A Day In The Life Of The Bouncy Banker-You really do only live once.

Wolf Geyr-IN GOD WE TRU$T

At Occupy Wall Street there is a wonderful process in play that, for all its problems, can be best described as Democracy in action. The stance of most of the activists is apolitical in that they find the current rusting infrastructure of politics to be one they no longer wish to work within. Neither do they wish to come at it from the left or right. This is bubbling up from underneath. Understandably they do not see the roads and bridges we now have in place standing up for long. The current crop of politicians give the appearance of desperately trying to maintain the current system but show a complete unwillingness to inject real change (monetary or visionary) into the process. The Masses are now the 99%. Socialism is now, at its simplest, people wanting to see people treated with respect. To continue using these words as a form of insult will only show up the thrower of those insults as a dinosaur stuck in old patterns, unable to escape a dualistic approach to politics that is failing to function effectively. There is a kind of political exegesis going on. Break down the current system, look at all the parts, and cyber-nurd it back together, whilst making sure to throw new parts thrown in and stir, vigorously.

I see so many people energized by a sense that change might be possible if applied with great caution. Burned once people hold their hope close to their chest. Artists, economists, university lecturers, whoever is involved must show a willingness to make mistakes, and be open to criticism, the horizontal process, and consensual thinking. It is way too soon to say any of us have figured this thing out to the point where clear demands, open and shut, can be made.

One artist at the No Comment Art show, Wolf Geyr, has clearly been struggling with the issues of art and money for a while now. My take on biting the hand that feeds i.e. making art that one hopes is pretty insulting to the very people who might one day buy that same art, has been fairly consistent. Think Steve Bell, brilliant satirical cartoonist who has been a presence in the British paper, the Guardian, for a good thirty years. I believe, though I may have my facts wrong, that Margaret Thatcher, whom he satirized viciously in his strip Maggie’s Farm, bought some of his originals. I guess that is one way to stifle criticism, rather than getting all upset in public. This does not really succeed unless the cartoonist/artist gives up, and Steve Bell is, mercifully, as biting as ever.

I’d like to point out that many of those in the financial industry who are also patrons of the arts have been biting your hand all along. You put your money in their bank where they make it grow to their own benefit whilst charging you for the privilege of doing so. Curious don’t you think?

Art Gives a Speech at the old JP Morgan Bank as part of the No Comment Art show, 10.8.11

Thanks to Wolf Geyr for filming. Find more of his work at:  http://www.wolfgeyr.com

Art Enables The Banks (version 2)

Freedom From Want

Norman Rockwell

So is this one of those rare, populist moments that will benefit the democrats and not the republicans? The notion that income inequality as it stands is reprehensible is hard to dispute. For once it does appear as if the right is at a loss for words. Their outmoded charges of liberalism and socialism will now fail to penetrate the usually thin skins of the opposition as the true meanings of those words are taken to heart once more. I’ve never understood how it was that the right could hurl these words as insults and get away with it. The democrats have always showed a remarkable lack of backbone. Maybe now they are beginning to stand behind their supposed values. The issue of income inequality is one that the right has so vociferously painted as one of class warfare that their about face is remarkable. Cantor would now like to talk to the mob he slandered. Romney is now concerned about the plight of the 99%. Politicians of either stripe apparently now feel the frustration. Until they exhibit an interest in real change that empathy will appear hollow. The exciting part of all this is that the bland assumption that the have nots simply want what the haves have is clearly hollow. Their demands are reasonable. Freedom from want is not a new idea but amazingly there are those who have continued to mock it with impunity until now. Freedom from want is a human right albeit one that must be ever fought for, and people are now taking that fight to the streets once more.

Meanwhile on the health front more and more companies lay off workers to whom they owe too much (good benefits) replacing them with hungry workers to whom they can extend less satisfactory benefits and lower pay. So it is naturally time to address the healthcare gap once and for all. Do I need to point out that private health insurance is hard for most of the 99% to afford? The healthcare system as it stands tilts heavily in favor of the wealthy. Time for those without health insurance to wage a health war! A good and affordable healthcare system is something many, many folks could get behind once someone explains clearly and simply, once and for all, how they are being shafted by the system currently in place. Tying an individual’s health benefits to a job was never a great idea as it impeded the ability of people to grow their careers and move from one work situation to another concerned as they were by the possibility they might lose the benefits they have or be temporarily caught without. That amounts to a form of fear culture, something the right continues to extol as virtuous in every sphere. Fear, as far as they are concerned, drives the economy.

So, given that people have little choice re their health care insurance it seems now might be the time for everyone to drop their coverage, occupy the hospitals if they’re unwell, the headquarters of insurance companies if they currently are well and demand coverage for all or none.

I’m no expert. All I see is a wrong headed system with lobbyists so powerful any alternative to things as they stand have little chance of moving forward. Until someone stands up to the insurance companies nothing will change. This is just one of the many fronts where anger around income inequality is palpable. This insistence on change must be encouraged and cannot stop. The mantra must be healthcare for all.

It is positively boring to have to repeat the obvious again and again but in this culture as it stands we have no choice.

How Art Propels Occupy Wall StreetMichele

Article by Michele Elam, Special to CNN

Letter to the Bank Manager #83 (Occupy Your Home!)

Crappy photo collage thrown together in haste! But you get the idea.

My dear Bank Manager,

I write to you on a fine sunny morning after days enduring nature’s rage. We have tree limbs in our back yard that narrowly missed scarring our home. Halloween was a blast this year as we negotiated downed power lines and piles of tree waste to get to those baskets of candy sitting on the stoops of homes that were without electricity. You must be relieved to hear we still have our power! This home on which I still owe a massive mortgage to, well, you, still stands. If the massive tree but yards away had chosen to give up the ghost the house could’ve been crushed. You almost lost your leverage over us.

This all set me to thinking about how it is that despite years of living in this fine shell, filling it with the warm sounds of children playing, laughing and singing—in essence breathing life into it—you, with a swipe of your pen could, if we were to skip a payment, lose one more paycheck, suffer one more medical bill, could end it all. I resent that. Truly it does come down to many missteps that, over the years, built up to a loss of equity, a tragic yet common situation. Indeed the situation is so common that people are discovering, of necessity, an inner creativity that shows the way to an alternative perspective, another way of looking at this mess. Instead of quivering with a constant gnawing anxiety over the fragility of our situation we shall instead take the bull by the horns (yes! That bull!). We have decided to go out into that yard, MY yard, no longer YOUR yard—mine I say! Mine!—I shall put my sweat and effort into sawing up those tree limbs to make fire wood (don’t see you out here with your chainsaw!) to heat my, MY family’s home. We, my family and I, not you, shall occupy our home! Inspired by the visionaries at Occupy Wall Street we shall Occupy Our Home!

Well? What do you think? Surely you are happy to see your client excited, and inspired, with fire in the belly? We are circling the wagons and hunkering down to a long, tough winter—in the comfort of OUR not YOUR home.

As these fresh creative juices flow I wanted you to be the first to know, you my bank manager, the one to whom I naturally turn in difficult times, for advice, for therapy and for friendship, a deep abiding friendship that can endure such difficult bumps in our relationship.

Yours sincerely,


Art O’Connor

Margin Call

A new movie, Margin Call, by J. C. Chandor, takes a different tack on Wall Street attempting to look at a more human side—to be precise it looks at the eery quiet that pervaded Lehman Brothers the day it went down. From an article today in the New York Times:

JoJo Whilden/Margin Call Productions

"As I avoided security guards and surreptitiously filed reports from a men’s-room stall, what struck me most was the absence of panic, the strange stillness that seemed to permeate the place: the melancholy silence of a once-great global corporation staring into the void."MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM

Letter to the Bank Manager #81 (Your Illness Is Cureable)

Dear Bank Manager (maybe Mr. Bullrider still works for you or maybe he does not! No matter! You’re hypothetical anyway though I continue to yearn for the human connection),

Do you see how the nature of these letters has changed over the years? When I first began writing to you I was reaching out to you on your raft—rather your gin palace, as my father would’ve called it—a drowning man desperately in need of salvaging. Salvaging seems to be the appropriate word. Saving always smacked of conversion and that was not what I was seeking. I only wished to get my own house in order. I had no desire to become you with your fine yacht and padded bank account. I hoped only that you might aid me in the complicated work of making my financial life more secure and less mind numbing. I was asking you to make my money work. I still believed, had faith that that was the job you were hired to do.

Now I find myself in the unenviable position of having to throw you a lifeline and, given your overall arrogance, beg you to take hold of it. I’m saying: Look! Look! Look! We’re not trying to push your head under! We are trying to get you to change your ways. That is it. They are unhealthy. They do none of us any good. Your practices may appear self serving but they are eating away at you from the inside. Because the erosion is from within and you are not one to stare at your own belly button (as my mother would put it) you fail to see it. Whereas once upon a time you were my financial therapist now I am your life coach. You are dying. If you do not change your ways your life force will ebb out and trickle down (there’s that expression again!) the drain. I’m urging you to change your ways. You drink too much. You must cut back on your meat consumption. You have to stop throwing so much money at agribusiness and the factory farms they prop up. Instead pour it back into the world where it can do the most good—before you get melted down, a victim of financial global warming.

These letters may at times appear aggressive. They are intended as fair warning. Warning can also appear to be an aggressive word. I’m struggling to get through to you. Sorry but you are so thick skinned it requires the greatest of fortitude (and a physical strength I do not have) to not pick you up (metaphorically) and shake some sense into you. I know your notion of sense: The more money I have the better off I am. Your wrong. You are living for all the wrong reasons and making that clear is, apparently, going to be the work of a lifetime.

Yours sincerely,


Art O’Connor

PS—You are not as yet terminal! You still can save yourselves. A fine Canadian institution called Adbusters, has a wonderful proposal:
On October 29, on the eve of the G20 Leaders Summit in France, let’s the people of the world rise up and demand that our G20 leaders immediately impose a 1% #ROBINHOOD tax  on all financial transactions and currency trades. Let’s send them a clear message: We want you to slow down some of that $1.3-trillion easy money that’s sloshing around the global casino each day – enough cash to fund every social program and environmental initiative in the world.

I am sure, for you, this medicine has a bitter taste, but I promise in the long run you’ll feel much, much better. Now unclench your fists, and breathe slowly. Rest in the assurance that Mother Theresa and Robin Hood are working on your treatment.

PPS—In my letters as you can attest I have always refrained from calling you names or resorting to crude language in any form. I’m not out to put your back up! Getting through to you is my goal. If you close your ears and leave the table I’ve failed in my work. I do however beg of your restraint when it comes to some of the imagery I apply to these letters. Understand they serve as an emotional outlet and/or a visual counterpoint to the restraint I in turn apply to our continuing dialogue with you.

Letter to the Bank Manager #80 (A Spirit of Cooperation)

Dear Bank Manager,

Let us assume that today is the first day of a correspondence that will eventually grow into a marvelous, poetic, astute collection of letters between two people who are each, in their own way, artists in their chosen field. We will wash the slate clean and imagine you actually responding with great clarity, after deep contemplation, to each and every one of my letters. Confronted on one day by my complaints and whines you respond with patience and warmth, on another seeing my deep anguish over the state of my finances you proffer advice sprinkled with a humor that does wonders to my mood. The next letter comes at you loaded with existential fury and you reach and pull it down to earth where some of the questions may be tackled in a more practical light. I gratefully bow to your common sense and put aside the numerous questions I have regarding the current bizarre state of income inequality throughout the world. The next day I still cannot let go of the strange nagging feeling my questions have not been adequately answered and so come at you again with more troubling thoughts which you again take in and give generous response to thus easing my sense that all those who operate within the world of finance are thick skinned and unfeeling. Here, I think, is a man I can relate to. He has scruples and even, perhaps, doubts. You joke with me and side with me and agree that life is unfair. You prove to be utterly candid and frank as you tell me there is little you can do to help regarding the sad state of my personal bank account but that, on another level, we can at least engage in a passionate and heartfelt debate that may yield answers to some of the big questions eventually or at least will air the grievances felt by so many against the so few. You do not condescend or patronize. You observe  the protesters and the marchers, the drummers, the banners, the signs and say they are on to something, something even my colleagues can relate to. You say: We may wear fancy suits and silk ties. We may sport "bling" but is it real?  We may be the poor players in the world of finance—inside but at the bottom of the ladder, one health problem away from financial ruin ourselves. No wonder you are mad! No wonder you won’t take it anymore. You, at least, are doing something about it whilst they, the big they—the politicians, the CEOS, either remain aloof to it all, safely cocooned in their golden parachutes, huddled in gated communities of the like minded, emotionally remote, impenetrable in their own convictions whereby what they earned they earned and how they did so is none of our business and the right to privacy argues against the notion of transparency and if they ignore us they are confident we will simply melt away, tired of the wet cold sleeping bags, the constant harassment of the police, and giving in—as the winter draws close—to infighting and sullen moods that undermine the high spirits and huge hopes that began it all.

Let us assume this is not the case. The encampments will not melt away. The protesters will write more and more and more signs. The poets who did not know until now that they were poets will captivate, the artists who are discovering their inner fight will transform each other and those around them and each will inspire each and teach and the learning will be better than anything in an unaffordable college or university can offer for it will be grounded in reality and not chained up in an ivory prison of debt.

Let us hope that you, the bank manager, and I, the artist, can continue our dialogue and grow ideas they may not only strengthen our relationship but will help transform others so the world can move forward in a spirit of cooperation and not be split along what are basically class divisions. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could work together to make things better for everyone?

So far our letters to a fictional bank manager have not found their mark. They float out there in numerous bottles in an ocean that until recently seemed too vast to sail across.

However I/we—the members of the Bruxist Collective— remain eternally hopeful that the modest goals of eradicating poverty, hunger, debt, greed and corruption can be attained in our lifetime. Anything less won’t do.

Sincerely,



Art O’Connor (picking up the pen where my colleague, Kristian Witherkay, left it—beside the old, camp recliner—before he headed out on an exploratory expedition into the wilds of Occupy Wall Street and beyond).

PS—If none of this appears to make sense don’t worry. Sense, in a sense, has had its day.

Letter to the Bank #78 (Keep Your Hands out of my Wallet)

Dear BM,

In my efforts to not demonize the whole banking infrastructure, or every individual working in that system, I work hard to make it clear my target is specifically those who look down sneeringly at us masses and, whilst cleaning out the cash registers, believe that their ability to do so only proves their superiority. Though I address these letters to my fictional bank manager you nonetheless represent my best hope of what a financial advisor might be. I wish to believe that I am addressing a human being behind that daunting edifice who is only trying to make a living and who has some sense of moral obligation vis-a-vis his clients. That is all I ask—some sense. As the holder of my securities you wield power and with all the doubt out there regarding those who do it is high time you distinguished yourself from the rotten apples in your barrel. The You in these letters refers to the Rotten Apples and you may decide you fit that profile or... certainly do not. You are unavoidably part of that massive amorphous target that is the banks and will occasionally suffer from the collateral fall out inevitable in my tirades. So, on that understanding here goes:

My relationship to you, dear banker, feels much like that of a petulant child to a cold and uncomprehending, distant parent. I want to lash out but know I’m dependent on you for food and lodging and so as I strain to be heard I also make great efforts to do so in such a way as to not have you cut me off entirely from my holdings, my 401K, my pension, that which amounts to my thin inheritance. With your hooks in all organs of power—politics (both parties), law enforcement (and surveillance), the Bench (bought by that remarkable individual known as The Corporation), it is hard as an individual to speak truth to power and takes enormous courage, a courage we say taking root with Occupy Wall Street. Their ability to remain civil despite the condescension pouring down on them is an inspiration. As you well know if I am rude, it is with civility. I offend politely. For not truly altruistic reasons I come to you in a spirit of cooperation and suggest means by which we might better work together. Perhaps you could not slap on that extra fee? How about giving some relief to that mortgage burden? You might avoid having to deal with the pain of adding yet another crumbling home to your overloaded books. I’ve heard you are bulldozing whole communities of foreclosed homes because it is cheaper than fixing them up. Why didn’t you fix them up when people still lived in those homes? Would that not have been a better solution all round? It looks a lot like stubborn behavior on your part. If you believe rules is rules then surely you should apply them to yourselves as well. That would certainly mean no more bailing out the big banks. You must be confused at times by the anger that seeps out despite my best efforts to keep it buried but you have so much power and you use it in a disgracefully poor manner and, as even you with your thick skin cannot have helped noticing, the fury cannot be tamped down any more. To not be so compromised by our complicity with the banks we look to the notion of removing our assets from your institutions. You naturally thought of this a long time ago and people are finding it very difficult to extricate themselves from your grip. It’s nasty of you to hold on to our little wallets, wallets that keep yielding nickels and dimes that amount to billions when you look at your massive client base. If they all got up and left your party you’d be destitute.

Yours sincerely,

Kristian Witherkay

PS-My colleague, Art O'Connor, normally a retiring and elusive soul, will read more of these letters loud in  public soon.

Letter to the Bank #77 (Cleaning Up The Street)

Dear Mr. Bullrider, my personal BM,

I keep coming to you as one who I desperately hope can at least grasp the outer edges of my frustration. You may be blinkered but you are not blind. Your vision is foggy. You, my bank manager, a lowly, vulnerable player in the financial system, need to wipe off your glasses daily but at least you sense the fury out there, and are not completely immune...or so I hope. The majority of your colleagues continue to look on by all appearances choosing to remain oblivious to all the pain their business models inflict. They constantly nickel and dime their struggling clients and consider it par for the course. But what the banks call small change is the very lifeblood of a vast swath of the society they purport to be a part of. They chuckle with delight as the little people try to withdraw their money in protest, knowing as they do that those accounts are so tied up in the business of the banks that closing them causes pain all around. The vampire squid analogy still holds. You feed off us and we inevitably bite that hand and then are dependent on you feeding us more, feeding off us more. This is a sadistic system. You cannot possibly be surprised by the protests. You are however continually smug, condescending and arrogant. You are patronizing. To my mind brilliant people are those with vision, not those who game the system. You want patronizing I’ll patronize you. With my ragged coat I’ll come in and pat you on your shiny bald pate, behind your virtual mahogany desk, look at the status symbols covering your worked out frame and nod pityingly at one who is deluded and needs rescuing from a life of no heart, and only material dreams. So you see two can play at the superiority game. So sad and so wasteful.

These days there should be no shame in being poor or out of work. A lot of shame though does attach to being dubiously wealthy. You need to clean the blood and guts off your own front stoop before complaining about the slightly offensive smell coming from Zuccotti Park. In that respect we can help! There are many of us! There are so many people willing and able to work who are without jobs right now. Thousands could descend on Wall Street with buckets and sponges and scrubbing brushes to get down on hands and knees and do the dirty work you’d never admit to even seeing. How beautiful if we could all enjoy the wondrous spectacle of the great edifices to Mammon gleaming in the sunshine, every inch of their faux Italian marble facades spotless, swabbed clean of all that truly stinks. How wonderful if you could regain the trust of the people. Show us that you genuinely care.

Most sincerely your client, who as ever remains reasonably polite by applying incredible restraint on his own emotions,




Kristian Witherkay

PS-Still working on an image to go with this one.

Letter to the Bank #76 (Trouble With The Hand That Feeds)

Dear Mr. Bullrider,

I’ve long discussed with you the troubled relationship my elusive friend, Art, has with money. There he is struggling to beautify or/and enlighten the world through his bizarre inclination to make art objects. His objects become objects of desire and naturally he is happy to see them find homes as people deign to acquire them. They do so for a prearranged price or through an entertaining transaction, or by barter, mechanisms for exchange as old as the hills. Naturally with the cost of living almost impossible to aspire to at this point in the millennium he hopes the exchange is advantageous enough that he is able to feed his children using the proceeds from the sale. Now as it happens those able to part with money over such frivolous transactions as the acquisition of Art may often be in the enviable position to do so on a regular basis. They become patrons of art. They build art collections. Some of that art has strained to be pleasing often in a very canny way, appearing confrontational whilst, with a knowing wink, working for the owner, whoever that may be, as a status symbol. This kind of art is referred to as Blue Chip art. It has become as dubious as the money used to acquire it. The two are in cahoots. They may come from new or old money and in either case are like pet owners, the artists being their pets. But the bigger the pet and the bigger the art, the less patronizing and more equal the relationship between the two. Naturally the owner of a great dane is respectful enough to not invite the ire of a dog so big. Meanwhile many of us little artists are scurrying around looking for owners, for galleries, for soap boxes from which to express and scream, talk and dream, troubled by the compromise that is inevitable in the symbiotic relationship between art and art owner. Now once in a while the pet gets unreasonable doesn’t like the food being proffered and feels an inclination to bite the hand that feeds, a hand that is likely as not deep in the till of the financial system that is burning us all. Art is compromised. Art feels sick. Art is suffering. Art will lash out. Art might defecate on the stoops of the very galleries that, purportedly support his/her actions.

Art has no choice but to keep being rude and keep hoping their patrons will turn the other cheek and hand over a check as they do so. Art then, with clothespin on nose, accepts the check graciously and heads off to pay the mortgage on his underwater domicile.

Yours sincerely,


Kristian Witherkay

PS—Art is home in bed as we write, suffering from a nasty head cold (could it be strep?) and a debt crisis. Perhaps you could help? Maybe you could...buy some of his objects, objects made only with the intent to communicate, to get through (to you), though admittedly, at times, in a thoroughly oblique way. What can I say: He/She is elusive.

PPS—Why do I say She? Thing is the Art I know is a strange fellow with theatrical mutton chops (think that’s the correct term), but he is anxious you should know he has a sister in arms, Artemis, who is out there disturbing the peace with challenging objects of her own. I’ve not met her in person but see her work everywhere.

Letter to the Bank #75 (Voices-even the confused ones-must be heard)

Letter to the Bank (Occupying Wall Street)

Dear Bank Manager—if you can call it managing because really all you’ve managed to do is get all of us (sigh)—this is why it is hard to remain polite—you know, in a great, big ol’ mess,

Where were we? Oh yes. As one who has made a specialty of politely being rude to banks and bankers these past few years but who also expends much time and energy in the earnest effort to keep channels of communication open it is with pleasure that I can report back from Zuccotti Park and tell you they’re on the same page! They don’t plan to insult but to engage! By setting up camp they ask for and establish their right to do so. I’m down with their talk, their agendas, their hopes and desires, and above all I’m down with the fact that they are out there trying to speak their minds. The voiceless are finding their voice and what a powerful voice it promises to be. I’m waiting to hear those voices rise up in London, in the City, in Paris, France. Go Global. Don’t remain a Western voice or a white voice or a male voice become universal. This is about bigger things than banker bonuses. Those are just the shame of the old order.

Winter will come and those camping out will be stubborn. They can’t stop now. This has become inevitable. They are on a roll. People will bring hot soup and tarps, tents and socks. Doctors will bring mobile flu-shots and medicine (though some at Occupy Wall Street will balk at the idea of a shot in the arm administered without questioning the effectiveness of flu-shots, and good for them). Question all authority because for all too long we’ve hung our heads and done as we were told and that in a country where we should feel free enough to loudly debate everything. We've listened to the refined arguments and explanations of the 1% for oh so long and have heard oh so little of substance. Now it is time to listen to the daft and the silly, the extreme and the difficult, the messy and the clumsy and even the barely legible. That is where graffiti and poetry come from, the soil of art is the almost inexpressible and only if that soil is tended with loving care can those voices emerge. Nurture them and encourage them and show them the whole complexity. It takes a special talent to role the whole big ball into something we can all grapple with and maybe right now that is what is in the works.

Dear BM, I have to highlight one of their demands in light of what, despite your resistance, I’ve been insisting all along:

Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the “Books.” World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the “Books.” And I don’t mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.

I’m personally delighted to see the protesters out their articulating (however inarticulately) their/our numerous grievances. Did I ever send you a Delete All Debt mug? I know it is absurd. I know it is preposterous! What? One day everyone at the stroke of an agreed upon clock will push a button and kill all debt? Too big to do? Bit tired of the “too big” argument. Very tired of the “too little to succeed” actuality.

I’ve been banging out these absurd letters to a bank manager who does not even exist who goes by the preposterous name of Bullrider, or Banks, or BM, for the past four years or so and honestly it may do a lot for the soul, my soul, get it off my chest at least, but it doesn’t really go much further. You know I’m not even sure it gets it off my chest. I think all this time I have been hoping my rage (I call it rage but is the simmering kind, the kind that is no doubt familiar...the fuel to the 99%) would form into cogent arguments for change. Once they did I’d get out there and share my thoughts loudly in the Public Square. My mistake? Waiting for these arguments to clarify. I should've been out there long ago. We all should've with are simmering fury at the state of the world and its sad attempt at economy. Well now we know you don’t need ghee. You just need butter. Fact is I get so caught up in nuance and language I forget to forge my thoughts through with threads of...there I go again...I forget to speak clearly. And actually that is okay. Speak up! Write me back! Argue me down! Put me back in the enveloping folds of my ragged armchair in front of my dismal TV with my potato chips and beer.

Sincerely,

Kristian Witherkay on behalf of the Bruxist Collective. 

Thanks to Hyperallergic for this image.

Protest Signs

One sign can't communicate my frustration

Why aren't you marching?

From No Comment art show at old JP Morgan building, 23 Wall Street

Letter to the Bank #74 (No Comment Art Show, 23 Wall Street)

Dear Mr. Bullrider, my very own personal bank manager (am I right?),

Thank you for inviting us in to the very belly of Wall Street last night so Art and all his (Arthur’s) and her (Artemis’s) friends could express themselves without reserve in face of the financial calamity that we are all confronting. I’m not a realtor and cannot begin to fully understand how it is that last night a pop-up exhibition occurred at the old J. P. Morgan bank building at 23 Wall Street, but happen it did and what a joy. Certainly there was fury—burning dollar bills, protest signs—in spades. There was also a young woman playing a beautiful rendition of the Jimi Hendrix Star Spangled Banner, live gambling, body artworks, graphitti (on the spot murals), puppeteers and performance. The building, a gargantuan yet vacant space that even bankers can’t afford I’m guessing (I already know I’m wrong—when you can make money out of nothing what’s to not afford?) was filled with what can for the most part be described as anti-corporate art. There was plenty of humor and a ton of energy. Even the barriers and excessive police presence outside (including mounted police) failed to discourage a large attendance. Be encouraged! There is Life on other planets. You just have to look harder.

I left before a silent auction planned by the organizers, No-Comment-Art, took place. Though allied with the Art Committee of the Occupy Wall Street movement some saw the auction as yet another Capitalist Enterprise and therefore dubious. Considering the movement is in a beautiful infancy and has a lifetime (I hope—full of hope) to figure out what its demands are we urge such thoughts to be picked up as conversations and discussed heatedly but in mutual respect. Some of the money will go to the protesters, some to the artists and organizers and some, possibly, down a black hole. The show was happening, after all, across the street from the New York Stock Exchange. Such is life and life isn’t perfect but it is life, pumping veins and all. Whether Occupy should build a list of demands, whether those demands should be mutable, inchoate or wide open is already a matter being tested out in the blogosphere. I do know divide and conquer is a great way to sow discord in a movement and that for now it would probably be for the best if tolerance/give-and-take ruled the day.

Enjoy some images of the show.My dear BM, you should run down there. If you went now you could snap up the art for nothing I expect!

Though ever a thorn in your side I remain none the less most sincerely yours,

Kristian Witherkay

The banner image for this letter is a half sign, a symbol of expression finding voice. It is okay if the message is unclear. The emotion is very clear.

From No Comment Art Show at 23 Wall Street, 10.9.11

The elusive Art read letters to the Bouncy Banker at No Comment Art exhibit in the old J. P. Morgan building on Wall Street Friday night, a block or two from the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park. PHOTO: Kevin Pyle

In one pop-up performance piece, a man from New Jersey who calls himself Art O’Connor read a mock letter he wrote as a frustrated artist to the banks who have screwed him over. His act was a mixture of frightening rage and vaudeville comedy. Dressed in a tattered suit and roaring from a make-shift soap box, O’Conner looked like he belonged in a Broadway show about the Great Depression. My heartfelt thanks to Hyperallergic for this write up.

Letter to the Bank #73 (Occupying a little of Wall Street's Valuable Time))

Letter to the Bank

Dear Mr. Bullrider, My beloved bank manager, my very own BM,

Throw me a bone here.
Do you not manage my money? Is that not why I deposit my money with you? Am I not your client? Do you not work for me? Are you not, in effect, my employee—our employee? Are you not indeed a public servant? Was this not supposed to be the case? Do I not give you my money—albeit a paltry sum—so that you might invest it wisely? You guys are magicians! We stare at you in wonderment. You have us in the palm of your hands. Pull the bunny out of the hat! Go on! Make my money grow! I’ve seen you do it. You are amazing how you take nothing i.e. what I give you—the aforementioned paltry earnings of a toiler—and end up with bonuses for everyone but me! One moment your financial edifice is teetering on the edge of financial ruin, the next you’re riding high! That poor bull of yours is plum tuckered out! Then you bounce right back! Your manic energy is an inspiration to us all! What fabulous tricks you do perform and I look on in amazement. But then I ask: where’s my ice cream?

I am not naive. I know you are all in it for yourselves but you are in it with our money! You get your hands wicked dirty for pathetic little investors like me, but as owners of feeble checking accounts that never, ever grow it is hard to applaud you for the evil you do on our behalf.  Actually you must be quite bitter. See? That is your opening. That is where you can screw us good and proper—by hoisting us on our own moral petards* (see note). We are compromised. Banking as we do with you we are therefore culpable and thus you can render us mute, voiceless. Or we could insist you take our monies and make ethical investments. These days I am really trying to fathom why we have our money in your banks in the first place. At the best of times you were clearly an inspiration to us all. Suddenly everyone wanted to become a banker, a financial engineer, a ...mortgage broker. And apparently it wasn’t about intelligence or skill, it was all to do with who you knew. Any Tom, Dick or Jane could get wealthy over night if they weren’t encumbered by scruples and had the right connections. And because there was no money to be made anywhere else even the brightest amongst us sold our souls to become derivatives traders. Suddenly getting a Master of Business Administration degree was the way to go. It was the best of times...for you and continued to be the not so good times for everyone else. But now it isn’t looking so good for you either. The suits arew in trouble! Once more money is evaporating everywhere. Thanks to new regulations gouging your customers is not so easy so now you have had to find another trick. You are no doubt mad at the regulators and decrying their crimping of the flow of currency from our accounts into yours. If you’re so mad at big government meddling then perhaps you should show yourselves up to the task of handling our monies in a fiscally responsible manner and go after the few bad apples that are giving your industry such a bad, bad, bad, bad, so terribly bad name! Instead, in another example of your shining brilliance, you intend to charge us for spending our money, tax us for using our debit cards! Now if ever seems like a good time to forgo the banks and withdraw all ones money and stuff it under the..., up the, in the.... Look all I am saying is if there should be a run on the banks you’d only have yourselves to blame. With your hidden fees and smoldering agendas you have lost the trust of the people entirely, lock, stock, and two smoking barrels.

I trust you understand that I care about you and that is why I share these thoughts with you my very own, if elusive, possibly non-existent bank manager. I’m trying to save you from yourself
, or an MFA, which was seen as a kind of MBA  but that is another story)

In these letters I’ve tried so hard to keep my tone reasoned and polite, and intrapersonal, between you and me. I’ve tried for the most part to avoid going down the rabbit holes of politics and religion and keep the message simple: From one human being to another. We are alike in so many ways, you and me.

We are not provincial thinkers. We both think big. We see this as a world wide crisis and this spot as its epicenter. This isn’t just about America. This is about the whole planet. Where on this planet can we hide our money these days—in your case to avoid taxes in ours to avoid those pesky debit fees.

Another thing we have in common is our need to make money. How we make it is another matter. I make art and you invent financial instruments. We are both so creative. But never forget art is worth more than money.

Yours sincerely,

Art O’Connor on behalf of the Bruxist Collective

The Theater on Wall Street

Why Occupy Wall Street?

Thanks to huffington Post for use of this banner image from their Occupy Wall Street coverage

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/30/occupy-wall-street-protests-new-york_n_989221.html

An elderly group leads a march up Broadway towards Police Headquarters, Friday, Sept. 30, 2011, in New York. (Louis Lanzano/AP Photo) http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2011/10/occupy-wall-street-protests-spread-across-the-country-bloomberg-calls-them-misguided/

http://rogueoperator.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/police-crackdown-on-left-wing-protesters-on-wall-street-right-should-not-be-pleased/

http://notmytribe.com/date/2008/09

I was cheered this morning by a Nicholas D. Kristof opinion article in this weeks New York Times Sunday Review. You can access his video on line. He mirrored some of my own thoughts on the topic of rage without clarity, fury without direction. I’m all for primal screams but it is thrilling when these feelings, in all their forms are captured effectively. Kristof decided to provide some well articulated and definable goals for the growing, passionate but as yet ill defined Occupy Wall Street movement. Thanks to people getting out on the streets some of the huge but hard to articulate frustrations of the 99% are beginning to be formulated. Personally I thank them for beginning to build an archive of grievances that stand in contrast to those of the Tea Party movement. The Tea Party may well be clearer in its demands but the demands of the Tea Party appear to be infuriatingly simplistic: “Let me keep my money/no taxes,” “Smaller Government”, and “Why should I pay for your bridge building?” The Tea Party is all about wanting what the bankers have—an abundance of riches which they’d rather not share.

Images are appearing from all over the blogosphere—each credited and sourced back—and from corners with hugely varying responses to the protesters i.e. all over the political map. More to come.

One image (Eat The Rich) here is from three years ago. The only difference is the fury is beginning to have traction and build a clearer message.