From: xander!!! . (email suppressed)
Date: Sun Mar 12 2006 - 12:59:34 PST
i sort of think that part of the point of avant-guard cinema (or...maybe
i'll just speak for my self and say my work) is to 'take things up with adam
smith' and of course i understand that market capitalism is about
exploitation, but i am also hopeful that sub-culture and art can create
models that work differently.... i think that co-operative efforts are
awsome and important and understand what you are getting at when you write,
What the small festival
>with fee amounts to -- in a very imperfect way, granted -- is a sort of
>cooperative screening. By pitching in entry fees filmmakers get the
>opportunity to have their films screened to people who wouldn't get to see
>them otherwise.
but co-operation is also about rejecting heirarchy and when there is money
paid and inclusion and exclusion there is a heirachy at play. i think that
screenings where there is a 'curator' who's project it is to program and
make decisions is somehow a more honest system
>From: David Tetzlaff <email suppressed>
>Reply-To: Experimental Film Discussion List <email suppressed>
>To: email suppressed
>Subject: EXPLOITATION!
>Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 15:26:09 -0500
>
> > ...when people or institutions profit from work and the
> > worker does not this is exploitation,
>
>I believe the point that has been made here is that the people or ad hoc
>institutions that show new and non-comercial work do NOT make a profit. I
>have read nothing but condemnation of those 'festivals' that are run as a
>commercial enterprize.
>
>The fact is, there aren't that many people willing to pay anything, as
>audiences or funders, to show this kind of work. What the small festival
>with fee amounts to -- in a very imperfect way, granted -- is a sort of
>cooperative screening. By pitching in entry fees filmmakers get the
>opportunity to have their films screened to people who wouldn't get to see
>them otherwise.
>
>It seems people are shocked! shocked! to discover market capitaism is
>exploitative. The naivete of people who expect experimental filmamkers to
>actually get paid is charming but also comic. If you want to get paid in
>America, you need to offer goods or services for which there is an
>established market of a size capable of generating an income.
>
> > When you are ready to do all your teaching for free, then you
> > might be in a position to suggest that artists should do the same. . .
> > If your university stopped paying you, would you go on teaching there?
>
>Of course not, but I would not stop teaching even if was no longer
>formally employed as a teacher. But more importantly, this teacher vs.
>artist distinction is wholly false. AFAIK, Stan Brakhage supported himself
>through most of his life by teaching. The film work for he may not have
>been 'sufficiently' paid, established his qualifications to attain a
>teaching post, therefore he received a kind of indirect compensation.
>Almost everyone in academia creates scholarly or creative work for which
>they receive no significant direct monetary compensation. I shall bypass
>the question of whether the published essays I have written or the films I
>co-authored that have been widely distributed are 'art.' But by the terms
>you use, yup, I have given all of them away for free or next to nothing.
>(I always get a laugh from the yearly royalties statement a publisher
>sends we: yeah! another $2.47!) Except that is not how the system work.
>Academics are not paid to be teachers alone, but teacher/scholars or
>teacher/artists. If you have a pure teaching job, say at a juco, you may
>teach 5 or 6 classes a term. At a research university the norm is 2. What
>the school is paying for you to do instead of teaching those 4 other
>sections is to get there out and write or make stuff that will build the
>schools reputation by association. That's the job. Filmmakers who teach at
>universities and 4 year colleges are generally, if not explicitly, being
>paid to make films by their schools.
>
>Other than the lucky few who can score a big grant or fellowship, nobody I
>know who makes non-comercial films doesn't have a day job. Would I make
>things work differently if I were King. Yeah. But really, you need to take
>these complaints up with Adam Smith, Milton Freidman, etc. etc.
>
>What most artists consider their art, would be considerd by economists or
>the IRS exactly as a 'hobby.'
>
>In other words, the worlds of art as a 'vocation' a passion, an identity,
>a spiritual practice on one hand, and of 'art' as an occupation for which
>one can expect to get paid have no intersection whatsoever. This is what
>Marx called the alienation of labor. It sucks, but short of a revolution,
>it's kinda the way things are.
>
>
>__________________________________________________________________
>For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.