[rumori] commodification of... insider/outsider

Polenberg, Todd [rumori] commodification of... insider/outsider
Wed, 16 Dec 1998 11:32:53 -0500 (00913825973, 43DCB452A407D211B07F00805FA7C77B59E8EDatNYCEXMB07.pfizer.com)

i'm a little surprised to hear this view coming from you, given the kind of
excellent political art you've been responsible for disseminating.

with 'the flow' being a system of distribution + copyright that you don't
participate in and whose values you don't espouse, how do you propose to
become a part of it without believing in it?

i think the line between flow and not flow has more to do with how/where one
is selling their work than how much of it gets sold. hasn't it been easier
for you/us to just become part of the outsider flow? the internet has
allowed us to set up an alternate network of dissemination--shouldn't we be
more interested in exploring and protecting that than banging our heads
against (or feeling the warm sprinkle of piss as it rebounds against) the
mainstream system? or can we really deal from both ends of the deck w/o
sacrificing our ideals? or is 'sacrificing our ideals' just kind of an
outmoded concept? (if so, color me outmoded, i guess...)

todd


PS. this is pretty unrelated, but is anyone else utterly horrified by the
levi's "what's true" ad campaign? seems like it touches on the worst part of the subjects we like to talk about... (i think i just want some
collective outrage...)



-----Original Message-----
From: illegal art [mailto:illegalartatdetritus.net]
Sent: Wednesday, December 16, 1998 2:57 AM
To: rumoriatdetritus.net
Subject: Re: [rumori] commodification of... insider/outsider



>the difficult thing is determining what the line is between
>outsider and contributor. what about the indie label outsider who has
>distribution (like bob ostertag perhaps)... is he part of the flow? how
>many cd's must he sell to not be?

sometime the best solution is to become part of the flow while still
holding to outsider values... otherwise you may be just pissing into the
wind and be the only one getting wet (which isn't always a bad thing)...

philo
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