Issue #12
Mid-Winter to Summer 1996
Dollars and Sensibility
Money is loaded with anger, pride, shame, and fear. In response, people talk differently. Some fast talk, some sweet talk, some back talk, some freeze. This journal is the product of the voices that kept talking, under pressure. Guest Editors Alice Naude and Annie Rachelle Lanzillotto put out a call for participants and received an overwhelming number of responses. Each played a role in nudging and shaping the journal towards its eventual form. They are a very real response to the economic condition of this country, a cultural obsession with income, and the devaluation of art.
Editorial team
Annie Lanzillotto - Alice Naude - Scotty Heron
Illustrator
Andrew Perret
Ad Layout
Julie Atlas Muz
Copy Editor
Bridget Burns - Lara Gerstein - Hope Hall - Nehara Kalev - Kristin Stuart Valdez
Articles
Dollars and Sensibility
Back in October, Annie and I talked about how to approach writers and artists for submissions to Dollars and Sensibility. What questions should we ask? What answers were we looking...
Redemption
It's the nature of money to change hands. Look down the streets, every coupla feet, somebody's pockets are ringing. Money is everywhere you look. Garbage is money. Ice is money....
Pussy & Cash: Diary of a Downsized Diva
excerpts from a book-in-progress, a fictionalized memoir detailing the experiences of a downsized jazz saxophone diva at the welfare office. 10/15/92/at the crossroads #4 talkin bout them post cold war...
A Collaboration with Class
To answer the question of the relationship of money to art, it helps to have some agreed on understanding of what money is. Money not only buys things, it also...
Following the Dow or the Tao?
As children we charged two pennies for kids and three pennies for grownups for admission to the cellar marionette shows of my Philadelphia childhood. The 92 cents or so earned...
Reflections on the Economics of Impermanence in Painting and Dance
It is the threatened future of my life as an artist that has opened my eyes to a broader context than aesthetics, and caused me to speak my concerns. I...
It Topples Fast
The translation of cash in French, is "liquide" or "espece" (liquid or species). It's liquid. You cannot grasp it. All the different coins! I take a long time to pay...
Fraternity - Making a Living as a Brother
Five artists in a shared process in a common form. The cheshire cat, Money, grinning — always there —faint and looming. Excavated personal histories are wrought with the most invisible...
Money in Art: From Face Value to Critical Value
Art and money are both embodiments of value, and between them is a constant tension. Art has always been to some extent a commodity, money is the most liquid of...
Falling Short of Sorts
I will go into numbers here. I know that is considered not a very fine thing to do, here in America, country of capitalism. Everyone talks about money: how to...
Hallelujah Anyway #2
Last summer I spent two weeks waking up at six in the morning to videotape shopkeepers opening their gates. I was interested in the movement involved, the way it plays...
Bank Account
Oh, Macy's having a sale. Cuisinart $99.99 only. Cuisinart, cuisinart. Oh that's what my mother wants. She writes me a letter everyday. "Do you mind very much if I ask...
Because You’re Worth It
A Perspective Opportunist In the beginning we have no money. And we don't care. The rest of the world is clearly confused and we find joy in secret places. We...
Silver Spoon
I am a privileged American artist. For the past three years I have had control of about $160,000 in an investment portfolio. Managed by a broker, the money is in...
The Tides That Blind
When my Russian cousin came to visit me during a record-breaking heat wave several years ago, it didn't deter her from wanting to explore the city with the voracious appetite...
Starve
Ralph Lemon's company is one to which I would take a friend unfamiliar with modern dance, it's always an act of advocacy and responsibility when I introduce someone to dance....
Dance, Mind-Sets, and a New Day
The mind-set of the dance community, like all actively functioning communities, is split down the middle, separating the richness mind-set from the poverty mind-set. One company's approach and one dancer's...
Economies of Dance and Other Thoughts
I only started dancing after I retired. I worked in a social work setting. Everyone came up to me and said, “your work must be so rewarding.” Isn’t that what...
Sensibility: Race, Class and Dollars [Never Trust a Thief]
“... i can understand slavery and i can understand homophobia/i can understand sexism and i can understand racism because it’s all a big misunderstanding…” - Assoto Saint’s Risin’ To The...
HOW TO SELL BUT NOT SELL OUT: Some Personal Lessons From Making a Career as a Subversive and Radical Performing Artist
When people ask me, how long have you been playing the saxophone? I tell them, as long as I've been in the struggle. When activists ask me, how long have...
Posing Poor
There have always been writers like myself who benefit for a time, perhaps an entire writing career from a so called unearned income. In the end there are a conundrum...
quotes from the damaged
“I know you think I’m upper class…” “She’s making politically correct dance…” “Now, you know the difference between a real nigger and a nigger with class.” “Oh, he’s going to...
Leverage Lost: The Nonprofit Arts in the Post-Ford Era (excerpt)
At present, it is widely believed within the arts that nonprofit organizations are experiencing extreme financial pressure due to governmental funding reductions and a momentary downturn in the American economy....
The Healing and Change, #9
The Healing and the change. How does it work? I remember getting a call from a friend of mine to work as a cater-waiter on Long Island. I'd never heard...
Power in Numbers
The act of "naming" has played a profound role in this country's history in creating a myth of who we are as a nation, a myth of who is "American."...
Peer Pressure and Payback or I Don’t Know Anyone With Money. Yes You Do!
It is a horrific scenario for the contemporary artist to contemplate: In 1653, Louis XIV commissions a group of artists to create la Ballet de la Nuit. He casts himself,...