NYC Junta

If change is a constant, then does the city have any real identity or soul? Or is change not constant? Is anything about the city permanent?

“The Vanishing City” is an upcoming documentary about New York’s real estate market leading up to the Great Recession of Our Time, which “exposes the real politic behind the alarming disappearance of New York’s beloved neighborhoods, the truth about its finance-dominated economy, and the myth of ‘inevitable change.’” It argues that the change over the last 30 years has not been natural but has been driven by policies favoring commercial and luxury development at the expense of affordable housing. In the process of driving out the middle and working classes, New York has lost some of the dynamism and grit that defined its identity.

“Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York” is a blog with much the same theme (it’s not clear if the blogger is involved in the film, although the film links to the blog). The writer worries that things ain’t what they used to be, that the city loses its character as the rents go higher, that art and love are trampled by the pursuit of money and things. This was where we read about Patti Smith’s comments about New York, that young artists should try Detroit instead… or Poughkeepsie.

I wonder if the city is vanishing, or if we are just allowing other people to determine what changes will happen. How can we empower ourselves to control the future of our city?

It’s been nearly a month, but here, finally, is a wrap-up of the last discussion, with my own recent thoughts on the subject intertwined…

How will musicians and writers, and other artists and tradesmen whose work is now primarily digital, make a living now that their product can be so easily and freely acquired?

Jeremy poses that the barriers to entry have been removed. Any musician with GaragePro can become world-famous: “The limits are only on ability, marketing savvy and drive.” He argues that the business model of the big labels is defunct, and I’ll grant that Big Music has lost its former sway, but can the model really be outdated if there are still commercial pop superstars making big money with the help of mega-amplified media attention?

But ok, bands don’t make much money from their albums anyway, it’s the record companies who take that home. The artist makes money on the tour, right?. That was true for a band like the Grateful Dead, who made all their money from touring and whose records sold poorly – but new, anonymous artists cannot conjure up legions of fans to follow them cross-country. According to EJ, who should know these things, the labels put the young artists out on tour and take most of the returns for themselves, leaving the artists with the merchandise take. “If you’re out on tour and you’re not selling merch, you’re not making money.”

It seems there’s no money to be made for anyone anymore selling CDs. Around the table, no man could remember the last time he’d bought one. Digital music purchases were also rare. All admitted to downloading free music, often illegally, though some said they had dialled back from the days when they could fill an entire hard drive in an afternoon. “I’ve got way more music than I could ever conceivably listen to.”

One participant brought up software downloads as a comparison. “I had a project for which I needed to have Adobe Dreamweaver. Well I looked it up and it’s four hundred bucks! But within minutes through a simple Google search, I was able to find the torrent, follow the crack instructions to load the software onto my machine and use it. Now, would I walk into a computer store and see this program for $400 on the shelf, put it under my coat and try to walk out? No fucking way! But I’m happy to do essentially the same thing over the internet, because it just doesn’t feel like stealing.” This sentiment was echoed around the table.

Despite the lack of legal, paid downloads happening, we were not hostile to the idea. But for most, it was the price. “Ten dollars for an album is still too much.” I asked what a good price would be, since I felt that $10 for an album is not so excessive. Five-dollar albums? Jeremy said yes, he’d buy albums at that price. But Don was obstinate, and said albums should be a dollar, because then he would just buy them on a whim. What didn’t occur to me at the time was that there could be a service that adjusted the price per album according to how much money each subscriber vowed to spend on a monthly or yearly basis. So I could sign up and guarantee that I’d spend $500 this year on music: at that level I could get albums for $2. Kind of like the BMG mail order service of my high school days, when I started my first collection (CDs) by becoming a member. (Join Now and Get 6 CDs FREE!)

Another noted the proliferation of auctioning sites like eBay and asked why there was not a platform for auctioning mp3 songs and albums, or tickets to movies. “Why is every movie the same price? Some movies are clearly worth more than others.”

What about cash donations? I related a recent story in which I had “otherwise acquired” an artist’s album and was so moved by it, and listened to it so often, that I decided it was absolutely criminal that I hadn’t paid this guy – I went online and bought the album I already owned, just on principle (and as a result, probably transferring about $0.89 to the artist in question). And it’s true that people support art they love with their dollars even when they don’t have to. But the argument that won the evening was, “altruism is not a business model.”

If not charity, what about “Artistic Freedom Vouchers” from the government? Each of us gets $100 from Uncle Sam to spend on art and art alone… I leave it to you, gentle reader, to pursue that thread or not.

***

As for the news, we discussed James Fallows’s recent piece on Google “saving the news”, and it seems that the best news for the journalism industry is that everyone inside Google assumes that “users” (“readers”) will once again pay for their newspapers and magazines – and pay willingly – it’s just a matter of how. The argument is sound, because it also depends on the news changing somewhat. No longer will newspapers and media be able to provide the same stories as everyone else. They will have to provide something unique.

“Usually, you see essentially the same approach taken by a thousand publications at the same time,” [Krishna Bharat, the engineer who designed Google News] told me. “Once something has been observed, nearly everyone says approximately the same thing.” He didn’t mean that the publications were linking to one another or syndicating their stories. Rather, their conventions and instincts made them all emphasize the same things. This could be reassuring, in indicating some consensus on what the “important” stories were. But Bharat said it also indicated a faddishness of coverage—when Michael Jackson dies, other things cease to matter—and a redundancy that journalism could no longer afford. “It makes you wonder, is there a better way?” he asked. “Why is it that a thousand people come up with approximately the same reading of matters? Why couldn’t there be five readings? And meanwhile use that energy to observe something else, equally important, that is currently being neglected.” He said this was not a purely theoretical question. “I believe the news industry is finding that it will not be able to sustain producing highly similar articles.”

I think that maxim could be applied equally to producers of art and media everywhere.

Some good links to check out before Wednesday night:

CaptainCrawl is THE music blog index, type in an artist name and check out what comes up, you should be able to find links to blogs with full albums to download.

Radiobutt was the best music blog around, dude put up all the newest indie albums, had a really good site. It was hit hard by the music industry cops, relaunched and then mysteriously went down again. If you click on the link for it you’ll can read the guy’s farewell, he doesn’t say anything about the industry, but I’d bet the constant threat of legal action finally put him off. This interview between radiobutt and captaincrawl is essential reading for Wednesday night, CC says so many things that mirror what I think.  radiobuttmusic-vs-captaincrawl

I also wanted to link to Patch, which is one of our people’s current gig, a local community news sources that I think is an example of one of the ways people are trying to make a buck off news in a creative way these days.

(From Rindy):

For ideas about the future of journalism, it’s worth reading some of the work of NYU media critic Jay Rosen. He writes often about the ills of the national press today, who believe in what he calls “the Church of the Savvy“:

To the savvy, the center is a holy place: political grace resides there. The profane is the ideological extremes. The adults converse in the pragmatic middle ground where insiders cut their deals. On the wings are the playgrounds for children.  But to argue directly for these propositions is out of the question: political reporters don’t conduct arguments, they tell us what’s happening!  Instead an argument is made by positioning the players a certain way while reporting the news and doing “analysis.”

Another lament of his is He Said, She Said Journalism, in which “balance” is created by reporting what both sides say about a dispute (there are always two sides, never three or four) without bothering to fact check the obvious clashes of truth in the arguments. It’s practices like this that have readers seeking out new outlets for journalism. Where the news has traditionally given us the View From Nowhere (the myth of objectivity), we’re more interested now in reading honest analysis from writers who are upfront about their own opinions and who document their work thoroughly for others to follow.

For a great example, read what Mac McClelland has been reporting on the oil spill, and the heinous way in which BP has been treating journalists.

Sam’s comment on our modern art wrap-up got me thinking about the city. Patti Smith said young artists should seek other cities now because New York is not as accommodating as it once was:

Patti recalled coming to New York without money, when it was “down and out,” and you could get a cheap apartment and “build a whole community of transvestites,” artists or writers, or whatever.

Today, she said, “New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling. But there are other cities. Detroit. Poughkeepsie… New York City has been taken away from you… So my advice is: Find a new city.”

Patti’s words picked up steam when the Huffington Post ran it, but the original source was a blog called “Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York“. In both places, the item stirred a number of reader comments:

This is true only if you consider downtown Manhattan to be the horizon line for “the city,” which would be unfortunate. #

To “build a whole community of transvestites or artists or writers” is to start the gentrification process. This can be accomplished in the South Bronx or other places in the “outer boroughs.” #

The need to be close to the art scene in New York to get noticed is negated by the internet. We’re talking actual freedom here, not just slightly cheaper rent. #

If you’re good and you have talent you can make it here, no problem. #

Between the Guliani [sic] effect (although crime stats were already down before his mayoralty), Sex and the City, and the real estate boom, the city has become extremely homogenized and lost most of its soul. The newbies brought too many cars with them, and think it’s weird to talk to strangers. #

As I was following the links last week, I became wrapped up in this blog Vanishing New York. Before I knew it, I’d spent most of the morning reading the archives. The writer focuses on what was just touched on in that last comment: gentrification and what he calls the “yunnie” phenomenon – Young Urban Narcissists. Think Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. Have you seen or read it again lately? Though it was set in the 80s, it doesn’t seem dated at all. You can see Bateman-style condos for sale all over the city.

Check out some more Vanishing New York, this is a great blog:

• American Psychos
• Post-Crash Revisionism
• Park Slopers Want Geisha Girl

Friday’s Junta on contemporary art was one of the best yet and a lot of fun for everyone involved. We had a lot of good feedback: thanks to everyone for coming out.

JohnJ started us off with a quick overview of artistic movements in the last 140 years, with an emphasis toward trying to explain how we got to the present moment, not just in terms of movements and periods, but in terms of the modern way art works: galleries, openings, agents, etc. It wasn’t always this way, but there is a pattern. Certain “tastemakers” – those with money or influence – determine what is relevant and what gets promoted, and these people are not all artists. They are curators and patrons and customers, from Lorenzo d’Medici to modern hedge fund collectors.

But that is the “art world,” separate from art itself, where an artist must make a living using his work – and often himself – as a commodity. When did art become a path to celebrity? Some argued that it was with Picasso and other painters around the turn of the 20th century – essentially that celebrity came with the rise of the mass media. But wasn’t Shakespeare’s name known throughout England in his day? Well, yes, but he had a technological boost as well; he wrote in the wake of the invention of the printing press.

There were some interesting sidenotes about writing, with the question being raised whether it should be included in a discussion about “art.” Of course! said I, and some others, although a painter disagreed and it was painting that dominated the conversation. What about poetry, does anyone still write it? Yes, said a poet who was with us, and brought up Mary Oliver, who is indeed prolific, but who is also part of an earlier generation (b. 1935). I pointed out that Twain grew massively wealthy and famous by his writing (although he died a pauper), and until recently it was still possible to become a celebrity by writing (although if it’s fame you’re after, you’d better stick with crime or romance novels and skip the poetry.)

Damien Hirst is “the first billionaire artist.” Which is absurd on its face, but it brings up good questions about authenticity. If Hirst puts a shark in a glass case full of formaldehyde, what makes it different from you or I doing the same? DC wanted to know why a urinal, when placed behind a “velvet rope” by DuChamp, suddenly became art. The question becomes one of context: the place where one views the art, the background of the artist and how much of it is written next to the piece, and of course the title of the piece can change interpretations easily. DuChamp called the urinal Fountain.

DuChamp said that anyone could be an artist; that anything could be art. This was the precursor to Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame, and today it is really happening. Art is life, art is expression, art is commodity. The thing and the representation of the thing now overlap so heavily as to be nearly the same thing. In The Society of the Spectacle, Guy DeBord wrote “All that was once directly lived has become mere representation.” That was 37 years before Facebook. Today it presents a paradox: if everything is art, then nothing is art. So how do we know what’s good or bad?

We have to learn for ourselves what feels authentic and original. And those tastemakers are important. They perform a real function, by paying constant close attention. They watch the ticker of the art world go by, and from the great flow deduce the zeitgeist. Only over time do patterns emerge. But like Jeff*, a painter in attendance, said, “You come to New York as a young person painting still-lifes, with a traditional background, and you see what’s happening here, and you stop doing that, because what you’re doing could have been done 300 years ago.” When John Cage wrote “4:33″ it was revolutionary. But writing a silent song today is not relevant, because it’s not moving the needle.

Towards the end, we spoke of art which lives but is not commoditized – the work of the undiscovered or unappreciated. Henry Darger lived alone in a small apartment, having little social interaction, yet was busy producing lengthy novels and paintings. Van Gogh was never famous in his lifetime and died penniless. And for some, dressing up like superman is a path for “fame and fortune.”

Like JohnJ said, “We could talk about this all night, and no one is going to leave here saying, ‘Yes, we’ve got it figured out now.’” With that in mind, I’ll end here and say thanks again to everyone who came out. It was a great night. Look for the next Junta to gather near the end of May…

* I originally attributed this to Sam. Apologies.

John J. McGurk is an artist who founded Elwa Productions in 2007 with the mission of promoting and curating shows with young, usually unrepresented artists. He is a graduate of RISD and has worked at galleries in Providence, RI (The Steelyard, Firehouse 13) and NYC (Aicon Gallery, Mikhail Zakin Gallery).

John J will lead a Junta discussion on Friday April, 30 at 6pm. Here he explains his topic:

Avant-garde, Modernism, Impressionism, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Conceptualism, Pop, Post-Modern, Post-Pop, Neoism, YBA’s.

In the 20th century the artist moved from purely an object maker and into the realm of politics and social interrogation. Duchamp began this process as the antagonist to traditions by breaking every rule in the book, opening art up to a much larger and undefined cultural space. As a result, the Dadaists confronted us with the absurd, the Surrealists took us into our subconscious, while the Situationists took us headlong into politics.

Nowadays, movements and generalities about the art world are harder to define. The overlap, derivative, mash-ups of contemporary styles and techniques make it a very interesting time. All the knowledge of the past seems to be funneled into today, with artists able to take advantage of the past’s analog techniques while combining them with digital and computer technologies.

Elwa is most interested in where this overlap takes place. That is why we represent artists using traditional mediums, such as pottery and ceramics, while incorporating new technologies and techniques unavailable only ten years ago. Artists that are speaking to our time in some way: through painterly investigations of technology, or sculptural creations that speak about our role in nature.

Many people find contemporary art foreboding and elitist. Its meaning or intention can be lost on many viewers. In many ways the insular and elitist nature of the art world is intentional. These hierarchies are created and maintained through art school training, art criticism, social standing, and most cynically, manipulation. Although not the focus of our discussion, it is important to understand some of ways in which “great” art is defined and promoted.

Elwa’s goal is to try and dismantle some of this façade: to show that in fact, contemporary art is more accessible than ever before. Talent is all over the place, not just at museums. Great art is not just for billionaires and kings.

This will be a BYOB Junta, held in a private apartment.

6pm-8pm, Friday, April 30. BYOB. Address forthcoming.

The Junta is organizing a meeting on contemporary art at the end of the month. In fact, it looks like it will literally be on the last day of April. Our featured guest (host, really) will be John J McGurk, an artist and gallery manager. He is also co-founder with his brother Whitney of Elwa Productions, which seeks “to not only fulfill the artist’s desire to show their work, but to consult young collectors in acquiring original art to begin and grow their collections.”

We will have more to say about the nature of the discussion topic over the course of the next week, but for now mark your calendars for Friday, April 30.

Read this essay on the state of the music industry this morning and thought I’d post about it. It speaks to a lot of the issues that are discussed on another blog a friend runs on music where I post a lot. The biggest thing in 2009 for me musically was that I get my music almost exclusively (aside from some trading with friends) from the many blogs that are out there where you can get full albums. I thought  Jon Pareles made all the right points about how musicians are going to have to get out there and play for people rather than wait for sales of albums to keep them going. It is a changing landscape out there, creative destruction at work before our eyes, and that is surely creating hardship for people associated with music. But mostly I think it is a hugely positive trend to have access to so much music, to have the bar lowered for entering in with all the easy to use technology out there, and the chance for music to be cross-pollinated so that weird and interesting new hybrids are formed. Maybe we’ll get into this at the next Junta, which we will think will be art related.

Our colleague’s piece in Harper’s concerning John Zorn elicited a reader’s letter to the editor. The reader said Cohen’s articles was “appropriately polymathic” but that his history of music was “curiously garbled.”

The full text is freely available at Harpers.org, though you need to scroll to the bottom of the page – it’s the fourth letter.

Back in December, Joshua Cohen spoke at a Junta gathering entitled “New York’s Avant-Garde“, in which he ran through a compressed history of the Downtown art scene and many of the cultural, social, and political aspects thereof – revolving around the musician John Zorn, but with plenty of jumping-off points for rabid discussion. It was one of our highest-attended and most animated sessions.

Now the article which formed a basis for Josh’s talk has been published in Harper’s: “Last Man Standing: The aquisitive music of John Zorn“. It is behind a subscription firewall, so you’ll have to pony up $16.97 for the year – or go out and buy a paper issue. I think they’re six bucks at newsstands. Subscribing really is the better deal.