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This isnāt to say earning money is bad. Itās very good. Iāve built a career around earning in a lot of different ways. But for me, the ever present capital layer buried in how we package and put ourselves out online, well - kind of ruined why I enjoyed doing it in the first place. I never wanted a full time job, I never wanted to be owned by anyone. Something about having a patreon (it was small, but large enough that I felt, well, owned) was getting in the way of me enjoying the act of making shit. Itās beautiful that online stuff can generate life sustaining income. I just think, we should be making stuff more freely, or just - without the impulse to constantly package and sell ourselves to an audience. Itās gross, and itās bad for the art. Demonetize yourself once n' a while, play games, and be wrong and upset people more.Ā There's nothing to lose when there's nothing to lose!
Mar 17, 2022
Related Recs
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This is hard to explain because it requires the understanding of what is was like for me to make several feature films for next to no money with a crew of friends who were being paid nothing, but it has become important to me to sometimes create work devoid of any financial consideration. I get asked to make music videos every so often and have not been paid for one in over four years. Which is fine. Doing something with the understanding that it is not a financial transaction, and thus ought to be categorized as āfor the artā forces me to remind myself why I even ostensibly enjoy creating anything in the first place, which is increasingly easy to lose sight of considering the rotten and broken state of the industry in which I have chosen to work.
Apr 26, 2022
Capitalism somewhat ruined art
I think when the end goal for an artist is to earn money their art suffers from it.
I do believe they should be able to monetize it and make a living from it ultimately
I love this artist called Infinite Bisous (Rory McCarthy) and he phrased it better then I did in this interview.
Apr 25, 2024
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There's a thing that I notice at art museums sometimes. Someone wearing a slightly annoyed expression will be speeding through the exhibit like they are going down a long to do list. Or I'll be playing a board game with a group and there will be some guy with a strained face looking like they'd rather be anywhere else. Maybe another time we're leaving a movie and they start to complain about how it 'wasn't realistic', you get the picture.
I swear to God it makes me want to pulpify their face.
I'm not saying that you need to like every piece of art or that you should feel bad for not liking a movie, but, goddamn, at least give it a fucking second. Closing yourself off to The New, being automatically opposed to earnestness when it appears, is one of the most damaging defense mechanisms I can think of. It is, in turn, also one of the best ways to maximize your misery.
The defense mechanism that is cynicism, turns its users into parasites of the Social; they are sold the idea (a lie) that damaging and denigrating <<something>> allows one to become independent of its power structure. On the contrary, just as a leech is the most dependent on its host, cynics are those that are most dependent on the power structures in our culture.Ā
I really want to emphasize the difference between criticism and cynicism, because I am in no way saying that we should not criticize bad or damaging art, but to successfully criticize something means to first buy in, to really allow yourself to be taken by a piece, to examine it as it comes. Buying in as a term (even one so bathed in capitalist sebum) is the right one in this case because to buy in requires one to make a sacrifice. You cannot experience art without opening yourself to the possibility that it will do damage to you. To fully allow yourself to be moved by a piece of art is to allow yourself to be cut.Ā
But inside that cut is what it means to be human.
I think the single best way to combat cynicism is an unceasing curiosity of the world and the people in it. The normal and common of this world is absolutely fantasmatic if you take a moment to examine it; we see the world through have fluid filled orbs made of meat for fucks sake. The fact that there is anything at all, the fact that you and I exist for even a second is an absolutely unbelievable mind fuck, and to be unimpressed by any and everything doesnāt make you special or better than anyone, it just leaves you on a road to the pit of despair and leaves me really bummed out for the rest of the night.
Sep 20, 2024
Top Recs from @matthew-daniel-siskin
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Having an online audience of any kind or a patreon is a huge responsibility, but I highly recommend making your way towards the goal of eventually having or making children. Iām a dada to a 2.5 year old little boy, named Dashiell (Dash) - with our little girl Meadow set to arrive in August. This is by far the hardest group project Iāve ever been a part of - I wonāt mention the endless list of things we all see when millennials talk about how tired they are, or how their boobs hurt (mine donāt, but if you have boobs they will hurt bad) - but when he takes my hand and pulls me in the direction he wants to go, or makes fun of something stupid I did in front of him (he has a way of saying āohhh, daaaaddaaaā which just levels me ) - I swear Iāve never felt a bigger or more true love in my entire life. Everything fades, everything dies, except the love of a child. Unless you really fuck with them, be good to your kids and love them a lot. I swear thereās nothing better than this, absolutely nothing. Thereās nothing better than love, I swear.
Mar 17, 2022
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I canāt say enough about a good loft. Ideally this is a large under-furnished-little-bit-industrial-a-little-bit-abandoned room for your unfettered thoughts and creativity to bounce around freely. I recently found one in downtown Los Angeles, and itās changed everything for me.. As someone who has always worked from home, I typically turned my home into a work space. This made any sort of healthy relationship with another person impossible - either Iād give in to their demands and stop making art or functioning, or I would break up with them. Iām very happy with my love/work balance now. I get that lofts are expensive, and with gas prices what they are - all Iām saying is, if you find a loft, and you treat it well, youāll never need to get gas again.
Mar 17, 2022
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The NoPost (i.e NoFap) is the simple exercise of not posting anything online on purpose. I find when I ignore the impulse to post, more than 5 or 6 times in a row, a great clarity hits me. Ideas feel new and beautiful again, my desires sink back into healthier corners, Iām focused. Itās great! I highly recommend trying this for a week, and see what happens. One of the rules though, is you canāt post that youāre doing it, as that breaks the NoPost core value. NoFap is good too but much more difficult to pull off.
Mar 17, 2022