Big Time Questions No.5

You said that you "managed to fall into the age old position of obscurity do to refusal to participate in the "industry" that art has become". How so? What do you hate most about the "industry"?

Yes, I'm afraid it's true. I'm still trying to rise above the position of "starving artist," I hate to fall into such a well-worn rut. I think it's especially hard right now because real expression is kind of up against a wall. There is more information in a day now than anyone could effectively process in an entire lifetime. That does a lot to the collective consciousness. We don't have time for anything in particular, because there is so much else to do and see. Content doesn't seem to matter as much as it just being SOMETHING! Anything and it'd better be now, or else someone else will have already done it. Take the state of Hollywood as an example. Remake after remake. They're even re-making sequels now! But how do we know if it's a re-make of a sequel or a sequel of a re-make? There's no time to think up anything new or exciting, because everything has this immediacy about it. That all feeds into the "art industry" thing. Art IS industry now. The aesthetic of the cutting edge in art have been successfully nabbed by the business interests, and now we get our cool, not just images like it used to be, but VISUALS from industry. REALLY creative kids are working 70-80 hours a week on Coke and Dockers commercials. And there's this belief that advertising is really coming into it's own; that it IS art now, but I don't believe that you can make art when the end result is the sale of a product or a brand. I just don't. It's not anti-mundane, it IS mundane. Cool is so standardized now, that even new cool is expected, necessary even. So business has brought over all the artists, and real art wallows in obscurity. I'm trying damn hard not to sound to cynical about all of this. It's not a "corporations lie to us" type deal. It's just the way I see the modern landscape, and I for one, find it hard to do anything genuine anymore without completely dropping out. The problem probably lies somewhere in me for even wanting to do something genuine in this day and age. Basically, I think it has to be taken back. Art has to move into areas that business won't dare touch with a ten foot pole! And there are plenty of those little cracks in the sidewalk, believe me. But business is fast. I mean they have whole ad firms devoted solely to creating YouTube videos that pass as real viral content, and don't even have an overt ad anywhere in the thing. It's like subliminal culture! Is THAT art? The fact that we don't even know we're watching ad's anymore? Lonleygirl 13 or whatever, she was a campaign. Not a hoax, a campaign! A scam depending on your mood. I don't think art should be about money. I think it should be about information. Conveying ideas or experiences in some way shape or form. Lonleygirl and all those cool motion graphics commercials on TV and the Internet convey a product. The coolness factor is just a means to the end. Art has become just a means to the end.