fatigue and a school of life education, which makes me tired, of all the rhetoric, which sometimes allows bad art to be good and vice versa, so I compensate, by trying to focus on the most critical things affecting our planet, ie: the human psyche and its ensuing compulsive greed. In this I find a great source of inspiration, in both ignoring it and exploring it.

The Great Pudding

For some, the sacred geometry of the Canada Council is in the shape of a trough and it stands to reason that it is filled with the universal pudding.

the Proof is in the Pudding, n'est pas? it's all men,

but for the complicit token woman. There are women who were contemporaries of these artists, but their work is not in the "collection". Although the one thing this show exemplifies is the way that through this system, the men are thereby grouped while the woman stands out as an individual.

Exhibition/Opening Date: January 12, 2007
THE MONOCHROMATIC FIELD: WORKS FROM THE COLLECTION
Belkin Gallery, 1825 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC. V6T-1Z2, UBC
The Monochromatic Field also debuts the second project by LOCATION: a roving collective for the acquisition of visual art for permanent collections. This collective donates work by emerging artists who are not yet represented in public collections by soliciting one hundred dollars from fifty individuals for the purchase of the art. The work entering the Belkin collection is a new series of monochromes by Arabella Campbell that stand as a central catalyst for this exhibition. Campbell’s work has been made specifically for the context of the Belkin Art Gallery and addresses its architecture and building materials.
Other artists in the exhibition include Art & Language, Ben, Tom Burrows, Kenneth Coutts-Smith, Image Bank, Ray Johnson, Gary Lee-Nova, Eric Metcalfe, Stephen Prina, Ron Terada, Glenn Toppings, Vincent Trasov, and Ian Wallace.

Apocalypso Now

A call for the reform of the Canada Council.
It may be AGony. Sort of like attacking the catholic church.
Lets be realistic, no utopian structure could exist in this society and
If you are ... the trough looks very inviting.

bite the hand

A feminist critique of the Canada Council and the funding system that can make or break an artist in Canada. Too often, one is afraid to address injustice for fear of destroying one's career. So what have I got to lose?

The following is a response to reportage in the Georgia Straight on arts in B.C. In the Nov. 2 issue there were two seemingly unrelated articles in the arts section, that both had references to survival as an artist.

From a historical perspective, prior to Canada Council funding, Vancouver was a community of artists, working together, organizing shows, festivals and readings, perhaps 'artists colony' has some meaning to people. At this time there was equality for women artists, who were not inhibited in producing their art, for example, Jone Payne did pyrotechnics at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Jeanie Kamins made community art, Maxine Gadd and Judith Copithorn, readings at the Sound Gallery.

By introducing a structure for distribution of funding, sold to us under the guise of more freedom to make art, the C.C. destroyed the community and replaced it with a hierarchy, dominated by men of course, this being the sexist sixties. At that point, alternative art became institutionalized, artists economically controlled by their "peers", through the funding. My theory, that the best government control mechanism for any free thinking or radical group is to find the morally weak and set them up as the representatives. Once created, this machine will self replicate.

At the Visual Poetry Festival at UBC in 1967, all the media attention was diverted to Michael Morris and Gary Lee Nova, the "stars" of Intermedia. Other male artists of Intermedia went on to teaching in major educational facilities, young women training as art workers were subjected to this same attitude. Most of the contemporary women artists, were ignored, forgotten or marginalized by the nature of their work which was often organic. Helen Goodwin, exhausted by the years of unsuccessful funding for her dance group, eventually walked into the ocean. The traditions of that aesthetic and subsequent power structure continue to this day. Conveniently, one history is written and another is entirely forgotten with the aid of Canada Council funded art history books. 


Many of the women I knew from that earlier period, could be classified as "behind the scenes" women. The vibrant artists scene could not have existed without these women, who made up the audience, cooked and provided food and support, contributed ideas, worked on the projects without getting credit but were really discouraged by the prevailing chauvinist climate to be artists in their own right. Some women became wives or partners and due to their connection in this way, seemed to garner more credibility. The other way for women media artists to become accepted was to become part of the groups who were offshoots of Intermedia, such as the Western Front or the Video Inn and later, during the seventies, Pumps. It is interesting to note that while the "men" belong to "schools" of art during this period, artists like Gathie Faulk and Martha Sturdy stand out as individuals.

Women artists working in the fields of social justice or textiles were not considered important. Their work was not seen as a contribution to art or culture, but instead was taken for granted. One example of these women was Melissa Gibbs who was part of the New Era Social Club collective along with Roy Kiyooka and Glen Lewis and who worked at the Georgia Straight during the early seventies. She assisted Dan McLeod during a very difficult period when he was close to losing a newspaper that is now highly successful and cannot be ignored as part of the west coast identity. Her presence within the art scene is difficult to define, but the whole culture of the late sixties and seventies in Vancouver is impossible to keep within the bounds of art history, but is more suitable to an anthro-social scrutiny. For example, why does the Museum of Anthropology contain works of art?

The Complicity of Artists Funding in All Of This

This year, not including matching grants from other funding sources, the Canada Council gave the largest artist run groups, Western Front Society, a privately owned institution, $221,500 and Video Inn/Satellite Video Exchange over $200,000. They, along with artists and and other gallery administrator/curators connected to them, have dominated "alternative art" for over 30 years, in Vancouver, and along with their contemporaries in other parts of Canada, through the artist run gallery system.

Although some galleries try to remain independent and some people in ARGs are socially responsible, the lure of accessible money and guaranteed success is far too tempting to ignore. Why bite the hand that feeds? Now, the $50 million in "supplementary grants to help arts organizations that already receive council funding" (Heather Redfern, executive director of Vancouver’s Alliance for Arts and Culture), reward is heaped on reward.

"Redfern pointed out that the $50 million is just a short-term commitment to two years’ worth of funding. What’s needed next, she said, is to make the $50 million a permanent increase, and then beef it up with the added $100 million arts groups say is needed to sustain and grow culture in this country." (Straight-Nov2, 2006) (Organizations can start applying for the supplementary grants through www.canadacouncil.ca/ beginning Monday [November 6]; the deadline is December 15. Their proposed two-year plans will be assessed by a jury of peers.)

"The other third of the new money is being earmarked for increased support to individual artists, and for both improving public access to the arts and helping Canadian troupes tour the country and internationally. “There’s been an explosion of touring in Canada, both internationally and within the country, but funds have not increased to match that,” said a supportive Redfern. “I’ve been on a [council] touring jury and it’s heartbreaking.”> Janet Smith - Georgia Straight, Nov2, 2006

So, if the present system is fair, why are the majority of full time dedicated artists and musicians still starving, while art industry salaried or successful professionals get the biggest grants?

There is no longer any artistic free will, as (Ron) Burnett (President, ECIAD) says, "We're trying to resituate the process of creativity within an understanding of how industry works. For example, if they want to be a painter, they have to understand how the gallery system works." > Janet Smith - Georgia Straight, Nov2, 2006

What is this system? It is the funding industry run by arts organizations through the "jury of peers". Artists are no longer trained to be artists, but 'art businessmen', using connections to "sell" their work to the galleries, networking their way to the top to become "established". Coupled with matching grants from other funding bodies, these "established" artists are eligible for huge amounts of money, for BC this year, for example from the C.C. alone, Jeff Carter $45,000, Claudia Minerva Culos-Medina $59.000, Julie Andreyev $60,000, David Rimmer $60,000, Jean Routhier $60,000, Steven Sanderson $50,000, Paul Wong $60,000 and others for a total of $796,486 for individual artists in the Media Arts.

True, media art costs a lot of money, but the costs of production in digital media has significantly decreased and a lot of equipment and facilities are already paid for, supposedly for artists use. But this is always designated by a careful bureaucracy, to artists who bring in more money through their projects. Media artists and musicians should have better access to the tools of production based on need, that doesn't include the inherent politics of these groups and pre-approved art. For a while, there was some social justice funding to media for community work, but that ended when the "Arts and Media" got changed to the "Media Arts", under Tom Sherman. When the C.C. gets its funding cut, "it" will consolidate. You can bet that when Harper starts hacking, it won't be the funding to well established groups.


However, if an artist is "established", why go to the CC for money? Wouldn't an "established" artist have more luck raising funds from other industry sources?

The $17.4 million in grants to B.C. from the C.C. for 2005 - 2006 was represented by a total of 106 jurors from BC. That's $174,000 aprox. (or more?)designated by each juror and well worth having some connection to. We are specifically told, from an industry viewpoint, to network, as part of our job as an artist. Having someone from your group working at the C.C. probably also helps.

"The figures are quite clear," said FranÃcois Lachapelle, head of the section, on the line to the Straight from Ottawa. "Only 15 or 10 years ago, we were able to fund roughly one artist out of three applicants on the senior level. Now we cannot assist more than one artist out of 10 applicants." The council's proposed solution is to cut the pie up in a radically new way. The most striking of the suggested changes is at the top of the system. The richest funds handed out under the current arrangement--$34,000 grants, each intended to fund a year of work by an established visual artist--would be replaced by a group of $50,000 allotments, each renewable over three years for a total of $150,000 apiece, a drool-inducing prospect for most working artists. - Brian Lynch, Straight, Nov. 2004

Peggy Campbell, a filmmaker who is trying to be helpful, gives workshops on how to make your application "stand out from the rest". It's competition, using all the rules of cutthroat business, not for the sake of art, but rather the art form of bureaucracy, clothing the machinations of control.

Curators/artists are churned out by the dozen every year, locked into this system. Society has spent a lot of money on the children they love, to become artists, there has to be some sort of industry to take them. Unfortunately, the industrial commodity is our most sacred creative quality. Why has art become sublimated to this atrocity?

"But at the same time, the economies necessary to support it remain fragile, and questions about representation and identity – “Whose art is it, anyway?” – are constant reminders of the vagaries of art’s integral “value.”" - Melanie O'Brian. While the eagerly awaited, "Vancouver Art and Economies", co-published with Artspeak, ("one of Canada’s most influential artist-run centres, assesses the “state of the arts” in Vancouver" - Arsenal Pulp), is not yet available through the public library's reference section, I doubt it will address the inequities I have touched on above but will focus on Vancouver's lusty photo conceptual industry.

Under the C.C.'s soviet style socialism, you have to focus on their industrial structure as a means of survival as an artist. It requires time and inclination to become a robot in their system, which is ironic as the WF has 6 artists in residence rendering that very thing. Another linguistic irony is the use of the word "swarm" and "INfest" for the annual get together of government funded artist run galleries. "InFest is about infesting the world with these new models of galleries," (Keith) Wallace says, as the meeting breaks up and Western Front members clatter around in the kitchen at the back of their building. The sun has set. It's time for dinner. - "Artists at the Helm", Robin Laurence, Straight, Feb. 2004

Some artists will get a lifetime of support because they are closely networked into this structure. They know how to get the grants. Look at the records. The protective urban mythology surrounding the grant system is "a crap shoot", "roll of the dice", "luck of the draw", "I just do it to keep in practise". Why fill out an application form, which takes significant work, why not just get a ticket? A lottery system would actually work if it was fair, putting previous winners out of the draw.

Finally, there is no transparency in the way the money is distributed, C.C. reports are always two years behind, you never find out who are on these juries, unless you applied for a grant and make a request in writing after you get the results. What are they ashamed of? You'd think they would be proud of these awards, publish the profiles and projects of the artists and organizations on the web along with the juries that selected them. Artists who have been unsuccessful should also have the right to have their project published to see what we have missed in our cultural landscape.

Is it too much to ask that all funding bodies publish this information, why must there be such a veil of secrecy if we are truly amongst our "peers"?

INSPIRATION FOR "BITE THE HAND" - The Hat Creek Coal Project

*This project has been turned down by the Canada Council, because it was not "conceptualized enough".

HAT CREEK / Environmental Intervention as ART

I work in the field of avant-garde /experimental filmmaking and media arts. I have participated in the founding and operations of art organizations, film cooperatives and environmental groups. I have a significant body of work that documents the cultural scene in Vancouver from 1978 to 1985 and the social justice/environmental movements from 1984 - 1990. I am presently engaged in lyrical film work and exploring technical solutions and new media applications for the presentation of a synthesis of my art, film, video and social justice/environmental activism.

My transition/transformation from community producer/artist to environmental activist began manifesting when, in the summer of 1981, I was asked to document the proceedings of the symposium being held at the site of BC Hydro's proposed low grade sulfurous coal burning conversion to electricity plant in the Hat Creek valley just North of Cache Creek, in British Columbia. If this project had gone ahead, it would have cast a pall over an up to this point unpolluted, natural paradise, populated by organic farmers and cattle ranchers and would have filled one of the heritage sites of small valleys settled by early pioneers, with ash, clogging a natural spring course. The symposium was held outside in the semi desert with wind sometimes coursing through the microphone, an technical situation typical of what I have experienced through many years of punk rock videography.

The speakers were all experts in their field, this was the second time (the first being the Royal Commission into Uranium Mining) I had experienced environmental assessment through live witnesses, but in the context of Hat Creek, to Witness took on a broader meaning. My experience, as an artist to community producer to community activist to environmental activist transiting from one to another has made me a critical specialist as a result. The extraordinary daily experience of an self taught intellectual will create a mode of practice that will not follow traditionally accepted structures.

When I analyze my work, I see that it fulfills a greater collective process, one that uses participatory social activism in an organized way as a transformative practice. The proceedings were saved, because I as an artist saw the value in what needed to be recorded. I realize that this has been a driving instinct throughout my work.

My subjectivity was an open process that allowed me to construct a personal theory, that my work would increase peoples understanding of the real world and change the ideologies around natural resources. As my knowledge of environmental pollution increased, I became more aware of how I was situated to take part in this transformation. My subjective role as an artist allowed my art to become an affective apparatus for social change.

The wild and untouched beauty of this singular valley designated as an ash dump, became the scene of an annual "Hat Creek Gathering", where a range of cultural and social groups came together but which included a strong luddite contingent opposed to video cameras and any technology which brought in the material world. It was ten years later, after the rules had been relaxed that I then filmed the next representation of transformative significance, the building of a sweat lodge, demonstrated by Eagle Star, a native of Alberta. The gathering has continued and remains a culturally significant occasion for a community of people who have a belief system based on the protection of the environment, every year the people of the Bonaparte attend, bringing salmon which is roasted at the central fire, elders attend, prayers are said.

The valley itself is on the traditional land of the Bonaparte, situated in and around the Hat Creek Valley area. The organizers of the Hat Creek environmental protection group always informed and included the Bonaparte in any action. The first year of the Hat Creek gathering, the following year after the symposium, had representatives from tribes all over B.C.. It was a celebration, as participatory social activism created enough opposition to the development to put a stop to this looming environmental disaster.

I have always had a critical feminist perspective of art history focused by the way my knowledge of that history was produced, direct experience, and it is the subject of another work which I will not describe further at this time. My critique is always directly involved in my work/art, a motivation that seeks systems of relations that have manifested similar understandings. My nature is to function as a highly individual motivator within a collaborative process. My coworkers will necessarily have an understanding of the experience of creating within the patriarchy of our cultural structure.

I feel that with this work, the transformative process is taken one step further and my role, as director, has been situated through the circumstance and proclivity of a radical organic catalyst. My artistic interpretation will find the subjectivity of the participants and demonstrate the change that has/will take place as a result of the way the art production has been specified.

In order for the visual material I have collected to serve as an affective apparatus of art activism, it needs footage of the present, 15 years after the last videography, the building of the sweat lodge. I intend to review and edit all existing footage to present to the Gathering. The Bonaparte will act as interlocutor to honour the process and honour the ancestors, show a community involved in sharing the information, teaching what is important and why it is being presented to the people.

The Bonaparte will receive an honorarium for their participation, to go towards the establishment of an environmental reference website archive to use in the event of further threats to the valley, as well as the symposium archives, available on multiple dvds for local distribution, educating and preparing the people in advance. As energy reserves become more sought after, the threat of environmental devastation will always be present.

I will then conduct interviews with these original organizers/participants and their thoughts around successful and unsuccessful environmental actions and their political /cultural lifestyles as contributive factors to environmental and social initiatives. The range of my experimental collaboration with other artists such as my work with bill bissett and Bill Roberts in my film "the wizard uv time" encompassing primitivist fantasy to art bands such as AKA who demonstrated extreme theorist principles and extensive videography of music, poetry and social justice, hopefully give me the experience to create a transformative film from this footage.

This work will demonstrate how I became an activist as a result of my experience as a cultural worker. I have selected this particular subject out of the hundreds of hours of my videography for the reason that it is a signifier to the work I began in earnest 6 years later, leaving the art establishment to do something I considered more important, then to return full circle back to activism through the production of art. The completed work will cover the span of 25 years and it will show how collective action has created this work of art. Once it is completed, it can go back to the community in an accessible form to generate further social and cultural changes.