A Piece Of The Action
By Mitch Berg
As I noted the earlier in a piece I thought I’d posted Friday, but did not, Sisyphus at Nihilist In Golf Pants commented on the State Arts Board’s grants of taxpayer money to “promising” “Minnesota” artists and their art.
Now, for years I’ve said that conservatives need to get engaged in the world of the arts; to stop ceding this utterly important aspect of the human condition to the grant-pimps, the pseudoacademic weenies – the left. Conservatives need to make their presences felt in literature, music, theatre, film, multi-media, comedy (albeit I think we can, and must, continue to cede dance to the left, since I have no idea how to take a conservative swipe at that particular medium. I’m open to suggestions).
In this spirit, Sisyphus takes a game swat at proposing his own grant applications (and, it seems, granting them, if only fictionally):
1. $3,000 to purchase extra large glass basin and cases of light beer for composition of art work in which an entire year’s worth of Nick Coleman columns are submerged in the collective artists’ urine.
Sisyphus makes a fantastic effort at getting the ball rolling. But we need to build on this to achieve more.
So here’s your assignment: Read the State Arts Board’s list of grants. And fill in your own applications in the comment section. We’ll be taking applications for
- Music
- Photography
- Media arts/new media
- Poetry
- Prose
- Dance,
- Theater
- Two- and three-dimensional visual arts
Take your best shot. The best? Well, maybe we’ll just forward them to the SAB and see what happens.
You never know.
December 1st, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Hey, I can personally vouch for the positive impact these projects have had on my life. They… wait a minute, no I can’t. Never heard of them.
Guess I have no choice but to try and chisel some of that public money for myself. Move aside boys and girls, there’s another snout heading for the trough!
Application:
$2,000 — to increase the quality of my blogging work and the overall quality of my posts, and to have my work seen by a broader audience
December 1st, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Application: $2000 to blog reviews of poetry posted mocking Peev on SitD.
December 1st, 2008 at 2:53 pm
I have written, and been granted funds, via our regional arts council. It is a process that is not automatic by any means, and requires more than a mock proposal to get through.
So go ahead, make fun of what you know nothing about, it is all that is left to do by this site anyway!
Shot in the Onion, rewriting history one screed at a time.
Flash
December 1st, 2008 at 3:00 pm
$20k to produce an interactive, multi-media work that allows the audiences to explore the interdependence of “the arts” and “clean water” within the context of constitutional amendments.
I will simultaneously be broadening the audiences of my fellow grant recipients by including samples of their work into mine.
Audiences will be provided with fruits and vegetables of varying states of ripeness, and encouraged to add to the complex texture of the work.
Grant will enable me to travel to New York, Italy and Hawaii to collect samples of works in progress from other grantees, as well facilitate the purchase of a 52″ flat screen and surround sound audio system to review and edit my work from.
December 1st, 2008 at 3:01 pm
“I have written, and been granted funds, via our regional arts council.”
Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me in the least, Flush.
December 1st, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Oh, BTW. I’m going to be using “UP (chuck)” as a working title. Suggestions are encouraged.
December 1st, 2008 at 3:15 pm
I’m waiting for Peevee to show up and regale us with tales of the week he spent in seclusion with Georgia O’Keefe while she turned over the sum knowledge of her technique to him.
December 1st, 2008 at 3:23 pm
So go ahead, make fun of what you know nothing about
I do, in fact, know about arts grants. This post is not intended to be a detailed dissection of an institutional process. It is intended to mock the spending of our tax dollars on “art” which is freqently tendentious and (as I noted on Friday) trite.
Shot in the Onion, rewriting history one screed at a time.
The word you’re looking for is “Pre-writing”. We “pre-write” history since, technically (and literally) the arts grant process isn’t actually “history”, yet.
A minor distinction, to be sure.
December 1st, 2008 at 4:42 pm
$6000 for the purpose of procuring and distributing senses of humor to various local lefty bloggers.
December 1st, 2008 at 5:10 pm
In the old days (meaning up to about the time of Napolean) artists and public works projects were paid for by aristocrats. After WW1 art was paid for by the wealthy and by then by the state.
Someone has to pay to produce this stuff, even if it is terrible. It seems to be integral to human nature to use collective resources to retell and reinforce a common mythologized history.
When you have no common history you believe deserves to be mythologized, you get modern art.
December 1st, 2008 at 5:32 pm
$2,000 — to increase the quality of my blogging work and the overall quality of my posts, and to have my work seen by a broader audience
I don’t know about he quality but Mitch just helped you with the broader audience. 😉
December 1st, 2008 at 5:33 pm
I have written, and been granted funds, via our regional arts council. It is a process that is not automatic by any means, and requires more than a mock proposal to get through.
None of us have any doubt that you have experience spending other people’s money.
December 1st, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Shot in the Onion, rewriting history one screed at a time.
[Following Scaifenet instructions]: SHOT IN THE ONION!!! HAHAHAHAHA!! That’s freakin’ hilarious, flash. Stop, you’re killin’ me!
December 1st, 2008 at 8:19 pm
but Mitch just helped you with the broader audience
Oh sure, now I suppose you want a cut of the action. When free money is being handed out, all the deadbeats and panhandlers come out of the woodwork.
December 1st, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Actually Flash is somewhat right. These granting boards usually require a lot of accountability from the grantees. There are loads of paperwork & delays before you get your $$. Hardly seems worth it for a few thousand bucks, but then, if your alternative is wages and tips as a barrista, $3,000 might seem like a lot of money.
My only real world experience in getting government grants is for scientific research & public safety. It might be that the granting body in MN is an old-boys & old-girls network that hands out buckets of cash to their friends.
Their web page is certainly ugly. It looks like the guy who did buzz.mn dashed it off during his lunch hour: http://www.arts.state.mn.us/grants/2008/08_aa_ai.htm
October 25th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
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