The following Central Regulatory Message has been issued by Other Business:
We are all artists at work networking about our work. In common we make art through approaches appropriated / hijacked / borrowed from or embodying business. We are OTHER BUSINESS, a newly minted collective combining forces to establish an explanation for the drift of artistic practices towards corporate commercial system models.
With playful earnestness BAD GIRL will be attending community pole dancing classes and performing routines garnered from them at local nightclubs on amateur night in the hopes of winning cash prizes. This experimental performance and experiential research will examine the difference between being a pole dancer and a stripper, the interstices of leisure and work and the daily negotiation of a distinction between personal and professional identity.
I am Neil LaPierre. I run a self help business called The N. LaPierre Office Studio. Informed in part by the principles delivered by Tony Little in his Target Training Series, the office offers targeted experimental improvement advice. We provide one on one sessions – personalized for the client. I am the founder of this firm and have two employees, Briony Clarke a receptionist and Bridget Moser a social media intern. We strive to engage with individuals within a positive and generous environment.
The Plain Survival Company, founded in the cold Montreal winter of 2011, is a mythical entity providing fallible advice, shoddy insights and poorly masked veils of anonymity. Existence and subsistence are two vaguely related words, but they used to be much closer. When basic needs are presumable, a new form of survival is born. There is no manual for survival of the spirit in the face of excess, but this has become part of PSC's purpose- to circulate and maintain a manual akin to wilderness guides, created entirely by collaborative effort. As a tangible entity PSC exists as Manual, the creative survival guide (www.plainsurvival.com) and barely coherent musings (plainsurvival.tumblr.com), but in reality it exists in the small, the unseen, and the everyday.
http://www.plainsurvival.com/Andrew Maize is the founder of a.corn inc, a new Halifax based collective with a mandate to produce locally, hand-made technologies with humanitarian, environmental and concraftualist ethics. It is with great pleasure that they bring you the new (i)Pad 3 - the world’s first biodegradable (i)Pad. Tune out - Turn off.
acorn inc.is:
Andrew Maize: Steve’s Job?
Andrew Rabynuik: pattern cutting and ironing
David Dahms: N.I.T W.I.T
Kara Highfield: Pho ShOperations
Maddy Andrews: Madwilla
Tamara Harkness: stitch witch
X Smith: D.
PSC, we’re starting to see a trend here. Did you have anything to say?
PSC
Didn’t I start it off?
Gillian
What?
PSC
Didn’t I start off this conversation?
Gillian
Yeah, but we’re starting to see some consensus. Everybody is sort of editing the Google doc with putting their name beside something [ a name they like], if you want to participate in that. Zach did you want to put your name beside a name?
Zach
I had a chance to speak, but it was before Other Business [was suggested]. I really like Other Business.
I dislike Other Business, because, um
Zach
I would even detract my Business Model Group in exchange for Other Business.
PSC
I’m retracting PSEUDO.
Gillian
So we’ve got Neil, Gillian, Andrew and BG liking Artists At Work Network, and BG Zach and PSC like Other Business.
I voted for two and that’s the stupidest thing.
Laughter
AndrewI vote calling the title for this piece Other Business.
Gillian
I like that, I’d be into that.
Andrew
We could also do AAWN.
Zach
I would potentially concede to that.
Gillian
Here’s my beef with Other Business versus Artists At Work Network; I’m thinking for future possible events or publications or retreats or activities …I like the idea of the more business-y sounding name, a more legit sounding name as far as a tactic for engaging with corporate culture or for proposing something say, to a granting body I just like AAWN, it’s got that element of play, but still sounding pseudo-serious. Other Business sounds like an offshoot side-project, never very serious. So I like the idea of calling this particular piece that we’re working on right now Other Business, like as a title, but as far as the name of the group or working group or collective, I like Artists At Work Network for future endeavors.
I concur.
BG
Do you want to take a vote on naming this discussion other business and calling the group the Artists At Work Network?
Gillian
I’ll second that.
PSC
Can I just make the case why I don’t like Artists @ Work Network? I fel like even though that was just proposed tonight, I feel like I’ve seen that before. I feel like there’s legitimate artist residencies that are called artist at Work, or Artist work networks, I feel like I’ve seen it before, like it’s too deceptive, I feel like it’s actually bordering on really being something more than it is. And I think the reason I like Other Business is because it’s actually more acurate and it’s almost more serious in the way that’s actually what it is. This is other business that we do. And it kind of suggests that it is an alternative to business which I think is more in line with what everyone is practicing. I feel like AAWN is too nondescript, and it’s too conformist to even be understood as being anything other than an actual network for working artists.
Andrew
I think we all are conforming to what we are critiquing. In critiquing we’re taking on this form of the corporate model, and I think that is very much just playing into it. And I don’t think we’re really offering anything more.
Gillian
PSC, I just did a google search and there’s no Artists at Work Network.
PSC
Well, I didn’t mean that literally, I mean that it’s the kind of that that I would just glaze over, like oh yeah, I’ve seen that before. I’ve seen iterations of that time and time and time again for artist retreats, artist residencies, artist collectives, artist-run centres. It irks me, rubs me the wrong way.
Gillian
Ok, I take your point.
PSC
But that’s it, I’m not going to fall out with the group over a name, but I kind of, I feel pretty opposed to that.
A few people speak at once.
Gillian
Ok, let’s go Zach, and then BG.
Yeah, I just want to say that PSC, I think you said articulately what I feel about that and I just want to agree. Particularly about Other Business as being a term that is used within those systems but that has that alternative meaning, and through that remains with this criticalness of it while still referencing it. Also, I don’t know, maybe this whole thing will result in this one publication piece that we attempt to make, and maybe it will not go anywhere further. So maybe it’s just a name that we use this one time. BG, your turn.
BG
Ok, I had noticed that the votes for each of the names haven’t changed...
Andrew
I’m leaning towards changing, I also thought about adding the word Network. Other Business Network.
Gillian
I would prefer Other Business as it stands because...
Neil
Could you all not change the names on the Google Doc because when Ms. Clarke writes up the minutes it’s going to be hard for her, and if it’s altered it’s going to confuse the minutes.
Andrew
Uh, I apologize.
Laughter
PSC
We’ve been told.
Gillian
Ok, umm, Neil, Did you have anything to add?
Neil
The things the PSC doesn’t like about AAWN are things that excite me a little bit, the generic quality and also that it’ll be a bit more about what we do. And I think we should have more of a brainstorm session rather than a meeting. Or a focus group.
PSC
I don’t think that I was going for anything punchy. I’m not going for anything that’s advertising, I just think that Other Business speaks to the work that we make and the reason that we’ve come together more so than AAWN.
Neil
I didn’t mean to imply that you did, I just think that for me, what draws me to Other Business is that it’s a little punchy.
PSC
You know what’s generic too, is Other Business, I find that bland.
Zach
Double-entendre.
Gillian
I think that, AAWN there is that tension because it does sound so generic, and so much like other art projects. Specifically there’s one that happened, maybe the AGO, and it’s called Artists at Work, where Graeme Paterson and a few other people just did their work as a performance essentially.
PSC
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gillian
So realizing that made me think, AAWN - meh. I’m still not crazy about Other Business, but if that’s the way things are going, then I can totally concede. The thing that I do like about it is that Other Business is always an agenda item, and anyone who does any work in an office setting will know, so it’s something that people will relate to and will recognize as an aspect of business culture, the realm of business. So I’m OK with moving forward with Other Business.
Neil
Maybe we should sleep on this topic.
Zach
I have a problem with sleeping on it, because we need to get our asses in gear if we want to make this deadline.
Neil
Ok, I have to go in about ten minutes.
Gillian
Ok, I’m going to move my vote to Other Business for the sake of moving forward, sorry.
Gillian
writes her name in the Google Doc beside Other Business.
Zach
Is Andrew still there?
BG
Anyone else want to change their vote?
Andrew
...don’t know if anyone can hear me.
Gillian
I can hear you, Andrew. You still have your vote at AAWN is that where you want to leave it or do you want to change it?
Andrew
I’m going to decide not to vote, does that help? I choose to retract my vote.
Zach
Yeah, that helps.
Gillian
So it looks like Other Business. BG, Zach, PSC, and I are voting for Other Business. I guess this is by consensus, so were going with Other Business.
Neil Ok, can we move on?
...