proceedings from the conference - grantmakers in the arts · pizzicato five, jocelyn enriquez, the...

Proceedings from the Conference

October 15-18, 2000Minneapolis, Minnesota

Generation X and Beyond

Moderator: Roberto BedoyaNational Association of Artists’ Organizations

Panelists: Michelle CoffeyNew York Foundation for the ArtsMichael HoytKulture Klub CollaborativeEsther RobinsonCreative CapitalMario OntiverosNational Association of Artists’ Organizationsboard member.

October 17, 2000, 3:00 p.m.© 2001 Grantmakers in the Arts


Grantmakers in the Arts 2000 Conference: The Source 3

Sato: It gives me great pleasure to introduceBao Phi, who was born in Vietnam and grew uphere in Minneapolis. He is the two-time Minne-sota Grand Poetry Slam champion and was afinalist at the Nationals this year in Providence.

Phi: The first poem I’m going to read is aboutme imagining if I was an Asian American shock-jock on the radio. I don’t know how much youknow about what happened in Minnesota a fewyears ago when a really racist shock-jock on oneof our primary morning shows said very raciststuff about Hmong people.

So I imagined if I was a shock-jock what Iwould say. You have all seen the movie, GoodMorning, Vietnam, right? You know about theVietnamese Buddhist who set himself on fireback during Vietnam to protest the corruptDiem’s regime?

Good morning America! Welcome to theperilous yellow-power hour: loud, live, andclear here at WWOK. I’m your host, VictorCharlie Chan – the man – bringing boombangin’ jams slammin’ through the red,white, and blue to you. Side-steppin’ thenarrow cast by broadcasting in Hmong,Punjabi, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Canton,and Taiwanese, Thai, Tagalog. But – heynow! – you’re in America so let me hear yousay Nikomas, Minihaha, and Hiawatha.

We’re keeping it Wu-Tang like MichaelChang, on the down-low like Margaret Jo,and bonging ceremonial gongs going onlike Michelle Kwan and B. D. Wong. Areyou turning Japanese? Do you really thinkso? Be my seventh caller and I’ll send youon a trip, all expenses paid, for one night inBangkok! So all you tough guys tumble forthat phone. If you’re home alone but notbuggin’ like Macaulay Culkin, turn on thebox while you wash your socks and helpme keep the Sonic tea party hot withPizzicato Five, Jocelyn Enriquez, the Moun-tain Brothers, Bruce Lee Band, Sean Lennon,Corner Shop, and – yes, ladies and gentle-men – Smashing Pumpkins. ‘Cause eventhough that guitarist James Iha says hedoesn’t want to be considered Asian, wewill anyway.

So come on Asian America, let’s dance littleChina girls and boys! Hey, Asian guys! Canyou dance? Now the racial stereotypes saythat black men can dance and white guyscan’t, so how do you fit in? Can yourumba? Can you cha-cha? Can you do theChinaman Slide or the Bombay Bomb?Come on Asian America, it’s time for Asianperspiration, sweat condensation ‘til thewhole world shakes without condemnation.Can you dance like a cocky Confucian? Canyou get on down like a Taoist? Can youboogie like a Buddhist? No, not theCourtney Love, Beastie Boy type of Bud-dhist but can you boogie like a Buddhistwho’d set himself on fire? Can you boogielike a Buddhist who’d set himself on fire?Can you boogie like a Buddhist who wouldset himself on fire? Can you boogie like aBuddhist who doesn’t fear droppin’ dead tothe dance floor ‘cause he knows that hissoul just keeps going round and roundand round?

Are you gonna dance with another Asian?Hey, next person to call with a confirmedsighting of a cute, young, Asian Americancouple wins a Nobel Prize for Science andChemistry ‘cause you know seeing ustogether is like spotting Bigfoot. Are youtuned in or tone deaf? Are you broadcast ormiscast? If you are in the house – or if Ishould say grass-hut – let me see you strut!This is Vincent Charlie Chan – the man –representin’ live, loud, and proud on theperilous yellow-power hour. Are weCalgon, as in crystal clear? Can you hearme? Are you there? ‘Cause I am here.

This is a poem about me growing up in myneighborhood, Phillips, in South Minneapoliswhich is Minnesota’s largest, most ethnicallydiverse, and poorest neighborhood. I imaginedif I was fourteen and saw my college-educatedass right now, what would the poem I wouldwrite to myself be?

It was tough for all of us, those times, itseemed. Our arms braced between theAmerican dream and not being seen raisedon the street called 26th and Bloomington,slipping through the seams in this country’smulti-culti-quilt. We called it the same old


4 Grantmakers in the Arts 2000 Conference: The Source

shit. They called us gook, chink, blanket-ass, spic, nigger, coon; and what was reallysad is we called each other that too. Wewent to school and they called us newnames like Native American, Asian Ameri-can, Latino, Latina, African American, andmixed, while treating us the same damnway. And they called that progress. Wecalled each other Bolio, Ses, Mustafa,Nguyen. We talked about hip-hop andminimum wage jobs and the girls whobroke our hearts in languages that theywould call ebonics, pigeon, reservationaccented, or improper. We called it talkingshit or I was just fuckin’ with you.

We ran in the confused streets of Phillipsfrom the police, from the crazies, from ourown mothers. We ran until our chestsburned and our hearts hungered for anyplace to call home. We ran but we didn’tcall it running, no! We called it hangin’.We called it doin’ something. We calledit survivin’.

So remember those times like when wewere sitting around a table over at Arnold’sand we heard over the radio about that onekid – yeah, how could you forget? – thatone kid who once chased you with a knife.Yeah, how could you forget that one kidwho once chased you down 26th with asteel bar? Yeah, how could your forget thatone kid who once snuck up on you in thatempty candy store parking lot and stuck aloaded gun up in your stomach? Rememberthat day when we heard over the radioabout how he got shot dead in the street,and we didn’t know how to feel about it,and we called that life?

Remember those times like when thestreetlights ran low looking like winglessangels with hazy, lazy haloes, we sat indamp basements playing Nintendo, listen-ing to Yo-yo and De La Sol, eating Ho-Ho’s,drinking ice cold Cokes. We called it thosedays. And sometimes we turned our stereosup so loud that they would blow storiesdown from the trees and we’d dance inthose basements, in those lunchrooms, or inthat building. Remember that buildingwhere Guillermo painted a mural on theoutside wall about respect?

We danced a modern day ghost dance, webreak danced, we salsa’d, we cha-cha’dbecause we danced because we wanted toimpersonate the electricity running beneaththe city that no one is supposed to dig for!We danced because we had air in our lungsthat we didn’t know what to do with! Wedanced because no one could STOP US!And we called that living.

So when you get out of your fancy college,learning about postmodernist deconstruc-tionists while still not knowing how to fixyour own goddamn car, when you aresitting in uptown in some cut-throat coffeeshop with a Phil Levine poetry book and aborrowed Powerbook acting like you’re nojoke, when you can no longer tell if you’reliberating yourself through expression orselling your oppression, when they pretendto listen to you but still wish you would goquietly – remember there were those of usliving here who called you friend.

I have two more. This one is really short, it’scalled “Skyscraper Love.” I am in a play whereI am the spoken word component of the playand I have to give words to inanimate objects.One of the scenes is somebody imagining theseskyscrapers falling in love with each other andwhat it would be like. “Skyscraper Love.”

When the colors painted by the sun slinkinto neon, windows upon windows, mymultitude of eyes shine with reflections ofyou. Your spine is my ladder to the sky andmy route to the ground. Your hair, theclouds, changes daily, I see shapes there,dreams, and rain. When the lights go out,we are stars and darkness. We wear every-thing, inside of us, distantly, movement andnoise. I dance next to you through it all, mytall testament to the stars, we are the archi-tecture of up, the end result of numbers andstraight edges and tangles of white lines onblue paper; we have learned to love bydesign. You are the blue wave I dreamabout made manifest; you are the signatureof the street preserved in glass. My steelgirders shiver when the sun strikes you andyou light up the city like a fractured candlewhose bright fingers mimic the horizon.



Okay, I have one left. It’s a work in progress.This last one I would like to dedicate to two ofmy friends, Emily Chang, who is in a Pan-Asian spoken word group out in Chicago, andGolda Sargento, who is in an all-Filipino AsianAmerican spoken word group out in the BayArea. I wrote this for them. “From Two Tonguesand Eighth Wonders: Emily and Golda.” I justsaw them perform in Chicago. They do thisgreat poem called “Not Your Fetish,” abouthow they refuse to be the fetish of guys whohave a thing for Asian women. It’s a greatpiece, it’s wonderful. The day after I saw themperform, they went out to have ice creamtogether – I had gone by then. This guy cameup and tried to pick up both of them with thisline: You know, if you guys came home with mewe would be like sushi on rye. So what yearis this?

So this is for them and I use two of their lines.Emily’s line is: “Resist is a beautiful word.” Shewrote that, I use this in that poem. And Golda’sline which I use is: “Earthquake, airborne, heartpulse transformed the verbal declarations ofrhythmic life forms.” So this is for them.

BHG is Bloodhound Gang; we protested againstthem for their racist, sexist song “Yellow Fever,”about the same subject. Wen Ho Lee you guysshould know. If you don’t, go read something.

Seeing the both of you attack a mike like itwas an old lover who owed you something.Seeing both of you grab a mike and light itup to illuminate and lead us into this thingcalled Asian America. To hear your voicessing and yell and whisper and pull andshape. To roar, to manifest beauty, and tugme out of my seat, my heart abandoned mefor both of you. You who fight for the lovebetween all of us doing the “You people areso good at math” of two tongues and eighthwonders to see if we could add up to astructure of yellow, brown skin and blackhaired architectures. A new city, an urbanrap-city of Asian American riff-raff, hip-hopharmony to disarm their army of charlatansselling white wash, brain wash, lobotomies.I’d gladly let my heart go. To lend a beat,marching to match your warrior words, abreathing pump to match my fists, risingand falling to the flow of your poetics.

There is no room here for wanna-be, sly,pseudo-players lines, other men suggestingsushi on rye. This is about yellow andbrown skin, black hair, beyond the glare ofwhat they made. Trying to blind us withtheir false translation of beauty, trying tobind us with their glossy new version ofduty. This is about sugar cane songs andstoop labor and hours of work writing ourown stories ‘cause the real Miss America isnamed Miss Education. Malignant igno-rance, Miss Saigon as Miss Appropriation.And to slip from that skin requires thebeauty of brawn that manifests as poeticsfrom your brains, broadcasted from yourheart, inflated in your lungs, and yellingfrom mouths that they wish would juststay shut.

This is about self love, inhalation, in theface of their assimilation and down lowdiscrimination and their hard work fractur-ing our Asian American nation. But we seethem. Deciphered and saw the semen intheir artificial dissemination. This is aboutpronouncing pride in a country whosecollective tongue still stumbles across ournames. This is about surviving the transla-tion with two tongues apiece to create thateighth wonder called loving one another ‘tilit sounds like music strung from zithersstrung with our veins and flutes that distillshrill whistles of winds swirling in ourlungs. And, no, this not to simply invoke –because they provoked – this is becauseresist is a beautiful word. This is becausesometimes earthquake, airborne, heartpulse transformed of verbal declarationsresults in rhythmic life forms. This isbecause the truest and strongest love is thelove that sees. And we, as the yellow,brown, Asian Am family, fight for it back-to-back from the rice paddies to the streetsof D.C. to the protests of BHG to the cell ofDr. Wen Ho Lee. This is because we areBlasians, scorching our name with burningmikes across this stolen nation.

Thank you. I have one thing left to say: Enjoyyour conference, shake hands and all of that. Ihave a CD for sale. I have to go back to my jobnow, but if you are interested, leave me youremail address somewhere around here and



maybe it will get back to me. So, have funeverybody. Thanks for your time.

Sato: Thank you very much, Bao Phi. Just tellthem we will write you a note if you are late.You shouldn’t be late to get back to work.

I want to welcome you to this session on Gen Xand Beyond, and I have to say, at this point, Iam feeling really older than I want to feel. Butwe are very pleased to have you here.

It gives me a lot of pleasure, now, to introduceyou to the moderator of this panel. RobertoBedoya has been a friend for years. It says herethat he is an author, a writer, a curator, an artsadministrator, and I would add scholar, activist,a lot of other awards that have made him anoted figure for years in the arena of artists thatare speaking up and speaking out. His bio is inthe program so I don’t have to go over it. If youcan have a distinguished career in beingcounter-culture, Roberto has had that. So, I turnthe panel over to Roberto Bedoya.

Bedoya: Thank you. The whole concept ofcounter-culture was put on the table and prettymuch chewed up in this process called the “co-generate process.” What we are going to talktoday is about this convening that NAAOinitiated through the bulk of 1999 where wehad a series of nine think-tank sessions acrossthe country where younger artists were askedto come and dialogue with each other and takestock about their place in the arts world andtheir ambitions. Also to do an assessment of theworld in which they see themselves as they aretrying to realize their goals and aspirations.

I will read a something for you that is from thispublication called The Field Guide, which docu-ments the convenings. Then each of these fourindividuals will make a small presentation.Then I will do a little Q&A with these guys andthen open it up to you.

Before I launch into this prepared text, I need tovoice thank yous. I think one of them is JoanShigekawa, right here in the very front row,who has been a great supporter of this project.

Let me contextualize it a little bit. In 1996 Ijust started working at NAAO – NationalAssociation of Artists’ Organizations. One of

the first things I did was convenings across thecountry and an activity called “The DozenDialogues” which went to twelve cities andsome of them were trying to figure out whatmy members were talking about. There was awhole litany of concerns.

One of the issues that came forward and wasthe most pressing issue was about the questionof the next generation. I was doing a debriefingwith Joan about that convening and giving herupdates on what the field was thinking and shesaid, “Well, why don’t you bring some of thosepeople into the office? Into the foundation?” SoI said, “Okay.”

That led to this first activity called, “The Gath-ering of Artists and Arts Professionals ThirtyYears of Age and Younger.” There were tenparticipants selected, for their accomplish-ments, that were invited to the RockefellerFoundation to discuss their understanding of,and interactions with, and expectations for theartistic institution and worlds in which theyoperate. This meeting functioned as a crucialand important component of the planningprocess for NAAO’s leadership developmentinitiative – the Co-Generate Project. MichelleCoffey and Mario Ontiveros were at thatmeeting. Subsequently, they acted as the facili-tators for this project throughout the country.

Shortly after that event, I realized that thisproject had to go on the road and I was able toget support from the National Endowment forthe Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation. Welaunched the project in January of 1999.

The Co-Generate Project is designed to develop,nurture, and support the next generation ofcultural participants. We define this generationas approximately ages 20 to 32. Now, if onerecalls that I started this inquiry in ’96, that isfour years down the pipe. So I am feeling likethat dilemma of a TV series that is into itsfourth season and is based about some youngkid and he is growing up? So I got some 28 yearolds who are now 32. They are still part of mycrew and, yet, there are other issues coming up.

That also speaks to one of the wonderfulchallenges of this project that has been verysuccessful for NAAO. That is to continue to bein dialogue with our community and continue



to raise the questions. I am really happy thatwe are able to be here to be part of that continu-ing project.

The goals of the project were identified as: wewanted to identify the next generation ofleaders in the field; foster a dialogue betweenemerging and current leaders; ensure that theirvoices were clearly heard; identify clear andachievable goals towards mentoring thenext generation.

As I said earlier, we conducted nine think-tanksessions across the country. Let me name thecities that we went to: Tucson, New Orleans,Seattle, San Francisco, Houston, Pittsburgh,Washington, D.C., Minneapolis, and New York.An odd assortment of cities. In each of thosecities there were regional people from the areathat came to the meetings.

We received additional support for these meet-ings from the Tucson Pima Arts Council, theJerome Foundation, the San Francisco Founda-tion, and the Nathan Cummings Foundationwho all assisted in this convenings activity.

Topics that we discussed included: leadershipdevelopment, notions of aesthetics, and alterna-tive art models that have been engendered. Wehave listened to, explored, and supported thebeliefs of these individuals as they moveforward in their careers. The Field Guide Reportsspeak to the concerns and practices that thisgeneration brings to the art world.

When I started talking to my peers and otherarts service organizations, I felt the challengewas how to speak about this project and notsteal the vitality out of it. One needs to under-score that when one identifies a community orconstituency that has not been acknowledgedby others, the challenge becomes how to facili-tate the expression of this new voice withoutfalling into the role of spokesperson for thiscommunity.

People would come up to you and say,“Bedoya, you know about those young kids,tell me!” This has been a concern for NAAOand The Co-Generate Project because wediscovered quickly that the art community hadnot paid much attention to, or created manyopportunities for, this generational community

to inform the arts infrastructure to which theybelonged. The Co-Generate Project is not abouta template for organizations on how to developa youth audience or how to revitalize an organi-zation by appropriating the ideas and spirits ofthis generation. Rather the goal of both hasbeen the empowerment of these individualswho are the rising generation of arts leaders.

Two more things, then, before I introduce thepanel. I am not responsible for the name ofthis panel. The first thing that happened atevery one of these convenings was that theytore up the name. They shredded that Gen Xcharacterization. Most of these guys just hatethat name, the way they have been named, bythe marketplace.

The other thing is that I know there are peoplein this audience who are under thirty and intheir 30s. So obviously, when we have Q&A, itis important that you participate.

Our first speaker is Mario Ontiveros who is adoctoral candidate in art history at the Univer-sity of California, Los Angeles. His dissertationis entitled “Re-theorizing Activism: the Aesthet-ics of Social Responsibility.” He has workedprofessionally in cultural arts centers, non-profit, and for profit spaces, most recently at theGetty Research Institute. He just completed aresidency program at APPEX – Artists PacificPerformance Exchange – where he lived andcollaborated with thirty artists from the Pacificregions of Asia and the West Coast for sixweeks. He recently was elected to be a boardmember of NAAO. Mario?

Ontiveros: Thank you, Roberto. Before I begin,I wanted to thank the Grantmakers in the Artsfor bringing us here and for allowing thisdiscussion to take place. I think that The Sourceis a very important title, and it’s important forme to acknowledge people who have been asource to me, aside from everyone sitting uphere. One would be Josephine Ramirez from theGetty Grants Program who has been a mentorof mine for the last several years and has putme into numerous situations that have expo-nentially extended my creative and criticalprocesses.

I would also like to acknowledge Tomas Benitezof Self Help Graphics; some of you heard him



speak earlier today. I have been lucky enoughto never work formally with him but I amalways impressed by his ability to talk abouttheir organization.

The third person is Tomás Ybarro-Frausto fromthe Rockefeller Foundation. I have only methim once, but I know him as a writer, as aChicano historian, and his work has inspiredme tremendously. Since it is called The Source,those are some of my sources. Of course, all ofmy shortcomings are my fault, not theirs.

As Roberto mentioned, Co-Gen was abyproduct of conversations that took placecalled “The Dozen Dialogues.” One of thethings that occurred throughout “The DozenDialogues” was: Where are the young people?Roberto turned that question around in a veryproactive way and said, “What have we done,as arts administrators, to nourish and nurturethe next generation?”

Over the next few minutes what I will do istalk briefly about how NAAO approachedthe idea of leadership development for emerg-ing artists and arts professionals in this Co-Generate Project.

My primary role in the project, along withMichelle Coffey, was to be a co-facilitator,which was to help frame questions and facili-tate the discussion. As co-facilitators, weoccupied a rather precarious position becausewe were at once outside of the institutions butwe were also part of the institutions as beingrepresentatives of NAAO. What we realizedafter the first meeting was that our dilemma orprecarious position was actually that beinggenerationally part of an “us” as well as a partof a “them” was very much a part of whatthese emerging artists and arts professionalswere experiencing.

During these multi-day discussions, the partici-pants responded to a series of questions andthey were as follows: What compelled you towork in the arts? What are the most importantissues in forming your work? How do youmaintain your sense of ethics when workingwithin a community or public? In what wayshave those in the arts field – broadly defined asexecutive directors, visionaries, arts administra-tors, activists, grants organizations, board

members, etc. – actively cultivated and nurturedemerging practitioners? And how can NAAOand other arts organizations in the field assistyou in your artistic and administrative roles?

These questions encouraged a debate about thepossible alternatives to earlier and existingmodels of cultural production, circulation, andreception. We discussed the notion of complic-ity, resistance, and affirmation, as well as howto work collaboratively to live culturally andthink critically.

It is important to contextualize our participants.They arrived too late to take active part in the’60s and ’70s empowerment movements. Asmany practitioners were born years after 1968,the events of that year remain something thatthey experienced as a document of history butnot a lived experience. In other words, theygrew up during a time when there was littlemovement in any movement. Because of theirage, they encountered the debates of social,political inequities with phrases uttered bymany of their older peers – that they werenot on the front lines and could not possiblyunderstand the beginning of these struggles,therefore, you should follow. Yet social issues,political platforms, and cultural debateshave altered.

This generation has been working with othermethods of engagement and activism. Thisgeneration has also been critiqued for havingnothing to rally against and for not organizing,although I think that its notion of politicaland/or even tactics of intervention are notrecognized. We will talk a little bit more aboutthat later.

Most importantly, they have come into the artsfield with a backlash against identity politics,and a sense of not wanting to talk about raceand identity at the same time. That is part of theaftermath of multiculturalism.

In terms of the arts field, they have never hadthe benefit, vexed as it might have been, of fullsupport from the NEA. Further, they missed theflourish of alternative spaces which, by the timethey arrived, despite the rhetoric of somemission statements, were actually not thatdifferent from mainstream institutions as bothrelied upon the same operational procedures



and hierarchical logic. For many of the partici-pants, the outside looked all too familiar to theinside. As this generation entered the main-stream art world, it was asked – perhapsbecause it was a project of affirmative actionand multiculturalism – to accept, talk across,and manage difference. They are supposed “toget” diversity and, you know, well maybe theydo, but I think in ambivalent ways.

On one level, multiculturalism opened many ofthe doors but it didn’t guarantee a seamlessaccess to the inside. It meant that once youentered you became both a diversity statisticand a native informant. While many of themactively avoided serving as the institution’sdiversity poster child, they did not resist theproductive and enabling aspects of youth andeducational programming. For many, workingwithin the system makes possible a way oftransforming it even if only slightly and mo-mentarily. Working within and understandingthese conditions and contradictions informstheir capacity for leadership.

NAAO initiated the building of the next gen-eration of leaders along several different regis-ters. First, by calling upon arts administrators,it pushed them to look closely at their staff andother associates as potential leaders, whileencouraging them also to think about thenecessary leadership qualities needed to run anorganization after those founders left.

Second, this project made clear to the partici-pants that they had also been identified asleaders in the field. Many of them felt a sense ofempowerment knowing that they had beennominated to participate, which is particularlysalient as most of them are as old as the organi-zations that they work in.

This dynamic fostered an inter-generationaldialogue of leadership development that NAAOhad hoped for. Many of the Co-Generate partici-pants formatted their own notion of leadershipdevelopment and tried to rethink existing,perhaps inflexible, models. Certainly, they werewary of adhering too tightly to any model. AsBill Redding, in his discussions of the limita-tions of political models, has said, “Modeling,for all its glamour, is always exploitive.”

Many were also working in seemingly newways, often in temporal arts spaces, sitesdesigned with a vibe of limited expectationsand short shelf lives, a type of hit-and-runtactic. More fixed spaces served, often simulta-neously, as exhibition and performance, book-stores, educational activist centers, coffee bars,and taco stands. They have learned the burdenof place, the limitations of setting up shop.They have also learned the new sites of place,such as cyberspace. No longer can these artistswalk into a neighborhood, like was done in theearly ’80s, without realizing that they are, morethan likely, part of the first aesthetic wave ofgentrification. What they share with their olderpeers is that they must work on multipleplatforms to produce their work. They balanceday or night jobs, perhaps as a baker or as anarts administrator, to support their collabora-tive efforts. Many of us, I think, realize that theideas put forth at the table at the Co-Generatediscussions are still forming and flexible.

Finally, an implicit goal of the project was topropose a notion of leadership developmentthat was not predicated upon developingleaders that were simply a replication of exist-ing models. We were trying to avoid creatinganother Junior League where you simplyfollow, observe, and follow some more.

The Co-Generate Project provided a flexibletemplate for participants. On their own accord,various regents have staged several of theirown ad-hoc, do-it-yourself convenings. Therehave been regional exchanges such as artshows between various areas. Participants fromeach region actively assess the project bycontributing to the NAAO Field Guide. NAAOand a few of its participants presented theproject to the National Council of the Arts in1999. Also, NAAO has asked several of itsparticipants from the Co-Generate Project to beon its board. Finally, all of us gained from theproject a greater sense of responsibility, andthis is, I believe, the cornerstone of leadershipdevelopment.

Thank you.

Bedoya: Thank you, Mario.

We will have time for Q&A afterwards, but let’sjust continue down.



Our next speaker is Michelle Coffey. As Imentioned earlier, she was part of the initialconvening that happened numerous years agoat the Rockefeller Foundation. Currently, shehas just started a brand new job as a programofficer at the New York Foundation for the Arts.Prior to that, while she was working withNAAO as the co-facilitator of the Co-GenProject she also was working for the nationalcampaign for Freedom of Expression where shewas the acting director before she took the jobat the New York Foundation for the Arts. Shehas a history here in Minneapolis where sheworked at the Walker Arts Center and whereshe created and implemented a programtargeted to teenage audiences. Michelle?

Coffey: Thanks. And Mario, you are amazing!

Thank you so very much to Grantmakers in theArts and a big thank you to Roberto for keepingus moving forward. Before I start, I also want torecognize the sources that have inspired meand continue to do so. It is almost like a fullcircle for me to be able to come back to Minne-apolis after a few years and see many, manyfriends and mentors that continue to inspireand shape my life. Folks like Seitu Jones, withthe Jerome Foundation; Tom Borrup; membersfrom Walker Arts Center; Neal Cuthbert andthe McKnight Foundation initiated the programthat I did at Walker Arts Center. So, in someways, I feel that they are the inspiration and thestarting point from which I started my career inarts administration. Walker Arts Center inMinneapolis is very dear to my heart and willalways be home.

Mario laid out, gracefully, the framework fromwhich we were operating. I am going to bedoing more of a marketing, quick component ofthe issues that we discovered. Due to thepanel’s desire to directly engage with yourquestions and ideas, my comments are going tobe brief and we will be able to work on those alittle bit further during the Q&A session.

First, I want to provide some context andbackground of this generation. As my genera-tion entered our adulthood, we were tagged asGen X slackers with characteristics of beingunmotivated, not focused, no initiative, etc. Youguys know the Slacker film and Douglas

Coupland’s book, and so that’s the frameworkin which we entered our adulthood.

A decade later, as we enter our thirties, Gen Xslacker has been replaced by Gen X entrepre-neur multi-millionaire. We are now the success-ful dot-com-ers. So those boundaries of Gen Xslacker and the Gen X multi-millionaire havereally, really allowed us flexibility in terms ofhow we identify success.

Some of us have made an active choice to workin the arts and the nonprofit space, maneuverthrough this commodity-driven economy.Therefore, our modes of operation havechanged. I wanted to speak a little bit furtheron those modes.

Also just a sidebar, Andy Warhol’s fifteenminutes of fame has sped up for our genera-tion. We now are on fifteen seconds betweenthe time an artist’s idea is presented and themass marketing of that idea ends up on abillboard. Therefore, we now have to strate-gically plan when we decide to, quote,“go public.”

Some of the issues that I want to touch brieflyon are: DIY – as Mario had mentioned – theDo-It-Yourself mantra; marked and unmarked;working below the radar. I will deconstruct thisfurther. Then I want to speak about our notionsof success.

We came of age during the AIDS epidemic, theReagan administration, multiculturalismeducation, and only knowing the NEA under-neath attack. We know that Social Security, aswe know it today, will not exist in our senioryears. Based on that groundwork, the strategyof DIY – or Do It Yourself, or some of you mayknow it as Out of Your Pocket – is a strongcharacteristic of this generation. Hit-and-runstore fronts, motels, one-night living roomexhibitions, is one answer to the outcome of thefunding and resource limits for many of us.

One of the things I also wanted to do wasprovide some of the models that this generationis doing. In the Mountain Plains region of theCo-Gen Project there were issues of isolationand not being able to connect with other peersand artists, not only within the country, butwithin their own region. Folks from the Ink



People, which is a space in Denver, Colorado;Plan B, which is an alternative space in SantaFe; and the Museum of Contemporary Arts,which was started by one of our Co-Gen par-ticipants in Tucson, decided to begin to circu-late their shows and work that way.

Mario and I were wonderfully surprised athow often, intensely, and passionately thetopics of race and class impacted the majority ofour regional conversations – specifically, inSeattle, Washington and Houston, Texas. Thesediscussions of race and class led to the conceptof being marked and unmarked. How are weclassified? How are we identified before westate our position? This discussion of multi-culturalism and its failings, going beyond thefour F’s of cultural understanding – thosefour F’s being: festivals, fashion, food, andfamous people.

An example of how our generation is dealingwith this is there is an organization in NewYork – I don’t even want to call it an organiza-tion, a collective – called Apogee. It is a group-ing of writers, curators, and administrators whocome together and explore the African Diasporain connection to contemporary visual arts.Apogee facilitates exchanges between publicorganizations with an educational arts programand curatorial projects.

We are now just seeing that the discussion ofpost-modernist identity is not at the level thatsometimes some of us want. What happens isthat we pull together to push that discussion inthe public realm when organizations aren’tnecessarily willing to go there with us.

This concept of marked and unmarked alsoilluminated methodologies and aesthetics thatbecame clear as regional conversations traveledcoast to coast and in between. As I mentionedearlier, our commodity-driven economy isforcing us to be able to operate under theradar. You are not able to really identify whatthis generation is doing. When we do presenta-tions and talk to folks, a lot of folks werewondering, well, what is this generation doing?Give me the clues, I want to see your artworkthat’s produced. This generation slips belowthe radar both at operational strategies andaesthetics, so that we are not tagged and that

we are not marketed by the marketplace. Thework is both artistically and administrativelynot easy to read.

One model that I want to present, in terms ofworking artistically, is with the artist DarioRebleto from San Antonio, Texas, and also aCo-Gen participant. Dario explores DJ cultureand spinning, sampling and interdisciplinarytechniques that color both his aesthetic prac-tices and productions. His work is a samplingof both historical lineages and different typesof elements and mixing it up and presenting itin different formats that folks may not beaware of.

So given the cultural climate that exists whilewe are emerging as both artists and art admin-istrators, we have to redefine what is successfor us. As Mario spoke to earlier, some of usare E.D.s of art spaces that are the same age asus. Is that success or does that speak to leader-ship burnout?

Some continue to define success by art form.Another definition of success is being able to bea working artist in Tulsa, Oklahoma, andAlabama, and not having to move to the coastor the arts centers. That is successful if they areable to stay in the arena that they wish to be in.Or as one of our Co-Gen participants from L.A.who is an artist and educator, Pato Hebert, said,success for him is continuing to allow room forpassion, honesty, love, and hope.

And Esther is going to take it from this pointand talk about that for us.

Bedoya: Before I introduce Esther, Michellewas talking about Apogee, which is an AfricanAmerican artists group in New York. The artistwho was a participant in the Co-Gen conveningwas a woman named Jenny Jones. She works atCreative Capital Foundation, as well as doesEsther. But one of the nice things, and I will justdigress here a little bit about this project, is thiswonderful little sticky factor that we have gotgoing on. The word is out on the Co-Gens andpeople always say, oh, yeah, you went to that?What was that like? That is how Esther came tome. She wasn’t a participant in the Co-Genproceedings but she is sort of like a kissingcousin now.



It also speaks to some of the vitality that thisproject has initiated and has been keeping usongoing and engaged.

She is the director of Media and PerformingArts for the newly-formed Creative CapitalFoundation. In addition, she is co-founder ofWave Length Releasing, a company formedspecifically to address new forms of produc-tion, distribution, and exhibition. Wave Lengthis responsible for the first fully digital filmrelease which was executed via satellite to fivecities in October 1998. It was also responsiblefor the highly successful multi-platform releaseof The Last Broadcast, the first ever desktopfeature; a $900 movie that has gone on to grossover a million dollars internationally.

Previous to this, Esther was a series producerfor two seasons at Alive TV. She has also pro-duced the feature documentary, Homepage.Esther?

Robinson: Thank you. I am actually fromMinneapolis, I grew up here; I graduated fromSouthwest High School. We were joking aroundthat there is a strong Midwestern like, “Yeah,arts!” vein going through us all. In the spirit ofthanking our sources, some of my very essen-tial, formative years were spent here. I wentaway to New York for film school and I cameback in the early ’90s and was very lucky towork for a man named Neil Sieling producing anational PBS series that was formerly calledAlive From Off Center and then became Alive TV.I was very lucky in that he allowed me tobecome a serious producer by 23. I got to runthat series for two seasons.

I also will say I had a very difficult time at thelocal Public Television station. I need to also saythat much of my spiritual guidance while here,came from a fabulous woman named RobinHickman who I could not thank enough forsaving me during some of the most difficultmoments of diversity clashing I have everexperienced, which I experienced locally.

Finally, and most importantly – and I will get tothis in a second – I am most privileged to workfor Ruby Lerner, the president of the CreativeCapital Foundation.

That segues exactly into what I wanted to talkabout. I get really nervous when we have thesepanels about Generation X or Generation Thisor Generation That because I think that what itallows for is a distancing. It allows people tosay, oh, those kids are out there doing all thiscrazy stuff! How nice. One of the things that Ihave noticed is that a lot of the values andstrategies that are employed by our generationare non-generation-specific. Really they are theembodiment of strategies and values of ourmoment, and anyone can take those strategieson and use them and employ them in a waythat is really specific and really amazing in thecurrent time.

Why that is important is because we are strug-gling right now with the legacy. We have talkedabout this a lot – the post-counter-culturelegacy. We are in a different moment. Themajority of the institutions that surround thearts were formed in a different moment. Theyemployed vocabularies and strategies thatmaybe, possibly, don’t meet up with the mo-ment that we are in currently. A lot of thedifficulty of the people of my generation inmeeting up with those institutions, both “alter-native institutions” – and I have put that inquotes – and mainstream institutions is thatthey are not speaking a similar language. Butthat language is not generational-specific. Iknow people in their 50s and 60s who have ahard time in the same institutions because theyare willing to use and employ the strategies ofthe moment. I throw that out there as a chal-lenge to people who are running organizationsto maybe think about: Who are you if you arenot defined by the counter-culture? Who areyou funding if it is not defined by the counter-culture? And what is the moment that weare in?

Now, one of our difficulties – like Michelle andMario were saying – is that we do tend to gobelow the radar because we do not want to bemarketed to. One of the strategies for survivalis to go below the radar. I released a movie bysatellite to five cities in 1998. This year, theSundance Channel is launching a satellite-driven mechanism to twelve cities, five ofwhich are the exact cities that I did this pro-gram in. They are capitalized, they are bigger,they are faster. So, every time you show up



publicly, you are immediately subsumedback in.

Then the question becomes, what are thethings that have been percolating? What arethings that you need in your survival kit?What are you trying to attain? I say this inthat I feel quite strongly that part of my abilityto see this has really been because I have beenable to work with Ruby, somebody who haslived an activist life, who has developed astrong craft in the moment of her professionalcareer and has kept growing to such an extentthat she can speak to me – exactly to me – inthe present and yet I can benefit tremendouslyfrom her craft. Some of the disadvantages ofour generation are that we can’t link up to thepeople who have the craft and the skills to dothe really big thinking. If you, as a person inyour thirties decided, okay, I’m going to havethis career, your greatest challenge is to findsomeone who can help you get the skills or tofind the environment in which you can get thethings for your survival kit.

What I have written down are the things that Ifeel have been articulated by the group andother people. I would also like to thankRoberto because one of the most importantvalues is maintaining a networked infrastruc-ture, finding people who think like you, andgetting their information, and sustainingyourself through the process of a very difficultmoment in time to make work or be hopefulor tread fearlessly. Like Roberto said, I wasnot actually at Co-Gen. We have been able toidentify some of the elements of our momentand that is vital to me. I wanted to thankRoberto in the beginning and I got all excitedand didn’t.

The things I wrote down were: access to andaccumulation of relevant and reliable informa-tion. Adaptability and flexibility. Healthfulness.Informed risk-taking. Maintaining a strategic,networked infrastructure – your ability to findlike-minded people, or maybe even differentpeople, but to form partnership and strategiesand alliances to survive. Dynamic communica-tion – your ability to name who you are andwhat you are fast enough so that you are infront of the marketing mechanisms and areconstantly capable of being able to surprise and

transform your listener into a hearing person,as opposed to a passive recipient of informa-tion. Finally, the most important thing, and Ithink one of the things that we struggle with asa group, as a generation, is rigor and craft.

One of the things that has made me so thankfulto find Ruby is that I have had a difficult timeworking within arts infrastructures. Reallydifficult. How am I supposed to become aleader in my field if I can’t watch somebodylead in a dynamic way and in a way thatmakes sense?

Part of the problem right now is that we arefaced with some really hard looking. It is reallypainful to look at our arts infrastructure rightnow, it is really painful! To a certain extent, it isonly painful in some ways. In other ways thereare all these really dynamic partnershipshappening and, if we look at them through theoppositional lens of the counter-culture, and ithas to exist separate and solely for this and inthis rarified way, we miss a lot of the opportu-nities for creating sustainable infrastructure.

That leads me to a couple of things that Iwanted to throw out that are less formal, butthings I have been thinking about.

One is the flexibility of our generation. Forinstance, both of my parents have each had onejob in the last thirty years. I have had aboutthirty jobs in the last five. What that means isthat when I go into an institution, I am reallypicky. I am not going to work for no money,with a person who has “founder’s syndrome”and will not let me do anything fun, and isreally burnt out and has no where to go. I’mnot! We have to be aware of that. So, where am Igoing to go? Am I going to start my owncompetitive institution? What does that meanfor the arts infrastructure? Why aren’t wedialoguing? Where are those people going togo? What does that mean? It is hard to be a bossof people of our generation; it is not easy. Youknow, I have a lot of demands. Poor Ruby!

I started a company that could be valued atmillions and millions of dollars and I left tocome back to mission-driven work because I amcommitted to making this happen. I am com-mitted to making it happen in a big way and ina dynamic way. I was lucky that Ruby found



me because she is willing to just throw it all up.She is willing to make it dynamic, she is willingto say, take risks, to really say: What are wedoing? And how do we make it better? Thatfearlessness, though, is not permeated in ourarts culture right now. The question is, how dowe create that in other organizations? How isthat duplicate-able?

Then, one of the other things – obviously, I keeptalking about this – is mentorship. I would benot in the arts still if it weren’t for Ruby Lerner;I would be in high tech. I would be in high techbecause the way that I am flexible, the way thatI am curious, and the way that I am demandingare all rewarded within that sector. The way thatI want to take risks, the way that I like play, andthe fact that they will give you healthcare. If Iwas not given a package where some of thoseelements were there… I have a certain level ofautonomy, I am listened to, we are able to makechanges based on what we see. We havehealthcare. And also I work part-time! I workpart-time for the Creative Capital Foundationand I am still producing. I know what the artistsare facing because I face it too in the other halfof my 700-hour week. That, I think, was great. Iam willing to trade certain things for what I getfrom that, the values I get from that. The returnI get from making an investment in CreativeCapital is much bigger and better than I evercould get from a technology company. But, thatis not always available in the arts world, and itis important to recognize that.

The final thing that I wanted to touch on andthat I have concerns about, on a larger level,and I think we need to come up with somereally exciting ways to deal with this, isfounder’s syndrome and fatigue. It is reallyimportant that our generation recognizes theincredible challenges that a lot of the artsadministrators have faced. I understand howdifficult it has been to make and maintain theseorganizations. At the same time, it is reallypainful to watch people going through apersonal midlife crisis and taking their organi-zation through it with them.

We have to ask ourselves: Is there somethingwe can do? Can we swap out a young personand give someone a sabbatical? There are waysto approach this that are not punitive, that are

not like, okay, we both fail now. What are wegoing to do if there is such a high level offatigue and the only way to keep some of thisinfrastructure going is with younger people?

The other question I was thinking is: What if itis a young person’s game? What if at a certainlevel an alternative arts space is for the personwho is getting the skills and the opportunityand not the cash, and not the healthcare. Maybethose are the only people who can really affordto do it as we have thought of it now. What doesthat mean? What are the implications of that?

Bedoya: Thank you, Esther.

The final speaker, and then we will have a littleconversation and we will get to the questions, isMichael Hoyt, who is a visual artist here inMinneapolis. He has a long exhibition historyof painting and installation works in the TwinCities. He received his BFA from the Minneapo-lis College of Art and Design. He currentlyserves as Director of the Kulture Klub Collabo-rative, an arts and social service program whichdevelops and guides interactions betweenartists, the arts, and cultural practices withteenage youth who are at risk and homeless, inan attempt to bridge survival with inspiration.Michael?

Hoyt: Thanks, Roberto.

Well, to follow suit, I would like to just give myshout-outs and my thank yous to a few peoplethat have been generous sources for me asmentors and as leaders, and just people to talkwith. I owe a lot of debt to my previous mentor,Dorit Cypus, the founder of Kulture Klub eightlong years ago. Christie Atkinson at the WalkerTeen Programs, who is a co-collaborator and agenerous thinker. And the Reverend NealCuthbert at the McKnight Foundation who is asupporter and a good friend. I thank you all,Roberto, Michelle, and all of you for coming.

I would like to start by saying that I was part ofthe Co-Generate Project as a participant torepresent the Midwest, and it was an incredibleexperience to meet young people, of my age oryounger, from this region. What I was hearingfrom most of the panelists was that we sharemany similar concerns and issues around



culture and around creating and practice andmaking things and wanting to be shown andwanting to be heard. But there are very differentthings, there are very different reasons why wecan’t do that locally. The issues that face artistsin the Twin Cities are so completely differentfrom what the artists face in Iowa or Chicago.And so the mechanisms that we use to createand to express art here are completely different.

It is also somewhat troubling for me to talkabout my generation because I think that weare still developing and forming what ourvision is, what our place is in this large schemeof things. As we all know, in the past 10 or 20years, the art world has gone through somesignificant changes that affect how youngartists are engaging, producing, presenting,supporting, and ultimately succeeding in theart world. Many of us are fortunate enough tofind, create or – in my case – adopt a meaning-ful role in the arts culture. And when I sayadopt, I mean that my mentor Dorit was verygenerous in passing off her organization to me.I find that very rare. When we talk about“founder’s syndrome” and we talk aboutpeople that are willing to move on and to handoff an organization, I don’t think that is a verycommon practice.

The so called Gen X demographic is moving outof its 20s and into its early 30s. It is important tocontextualize that because, as artists and asadministrators, this is a critical time in anartist’s career where they really have to makethat decision. Am I going to stick it out? Am Igoing to hang it up? Do I really have the time?Are there really the resources out there for meto do this? Many of my peers, and myselfincluded, are faced with those questions everyday and hopefully will continue to pushthrough the boundaries.

Is this a natural process of elimination? Is thissomething that happens to artists, and is just aweeding out process? Or is this due to the factthat maybe my generation was led to believethat all you had to do to become successful wasto be brilliant and to create things and themarket would reward you? Or the nonprofit orthe foundation would reward you?

How does the new undergraduate, or even thegraduate, fit into the nonprofit driven artsworld? How are they trained to fit into thesemechanisms that exist today or were evencreated ten or fifteen years ago?

As Mario stated earlier, our generation hasmoved beyond the studio to form a culturaloutreach, and that is what I do. Although I lovethis and this is my passion, as a perpetuallyemerging artist and young arts administrator, Iam challenged to both bridge and to manageartistic practice, yet, at the same time, providean arts service.

Our generation has somehow taken this idea ofproviding arts service and created a new formof artistic practice. It is something that is still achallenge, it is something that we still have tostruggle with, because I think that it is not atraditional way of practicing art. It is not beingin your studio and being engaged with asingular process. It is about being with otherpeople and being in a community, and sharingresources and networking, and creating neworganizations.

Finally, Esther spoke of health and the relation-ship to the workplace. For me, health hasalways been carving out a meaningful andrewarding work. As a director, I am happy towear all of the different hats that we need towear administratively in small organizationshere. You are a director, you are an administra-tor, you are developing grants. But I wouldnever dare let anyone take away the time that Ispend with the youth and the contact time. Thatis really important in setting up a structure foran organization, to set up time to be a visionary,time to sit and think, and think forwardly. Butalso time to reflect, time to process with thepeople that you work with and the people thatyou provide services for. Also to focus locallyand on the ground level, and that echoes“below the radar” work.

So, I guess I would like to close and open it upto Roberto. I thank you all.

Bedoya: Let us thank all of them for theirpresentations. I want to share one thing andthen I will throw it up to the panel themselvesfor some conversation. All of these comments



were also very reflective of what were two daysof intense conversations with ten to twelveindividuals coming from very different posi-tions. Some of the Co-Gen participants wereinto artists, some were working in large culturalinstitutions, some were working at starting uptheir own spaces. All kinds of disciplines were apart of the conversation. It was always incred-ibly animated, incredibly intense, and incred-ibly enriching, as you have heard from thesefour individuals.

Does anybody have any immediate responsethey want to voice in regard to what you haveheard already from your peers? Or I have alittle question I can throw out. Well, if it doesn’tfly, we can just go to the audience.

Mario made a comment, talking about thelegacy of artist-centered organizations, alterna-tive art practices and whether in the last 25-30years, the development of community-basedgroups, alternative art space, specific organiza-tions, all sort of link to an ideology of the ’60s/’70s alternative counter-culture. You made thiscomment, “there is little movement in anymovement” today.

Then Esther, as a layering on top of that, com-mented about “founder’s syndrome” andfatigue. Does anybody want to talk about thosetwo things? If one wants to accept for themoment “there is little movement in anymovement” and then you also have this fatiguethat may be linked to people who are trying tokeep a movement alive.

Coffey: Could I throw on one more layer?

Bedoya: Sure!

Coffey: The generation behind us. I will throwthat on top. They are right there, they areamazing in being able to work with youngpeople. They are prepped and they have hadgreat engagement with Michael and are versedwith the language and also are ready to makethat commitment.

Bedoya: Let us focus on the comment of “littlemovement in any movement.” Does anybodywant to run with that?

Robinson: There is this interesting thing aboutthe generation that has preceded us, which isthe self-identity of being a youth movement, acounter-culture movement. If you think aboutthe things that I was saying about adaptabilityand flexibility, healthfulness, informed risktaking, a lot of these things are children of thatprevious moment.

But there are certain handicaps to recognizingthat a moment has passed. Within that, recog-nizing that the only hope of survival is theexcitement of reinvention. Probably the onlything that is going to get you up in the morn-ing, is going to get you excited about what youdo, is your ability to engage. Part of reinventionis connection with the world. What does thatmean if you have been formed counter? Ifyour whole identity is about being counter-something, or separate, what does it mean tobe connected?

I have a lot of painfulness about this. So muchgreat work has happened. I know my parentsthought that transforming society was going tobe enough. Then they transformed society andsociety morphed into this really nice marketingtool and didn’t really give them the paybackthat they thought they were going to get andthey are tired and they are looking for a pay-back that maybe they won’t get. That is acurious thing. What is your payback? What isyour legacy? For the people who are finding it –I think Ruby is a good example – I think shegets tremendous payoff with using the skillsthat she has made for making something newand something different, but that is a continu-ous line from those original values. Also, beingable to work with those of us who are veryengaged in the moment. But how do we do thatacross the boards? I don’t know.

Ontiveros: What I meant by that “there waslittle movement in any movement” wasn’t tosay there were no movements. It just meansthat the idea of being invested in coalitionbuilding became harder and harder to main-tain. I am always amazed when I look at mani-festos and artist statements from the late ’60s –and for me, particularly, looking at artists as thecultural workers within the Chicano movement– and there is this amazing, provocative, power.Empowering is so much the right word that



when I read that, it’s like to have that, just for aday, would be wonderful! To be able to havethat sense that art practices in a network ofunions, visual and textual circulation of thosekinds of things – to have that as a possibilitywould be amazing.

We grew up where that was very much bank-rupt, where it was very hard to imagine coali-tion building. It is easy to imagine communitybuilding. When we talk about communitybuilding it is always about consensus, it is neverabout dis-sensus, which is what this writer I justread yesterday talks about – dis-sensus. It isreally hard to address that in a proposal, indiscussions. How do you manage that? How doyou address it? And how do you work with it?How does collaboration really work?

Many of the folks that we talked about experi-enced that same thing. They did very muchwhat a late ’60s, early ’70s model would be,which was, we are queer, Asian artists, andwe’re going to focus on theatre. After threemonths it was, hey, listen! This is all male-driven, gay stuff. This is not about lesbian,Asian American artists. And so, let’s break off.It was almost impossible to hold that togetherfor a very long time without competing vectorsand agendas crisscrossing each other.

Sometimes the break was amicable and othertimes it wasn’t. But what seemed to happenwas that there were break-offs and there weremoments when the right environment wasthere, where they would collaborate, then theywould go into other separate areas without asense of loss. It wasn’t about numbers.

The other thing that is difficult about growingup within little movements regards the oldergeneration of artists. There was a period of timewhen the market really did become a factor forthem, when some artists who were working invery advanced forms of art-making succeededin the marketplace. Others believed that theywere true to a community but didn’t succeed.Those that made it were sometimes seen as sell-outs. It’s very hard growing up and trying tofigure out, well, what does radical mean? Ifsomeone was radical in ’68 but now she isliving in Bel Air? That was a sense of failure.

I think this generation has worked with therealization that it is impossible to avoid themarketplace. I was actually enlightened when Iheard somebody say, oh, if a vodka companywants to sponsor me then that is fine. I knowwhat they are bringing and they know what Iam bringing.

Question: Isn’t that floating above the radar? Ifthe Absolut Company comes in and says, Iwant you to do something. Isn’t that your headpopped up above the radar and then Absolut isgoing to send out its missile and blow you up?

Ontiveros: Oh, sure!

Question: What are you afraid of losing? I amvery curious about that, this idea of below theradar. What do you lose if you do somethingfor Absolut? What do you lose if you are acraftsman sewing buttons at the Guthrie The-atre and Disney comes along and offers to payyou five times what you are getting now, plushealth insurance, plus everything else, and youare working in the Disney Corporation? What islost there?

Robinson: I think there is a lot.

Ontiveros: I think you lose the right to fail.

Robinson: No, not even necessarily. I think it isso complex. I have done a lot of projects withreally, really big corporations. Well, on onehand, you lose the right to fail. And there is acraft-building process that you want to beseparate from the marketplace.

Question: You are not going to learn thosecrafts at Disney? I am being a little facetioushere, but I really am curious.

Robinson: What you lose is the context of whatyou are doing. I think that is essential. If youare doing it from an art context, people areseeing it and hearing it in a very different waythan if you are doing it from a marketplacecontext. And then our value is solely, solely, inthe transformative sense. It only works as atransformative moment! The minute somebodyhears Disney, boom, the transformation is gone.



They do not have the same visceral response towhat you are doing.

Now, can you still partner with them? Yes, to acertain extent. But you have to be very, verycareful about how the context of your workshifts when you partner with corporations.

Question: When you are talking about survivalstrategy, you are really talking about the sur-vival of the spirit.

Audience: Subjectivity. It is the differencebetween being a subject, an acting subject, andbeing the object of someone else’s scheme. Itsounds to me like that is what you are saying.

Robinson: Right.

Coffey: We are really interested in audience,too. In what context is our work being re-ceived? And what control do we have overthat? The ideal of developing a language tospeak with that audience is very, very impor-tant in terms of the process of developing awork. When Disney or Alt…, I am not going tosay Altoid, but when Disney…

Robinson: But it shifts, though, because Altoidcould do one bad thing and then, suddenly,they are off the list. I mean, it is complex!

Ontiveros: I would actually go a little bitdifferent and say that I don’t think anything islost by having Absolut or a vodka companysponsor you. Because the people that we met –and certainly it is a limited group of people thatwe talked with – but what I found very engag-ing was that the artists knew right from thestart, this is a limited engagement, this is oneevent, we need to raise funds for that. Thegroup had this little hook that actually kind ofdestabilized the whole commodity aspect of it.It was amazing. It was working with limitedexpectations. It wasn’t a marriage, it wasn’t apartnership that was going to be for six or eightmonths or for a year where your mission state-ment was going to have to be examined and youwere going to have to go to a board. It wasmuch more: look, this is a two-day event and weneed someone to fund this. So, that is where Ithink that it is gained and not necessarily lost.

Question: First of all, I just wanted to thankyou because after Bill T. Jones today, this hasbeen a very provocative day.

You were talking about the pain of watchingthe current infrastructure and the agingfounders and all of that. I have to tell you that Iam feeling a little pain watching all of you. Itcomes when you start talking about your“survival kit” and how that is what you need toget up in the morning and that is what youneed to go do your work. I am thinking, whereis your dream? Because it seems to me thatthere is this shift. I taught at an art institute forfour years in the mid ’90s and I could feel theshift in my class. I am not pointing a finger andblaming, I am being observational here, becauseI used to feel this way after my class.

A friend called me the other day and left amessage on the machine right before I left townto come here. She was reading out of a bookthat said, in a post-civil rights era, we havesubstituted empathy for activism. We werelaughing about how we can all sit around andlight our aromatherapy candles and feel veryempathetic and feel very good about ourselves.

I hear you talk about survival and at what pointdo you say, survival is not where it stops.Survival is not where the process stops, butactivism is the next thing.

I am wondering if the youth movement that Istarted to read about, which involves globaliza-tion, which involves commodity culture, is,essentially, out of control because we can’t evensee where the lines are anymore. It comes downto everybody has to beat each other up overwhether or not you are going to take somemoney from a vodka company or not. Thatbecomes these huge battlegrounds. It seems tome that there is a battleground where weshould be fighting. People should not befighting each other or for control of theseorganizations.

[end of tape]

THIS IS ONE OF A SERIES OF PROCEEDINGS FROM THE GIA 2000 CONFERENCE, THE SOURCE.Transcriptions of proceedings from GIA’s 2000 conference, The Source, are published as individual papers.These proceedings are also available on the GIA website at www.giarts.org.

ORDER FORMPlease indicate the number of copies requested for each individual sessions. Each GIA member organiza-tion may request one set of proceedings at no cost. For additional copies, please include a postage andhandling fee of $5.00 per session requested.

____ The Digital Revolution and the Arts Pre-conference

____ Opening Plenary: Garrison Keillor

____ The Independent Creative Voice in Media Arts

____ Arts-Giving in Minnesota – Past, Present, and Future

____ Myths About the Suburbs

____ Arts in Suburban Communities – The Need for Strategic Partnership

____ Artist Service Organizations: from Technical Assistance to Tactical Advancement

____ Building Connections through the Arts

____ Family Foundations: Where They Focus and Why

____ Keynote Luncheon: Bill T. Jones

____ Highlighting the Development of Giving in New Communities

____ Artists and the Natural World – Urban Wildlife

____ The Emerging Role and Potential of Community Foundations in Arts Funding

____ Generation X and Beyond

____ Closing Session

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❑ Charge my bankcard # ____________________________ Name on card ___________________________ Exp. date ________

❑ Make check payable to Grantmakers in the Arts.

Fax to: (206) 624-5568.

Mail to: Grantmakers in the Arts, 604 West Galer, Seattle, WA 98119-3253, (206) 624-2312.

proceedings from the conference - grantmakers in the arts · pizzicato five, jocelyn enriquez, the...

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