Competition for the cheapest way to produce the next disposable consumer crap for the consumption of workers whose wages have been driven down or whose jobs have been eliminated by the same force and thus can't afford the crap is rapidly driving itself into extinction. This is good news.
Was talking to Michael Bondi, excellent metal-worker and artist based in Richmond, and he said the following about public commissions. Years ago there was a public building going up in the Bay Area that had plans for a large metal sculptural piece in some central location, a plaza or something. Instead of submitting a proposal for an eyesore, Bondi proposed to make the "piece" a set of ornate doors at all the major corridors- doors that would actually function and be touched and used by the public every day. This is in keeping with older traditions going as far back as Gothic churches, where the work of master artists and artisans were an everyday fixture for the public like spoons and bowls. Furthermore, Bondi argued, the cost of the installation could be shared with the cost of the doors and windows they had already budgeted, representing a net savings to the public over the sculpture installation. Of course, the idiots on the board went with the sculpture, and nobody in the conversation could even remember what the thing finally looked like in the end, because the vast majority of this "public art" in the museum model of dead objections for observation is totally forgettable and worthless.
There is nothing terribly ground-breaking in this criticism of public art, but the interesting thing about this conversation was the conviction of this master metal-worker and the master mason he was talking with, and me listening in and agreeing, that what the new administration and its new, bottom-up economy needs is not new ideas about public works and building, destined to be a large part of any economic revitalization plan (unless we launch another war and a draft) but very old ones: Have them built by artists, hundreds of thousands of them!
What does this notion mean for all the other artists, performative, literary, hybrid, et al. I think Chris Stroffolino has given this the most thought of anyone I know, and I wish he would send me the New WPA manifestos he was working on, because I've lost all digital trace of them.
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i wish i might not draw this comparison (because of the general angst about rand's writings, and dually, my agreement with yours) but you sound an awful lot like Howard Roark, mister. I'm not sure if the new administration would do such a thing, especially considering that unlike the WPA, obama has outlined something that, while a step in the right direction, looks a lot like a social-industrial complex (better than military...), namely "raining money on private companies" (nytimes.com) to build infrastructure and increase jobs. what do you think about the WPA writers projects as a model for just such an artistic silver-lining to this economic cloud?
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