CONFESSION IN SUPPORT OF THE 1990-93 ART STRIKE

I may as well admit it from the start. They've been right all along, I'm useless, totally worthless.

But then, chances are, so are you, or you wouldn't be wasting your time reading this magazine. Not really wasting your time. Wasting the precious air that your excuse for a body is breathing, when you should be rotting in a rapidly disappearing Amazonian jungle, performing the only function that you're good for, as compost. After all, isn't it about time that you did something for the trees after having deforested them for so long for the sake of making paper to put your silly, egotistical drawings on?

No, not wasting your time. This magazine might even be damn 'good' for your lowly conniving, pseudo-sensitive pollution you so ludicrously glorify as ART. Face it, you're a careerist of the most parasitic kind. At least admit that this CoBalt slop in printed form is no more than a sort of 'True Crimes' manual with pretensions of superiority. I have! When I realised that useful people like car mechanics, wet nurses and mad bombers have good reason to scorn my flights of imagination and abstract thinking, I was brave enough to blurt out to the world that I'm just another con artist. Just out for an unfairly easy living and a free meal. JUST LIKE YOU! (dirty scribbler). Do you have the guts to spill it out as honestly as I have? Or are you just going to snivel and complain in that cushy Bolton Hill (or wherever) apartment that your parents pay for because you're incapable of facing harsh reality long enough to support yourself? Or maybe you're too busy being duped into gentrifying someplace like Hollins Market so that the rich can get richer and the you-know-who can get you- know-whater. Ever notice how many of your non-artist neighbours are going to prison? Avant-garde = Gentrification. Be it of the soul or of the city, when the artists come, there goes the neighbourhood.

Not that I'm any better than you are. That's why this is a confession. As my parent set (tentatively a convenience) is infamous for having written, 'Artists are only good for three things: making glasses, basket- weaving and counterfeiting money.' Well put, but with all due respect, not going far enough.

Have you ever asked yourself why you're reading this magazine? Probably not, so let me rub it in your mug. Oh, I'd say half of your motivation lies with your scummy need to pick up those little tricks of the trade like how to pretend to convince the government and corporations that you just might be smart enough to bad-mouth them if they don't give you payola to support your addle-brained pot habit all so that they can pretend to be doing something socially useful by keeping you alive. Then there's your pathetic need to qualm your microscopic conscience with that big fat mutual pat on the back. 'Gee, you're sooooo talented! I just love the way you take that palette knife and squiggle it around like that! OOOHH! that really is great! That prick and pussy and horse tongue collage would really shock your mom and dad! Better not let them see it! (giggle).

So what's the ball point of this? The ART STRIKE, the only answer to a problem we should've gotten rid of with the bubonic plague. In fact, why stop for just 3 years? Take a good look at yourself, stop exercising solely to get your mouth between your legs and give up art altogether. Do you want to be so ashamed of yourself that when you're fifty-five and your grandchildren come to visit you in the nursing home you can't even look them in the eye? Don't forget, if even they hate you, you won't be able to bum your fucking cigarette money off them.

Don't be more of a scab than you already are, SUPPORT THE ART STRIKE!.

Tim Ore (aka tENTATIVELY a cONVENIENCE & Michael Tolson) originally published in the Maryland arts magazine CoBalt.

Art Strike Start

Next (the international strike of artists?)

Previous (questions about the Art Strike)