From: Philip Hood (email suppressed)
Date: Wed Aug 23 2006 - 12:26:21 PDT
On Wed, 23 Aug 2006, Victoria Wolfe wrote:
> Their claim of fidelity to artists and financial
> credibility just weren't true. ...
hi victoria,
you are essentially accusing the tank of fraud here,
something that can do substantial damage to their
reputation. the organization's representative
on this list (Susan Agliata), in my personal esteem,
did seem to have a bit of a reactionary (e.g. "this
is the end of this discussion, GOODBYE!") response,
but I think it was done more out of inexperience and
not through calculated malice ... I really do
think that there should be a higher degree of
due-diligence through substantiation of the
claims you make ...
since the tank is a 501(c)3 organization, and they
are involved with on-line interstate wired money
transaction/solicitations and a host of
other things going, a handful of people's careers could
and maybe quite possibly should be altered. Generally,
with organizations that have gone corrupt, if they
are legally accused of something, they use the money
they've gotten from the public to defend themselves,
further degrading the net outflow of money and services
to what is considered their "base constituency," so to
speak.
I have quite personally found that there has
always been a bit of "sausage making" thats gone on
in just about every organization (every interpersonal
relationship for that matter) & so I don't expect
the tank to be free of that. That means to me,
once you open the casing, things are not going to
be as pretty as you'd like. The case could be
made here that there is a personal falling out, a
mis-understanding, rather than a systematic
mishandling of affairs, or just an honest slipping
through the cracks of things.
Victoria, I get the feeling that the Tank may
indeed have been trying to be an honest broker
overall and something has fallen through the
cracks. It seems that the many of
the main people are shifting rapidly, people are
pretty young there, they've been moving quite
a bit & I can imagine how things might have
gotten lost in the shuffle.
Personally, I'd just write to Justin Krebs
and let him know your greviances & let him know
that maybe the organization needs to really listen
to what you are saying, in terms of doing some soul
searching. His email is:
email suppressed
At the same time, I'd tell him to seriously consider
dropping the submission fee on films because its
limiting & probably doesn't really bring them
anything, makes them seem overly exclusive, an
opens them up to collective retribution from the
community at large.
Aside from all of this, my interest was piqued by
what you said & I did some free net
searching and some calling around for information
on the Tank, and what I could find is this, and
I'll share w/ you my quick notes:
http://www.improvresourcecenter.com/mb/showthread.php?t=22653
(Justin) Krebs and childhood friend Amy Herzog got the idea
for The Tank when the former tenant at the site, a small theater company,
left in April. As it happens, Krebs' father runs
Eric Krebs Theatrical Management, which manages the adjacent
John Houseman and Douglas Fairbanks theaters. "My dad's been
on the block for 20 years," Krebs says.
here's a short article about Eric Kreb's, Justin's Father
http://www.injersey.com/day/story/0,2379,438916,00.html
Here's the Tank's 2003 990 Form:
http://dynamodata.fdncenter.org/990s/990search/990.php?ein=010798319&yr=200406&rt=990&t9=A
You can also see that the Tank got a Manhattan
Community Arts Fund from the Lower Manhattan
Cultural Council in what looks like 2005:
http://www.lmcc.net/grants/boroughwide/manncommartfund/pastrecipients.html
The Tank Ltd.
To support Bent Festival, an event dedicated to circuit bending, the art
of modifying existing electronics to create new sounds and unique musical
instruments.
After moving from their space in mid-manhattan, they've
teamed up w/ the Collective: Unconscious:
http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_142/artgroup.html
Collective: Unconscious
has also recieved grants from lmcc.
Justin Krebs is also involved w/:
http://www.drinkingliberally.org/
Justin Krebs and Matthew O'Neill began Drinking Liberally in New York City
in May, 2003. Previously, the two had collaborated on Speak Up New York! -
a 2002 state-wide youth civic engagement tour that turned into a program
for New York state's PBS affiliates.
The New Democratic Majority has held fundraisers
for The Tank:
http://www.newdemmajority.org/cms/?q=node/view/9067
& etc etc etc ... that means that there's probably a
long paper trail on the Tank, should you be
interested in tracking down just what is going
on (which I think would be a worthy goal), should
you have some serious issues w/ the organization
that you think are fundamental to its make-up and
not just some personal misunderstanding ...
all this just my $.02.
-ml
pth
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.