Dear Moheb [Soliman, interdisciplinary poet, guest editor of the recent Mn Artists series “Getting Out“],
I’ve told you this before, but I think you really hit a nerve with this series. The Twin Cities arts landscape is in a massive transition: I keep hearing people saying that most of the spaces listed in their CV are now closed, or at least their organizational structure has been rendered unrecognizable. I can no longer physically enter many of the venues where you and I have witnessed each other’s work. Maybe it comes with moving into our 30s or 40s, but I know so many peers, colleagues, friends who are thinking of quitting art, who are going back to school for something else, whose collaboration broke up, who are wrapped up in a job or child or other life, or one of many other forms of getting out. How many nights have we spent venting about arts funding structures in a bar, threatening to throw in the towel, speculating about a relationship to labor that is simpler, less precarious, less exploitative? The attrition in this field is worth stating. Anyone who consumes art or supports artists should know this. These letters—which collect a range of fantasies and realities on “getting out” of the art life, the art market, the art mess—are a record of 2019 in Minnesota arts. It’s the moment after our infrastructure fell (significantly) apart, but before we built the next thing. I admit, it’s my opinion that there is no getting out: of art or of capitalism. I think we’re in it. So what now?
Your friend,
Emily [Gastineau, choreographer, Mn Artists Program Manager]
Writings Commissioned by Moheb Soliman for Mn Artists
Art,
Bye bye. Hello real life. Goodbye translation; hello interpretation. Hello experience and thought unrendered; hello satisfaction or distress on the first order. Hello people, the people, by millions. Hello wilderness—fecundity, without people and art. Hello lucid utility or recreation versus incessant re-creation; hello fantasy. Goodbye delusion. Goodbye waste and sacrifice and conceit. Vacuum, fringe, excess. Hello spontaneity, free expression, whim. Goodbye gift; hello present. Never-ending potential; unending desire.*
*to just live. Art is being quit every day. Left behind for higher purpose. Abandoned, or banished from. Sometimes the artists just go outside and never come back. Or at worst, return with something priceless, irrelevant, to wring into art. Some people were always out, lucky; stick a hand in at leisure. Happy strangers. Sometimes the world looks perfect, nothing to rearrange. The point is getting out, being out, however one can, even if on your ass, ass kicked, showing your ass. This series of letters samples varied people on the outs, and ins, thereof, of art.
Getting Out Letter 1: Gurumaan, hello
Incoming guest editor Moheb Soliman introduces the series Getting Out: a series of letters sampling varied perspectives on the outs, and ins thereof, of art.
Getting Out Letter 2: Dear Cruel (art) World,
In November 2016, reparationist, cultural organizer, and curious queer creative Eric Avery sent a letter to their community, announcing their hiatus from art-making. The letter is reprinted in full.
Getting Out Letter 3: Dear darling Harper just now two years old,
Educator, arts administrator, and artist Molly Van Avery chronicles the fundamental shifts in her creative practice since becoming a parent, the unexpected gift of exiting arts administration, and the confluence of wonder and surrender when a child learns how to sing.
Getting Out Letter 4: TO: Where It May Concern, 514 2nd St SE Minneapolis, MN 55414
Following the announcement that the Soap Factory will close for good, the former Gallery Director Kate Arford pens a letter to the building itself: a love letter, a breakup missive, and a reflection on the loss of the art spaces that shape not only the landscape of the cities, but ourselves.
Following the first letter that announced their hiatus from art making (published previously in this series), Eric Avery shares this communication from two years later: questioning the many possible pathways to liberation, how to live ethically in late capitalism, and why they associated art with freedom in the first place.
Getting Out Letter 6: Dear Moheb,
Interdisciplinary artist Charles Campbell delivers a rant to the guest editor himself in a series of abandoned formats, interrogating whether it’s possible to separate art and business, self and system, resistance and commodification at all.
Getting Out Letter 7: Dear Big Lake,
Ruth Pszwaro, poet and artistic director of the Grand Marais Art Colony, asks Lake Superior what it has to say to tourists and pilgrims, what it means to seek retreat or refuge, and what might change if we look towards a continuous journey rather than an escape.
Getting Out Letter 8: Greetings from the Future, sweet eric, or the Past, by Now.
Following their previous two letters detailing their departure from art making, Eric Avery returns with an announcement: They’re getting back in. Avery describes how the hiatus fundamentally transformed their creative practice, and brought their focus to repair, healing, and justice.
Getting Out Letter 9: To my forever work wife [you know who you are],
Molly Fuller reflects on getting out of the literary publishing world and beginning a new career in nursing—and how her background in the arts lends a keen understanding of language, narrative, and audience to the medical field, and allows her to view patients as more than a constellation of chronic diseases.
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