Pardon the interruption, sirs and madams, for I am aware of the frequency of requests for funding that are intruding upon your daily life. How rare is a moment to pause the endless yapping of digital devices and ponder the larger questions through the arts, or to just run free, perhaps loading the weak side of the court to run a high pick-and-roll and to throw a well-placed elbow into the face of your troubles. It is for these noble things I request your support. I’m selling candy for my basketball team or for my conceptual art piece. The choice is yours.
You are probably filled with reasons to reject me, as is the nature of receiving raw human expression. Perhaps I am too old to be selling candy on the subway for a basketball team. Perhaps I am a candidate for a massive, costly, and painful knee injury due to my lack of cardio-vascular fitness. Perhaps painting is dead. Let’s not give in to these quick refusals. Life is for living and we are here now together.
I’m no fool. I’m well aware of the legacy of 1970s performance art and the creative baggage that can arise from these herstories. It would be foolhardy to constrain ourselves to a specific media or theme at this point. Just be aware that the final product (or process, no?) will be robust and stimulating, and we won’t box ourselves in. Similarly, we might run man-to-man or zone defense, depending on the outside shooting capabilities of our opponents. Isolation? It is both an option in our offense as well as an offensive byproduct of our postindustrial condition.
Will we wear retro shorts or the more baggy current style? Will we try to enlist a large post player to run a modified triangle? Will sculpture ever become a meaningful mode of expression in an age of rapid two-dimensional reproduction? These are all questions I need to answer, and money is needed to provide the time to answer them. How am I to truly and honestly focus on these queries while scheduling appointments for that dick Erik in customer support services? How am I to study YouTube clips of early Joan Jonas or James Worthy with any focused appreciation while trying to mail merge? I spent three years on that MFA, and four years on the JV squad at my high school. I have muses to appease and practices to complete, separately.
Also, I need Gatorade in either case. I get dehydrated easily.
I’ve got peanut and regular M&Ms. I’ve got Twizzlers. I’ve got concepts that could free humankind from the entrapment of modern existence. All of these are $1 or three for $2.