As if APAP weren’t enough…this weekend has been the 95th Annual Conference for the College Art Association!

One of my oldest and best pals (from back in the day in Seattle, when we were fighting the good fight against The Man, back before we sold out and caved in to corporate capitalism and the art it funds) is now a professor of media studies and gender politics or some such thing. We’ve been hanging out and I have to say, it is very exciting to be around visual, media & conceptual artists who are exploring performance. The folks I’ve been meeting are interesting, well-read and engaged. Many of them are doing really cool projects – outside of major metropolitan areas – exploring everything from urban planning to global capitalism to gender representation to economics. It has been really delightful to engage with thoughtful people who bring intelligence and perspective to their work. And who make work that is engaging with the world rather than creating a circular conversation in a self-defined language.

Here in NYC we can get so bogged down in the overwhelming business of making art and the social machinations and manipulations of getting the access to the resources to get the money to engage in the business of making art that we can sometimes lose sight of the simple joy of good conversation with thoughtful people.

Anyway I’m sure for the artists/academics who are here to hustle the scene at CAA it is a totally different experience. It is probably just like APAP for them. oh well.