Who's not for sale (wrong conference), two images from powerpoint presentation, 2005

Installation Images


Memories of the event

Who's not for sale (wrong conference) was my contribution to the College Art Association panel, "Play, Pleasure, and Perversion: Insubordinate Refusals of Discipline in Practices of Art and Theory," organized by Simeon Hunter. The panel included transgressive lectures and performances by Carol Burch-Brown, Senam Okudzeto, Erica Rand, and Lucy Soutter.

I developed my talk from a very audience-specific point of view: If the demographics CAA provides as to its member-base were accurate I figured I would be speaking to the largest group of post-secondary art educators of my career. Wow. Post-secondary art educators. That characterization sounded so uncool, particularly given the influence and authority some of these folks wield in the intellectual, gallery/museum, and academic worlds - worlds that seemed pretty cool to me.

If I had been in the business world I would have seen this talk as an opportunity to build my constituency, and would have developed the talk accordingly. However, my sense was that socially prescribed roles in artworlds are somewhat more confused and unpredictable. So I wanted to explore the consequences of inserting a straightforward business talk into CAA's cultural model.

I assumed my culture-as-business persona, as President of Contraposto Home Decor Co. (imagine a hybrid of Steve Jobs and HW Janson, or better yet, Eddie Bauer and Adrian Piper). While pimping my oeuvre was a high priority, I ultimately wanted to capitalize on the unique circumstances of the conference to problematize the roles we play as practitioners, critics, theorists, and educators.

The performance went well. One person told me she thought the piece was like an addendum to Allan Kaprow's 1964 essay, "Should the artist become a man of the world." Made sense to me.