EL MANIFIESTO REVOLUCIONARIO DE WICASTA LOVELACE DE LA MANCHA
I intend to ...

Make a living doing the above.

This is the one that's easier said than done. Having said that, if I didn't think it was possible, this page wouldn't be here.

As I've said, I believe that the Internet is changing everything. It's making it possible for an artist to directly reach his or her audience and open up a direct dialogue. It's also making it possible for the audience to directly support the artist and ensure that he or she has the means to continue making art. In capitalist American the bulk of the money spent in supporting and promoting the arts has gone not to the artists themselves, but to the corporations who have placed themselves between the artist and the audience and has benefitted most from the arrangement.

Obviously, I feel that the corporate culture has damaged the free flow of ideas and art by determining artistic worth not by merit but by commercial viability. In short, if they can sell it, it's brilliant. If they can't, it's avante-garde bullshit that only a handful of self-important intellectuals care about anyway. So the bottom line is “can we sell it?” and “how much money can we make from it?” rather than “what us she trying to say by painting the younger child in the background and the television set in the foreground?”

In America we seem to believe that the only artistic endeavors that have worth are the ones that are the most successful. So we confuse half-naked, wriggly entertainers with geniuses for no other reason than that they have the most impressive sales figures.

We'll never get away from the spectacle. It's too ingrained in the American psyche. We like a lot of bang for our buck. But I do believe that the Internet is making it possible for the artist to find other means of making a living than trying to sell bits of their souls to housewives at community art shows and flea markets, or prostrating themselves before desk-jockeys at corporations.

For my part, I intend to exlore the new possibilities that the Internet presents. Is it possible that an artist can make a living by reaching out directly to his audience? Will an audience support an artist if his work is not something that's been seen in a major motion picture, carefully packaged in a display at the local mall, or plastered across syndicated radio stations on a continuous hourly loop?

I suppose we're going to find out, aren't we?

“Over, under or through. B'god!”
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