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.