Letter to the Bank Manager #93 (playing the system all the way to the bank)

Jef Bourgeau

is an American photographer, painter and conceptual artist who has become notorious through his sculptures, photography and curatorial work. The most famous and provocative of Bourgeau's work plays on the relationship between iconic imagery and irreverent materials, together forming a new context often drawing upon current controversies and, perhaps, the willfully provocative.

Jef Bourgeau is the founding director of the Museum of New Art (MONA), of Detroit's artCORE (empty storefronts to galleries), and co-founder of the Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography.

Letter 93

Dear BM,

I’ve been thinking a lot about acronyms and name brevity, expression brevity. In the age of Twitter I’d like to be able to say it all with very little I guess. There is poetry to be found in them thar hills. BM I believe to be an apt and effective acronym for “bank manager”. My own name defies such easy reduction. Reduce my name and you’ll get a fine broth maybe but nothing workable. The best I can do—assuming I dust off my middle name, Handler, is this: AHOC—isn’t working for me. However might there be a forgotten other middle name? Let’s say Dennis, comes before...you know—Handler. ADHOC works. My Underemployed Runners Guild, of which I am the sole current member becomes URG which I kind of like—expresses something of the frustration I generally feel these days especially regarding the cynicism, the greed, the dog eat dog spirit that currently prevails. I am at heart an optimist. I am a throwback, an achronistic presence on the contemporary “Art and Banking” scene: Without time; in a state of timelessness; deficient of time, Erroneous in date; out of the right chronological position or order ....
Out of whack I may be but I am also free. I’m not charging you for this am I? If anything is truly out of whack and demonstrates to the core the very meaning of Koyaanisqatsi (Hopi for “unbalanced life”) it would be the world of Banking and Finance.

I’m also having fun pulling words apart to figure them out. Corporation for example is a good one. If corporations are people are people corporations? Corps is body, corporeal is having body, corpse is a lifeless body. My mind wanders. Did you look at that link I sent in my last letter RE: the movie The Corporation? There is a moment in the documentary when we witness the CEO of a huge international conglomerate giving tea to a group of protestors in his own back garden. As the current CEO of one myself—my family—I’m not without sympathy. He and his wife appear to be the nicest people but the results of their profit motive are so awful they do not bare contemplation and there lies the problem. The deaths, the diseases, the murder, the mayhem, the displacements, the hunger caused by the actions of such corporations are too hard to innumerate, and too painful to grasp. Now if, as the protesters suggest (now sitting on the grass sipping tea and looking confused) this makes their hosts murderers, then it is not an impossible jump to the conclusion that we are all culpable who live in a western landscape reaping the rewards (even at the bottom) of our economic geography.

On a slightly different note I must share a quote from today’s New Yorker magazine from an article on Damien Hirst by Peter Schjeldahl:  “...there’s mythic bite to Hirst’s career: the working-class lad who gulls the toffs and makes them like it”. I love the idea of the unethically wealthy buying the very art that mocks them. The trouble is one cannot help feeling on some level Damien Hirst is laughing at everybody else, you and I included. It is why I for one watch him at a wary distance. I cannot love what he does. He plays the system just as traders do. The super rich who bought his art are now sitting on massive investments. It is a win win for both of them. Ultimately they are in cahoots. I wonder if Damien Hirst ever incorporated?

In Debt (also referenced in my previous letter), David Graeber highlights the etymology of the words hostage, host, hostile and even hospitality all derived from the same Latin root and all points back to how strangers relate*. You and I really should get that beer I discussed in our earliest letters and think about the implications of the relationships that most banks set up with their customers, the hollowness of which we are all becoming only too aware.

You no doubt are fully aware of the mixed tone of the letters I send to you—one moment polite and reasonable and the next seething with fury—but I do not apologize. Bankers wobble but they never fall down! At the very least I want your head to spin.

Yours sincerely,


Art (Dennis) Handler O’Connor



PS—In the same issue of the New Yorker Gary Shteyngart (in an amusing piece) suggests outsourcing tweets. I have all the time in the world but you, as a responsible financier (or financial instrument?) have the weight of the world on your shoulders. Just thought this might be useful.


DEBT, The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber—p.101, The Moral Grounds Of Economic Relations, 1st Melville House Printing: May 2011

Letter to the Bank #44

Dear Banks,
It has been a while! So much has happened since we last spoke I hardly know where to begin. You have thoroughly recovered from your nasty, nasty cold, bonuses are pouring in, and corporations are now allowed to make political donations once more without being overly concerned about conflict of interest! After all anyone who accepts your donations is more or less saying they will do your bidding. No conflict there! You should consider this though, and I offer it up in the spirit of uncompromised friendship: intelligent, inquiring, thoughtful voters might think twice about voting for politicians who are in the pockets of big banks, business or corporations. Just to put a flea in your ear. That said how about compromising me?

I was thinking I could exhibit my artwork in the hallowed halls of your institutions. What do you think? There is so much wall space in Wall Street, there is so much square footage upon which to hang artwork even in your local High Street branch. I would be asking for, insisting on, carte blanche, something you guys do all the time so I am confident you'd understand. I'd be the curator, my qualifications? Taste. Not to offend but it is clear from your general over regard for bling, love of big boats, furry coats and so on, that taste is in short supply amongst your colleagues. Sure there is plenty of blue chip art, some of it drop dead gorgeous, hanging on the walls of the man (rarely woman) caves of your CEOs, but what, I ask, is so exciting about staring at blue chips all the time? This is an extension of staring at piles of money. Andy Warhol had it right when he painted dollar bills, had your number, called you on it, and made a bundle, and now has your respect as well. What a coup!

Let me know what you think. If you are going to worry about what your clients may think I'd consider using the space of a bank that has already gone belly up and approaching whoever has the keys.

Yours possibly not but sort of ever so sincerely,

K. W.

Letter to the Bank #25

Dear Mr. Manager!

What’s this I hear? Can it be true? Have you really broken into the business of curating blockbuster shows of blue chip Art? (See previous post). Honestly I didn’t know you had it in you but as they say: All is fair in love and war. If I feel I can dole out financial advice then why shouldn’t you be a curator? Still this does bring up some interesting issues. It is one thing to have work you own included in a show but it is quite another to mould whole traveling shows around the work you own and all whilst bumping my interest rates up and up and up—all no doubt to help defray the cost of mounting such enormous shows. I guess you’ll worry about paying back your government loans later. Anyway my main point is this: Shouldn’t I have a say in the kind of shows you curate? Am I not, in theory, a shareholder?

So here is what I propose: I shall become one of your curators. I’ll pitch a few of the wonderful ideas I have for shows (some of which admittedly could be construed as slightly anti-corporate) and you can tell me if you are interested. Remember I am not anti YOU. You are my BM! I am “with you” so to speak. You are my bank and I am your loyal customer.

I do have some remaining questions though. Who chose all the art you’ve collected? Did you my bank, my struggling bank, go out and buy this stuff? Isn’t that awfully extravagant of you? Doesn’t that amount to somewhat irresponsible behavior given the current financial crisis we are all confronting? Or is this an alternative investment strategy? That I can appreciate. Why waste your money on toxic assets when you can buy Art? Or did you never intend to collect art in the first place? Did it arrive willy-nilly—one lien here, another bankruptcy there—until suddenly one day you realized you had an amazing collection of seized collateral? This is a topic that interests me greatly. When not piling my own freely offered collateral on your doorstep I am also out there trying to interest people in my art. I occasionally even sell a piece or two, which gives me quite a buzz. I even tried to interest your bank in my work a while back. I tried selling my art to you but that didn’t work so how about accepting my art as collateral. I suspect you’d prefer it if genuine artworks piled up in your basement rather than old washing machines and other sundry (unwanted) old possessions. Not only would this help me if you bought or accepted as collateral my artwork. It would also provide a boost to your collection. It would boost it no end, well, maybe not boost it so much as round it out a bit. I am offering you, my bank, a chance to get in on the Living Artists’ Support Network, or The Artists’ Collateral Order Network (TACON is a better acronym but none of this is final yet). You’d in effect be underwriting the future cultural wellbeing of your country. Some might call it gambling but I’d call it a sure fire bet. Instead of buying, or accepting as collateral, a hugely expensive Rosenquist painting, instead acquire tons of smaller artworks by hundreds of different, mostly unknown artists. The chances are with one of those artworks you may, one day, just hit the jackpot. Just when your bank is failing you’ll find you’ve been sitting on a jewel all this time, a jewel you didn’t fully appreciate at the time, a jewel so valuable it might just save your neck.

Yours sincerely,

KC

PS-The artists’ community is quite “hep” to the idea of bartering their artwork in exchange for debt reductions and so forth so do give this project some serious consideration. The ball is in your court.

Letter to the Bank #4

Dear Bank,

Please don’t tell me you have gone and discarded the drawing I recently sent you? That would seem very clumsy and inefficient especially on the part of a bank that handles so much money the world over. How can I trust you to look after my money if you cannot even respond civilly to a perfectly nice letter and/or take care of its contents? Consider this a slap on the hand but do not worry. I am not going to sue you. I don’t really like that sort of thing. Seems to me that as a culture we are all too quick to jump on peoples' backs as soon as they make the slightest mistake and I am the first to admit that I make mistakes. Still I do think you could’ve been a little more careful and I am sure you can understand that this somewhat diminishes the trust I have in your institution. That said I understand that the artwork came to you unsolicited in the first place! As far as you are concerned it is probably just junk mail! I kind of feel the same about your credit card offers these days. True I have taken advantage of them but now it seems they are taking advantage of me! Note: I didn’t say YOU were taking advantage of me because I still hold out the hope that you, as an upstanding institution would not be so course as to do such a thing.

I am going to let you off the hook! You lost my artwork and that is that but you can be sure I will not be offering you any more of the same. I shall try other banks instead. Perhaps they might be a little more careful. In the back of my mind though, I have to admit I sometimes wonder if you are not actually all the same bank! I know it sounds ridiculous but it isn’t. It is a bit like rolling all those nice brightly colored cylinders of Playdough together until all you are left with is one big dirty color, a color you simply wouldn’t want to work with.

Yours sincerely (if a little disappointed),


K


PS If you are so inclined you might send me the address of your corporate art collection. Perhaps they will be a little more appreciative.