Nowadays, the role of the artist is for the most part managerial. Public relations, project management and application, and various paperwork consume about eighty per cent of the artist’s time – curiously, this is also the case with today’s farmers. This is something to be publicly acknowledged, because many still want to believe in the figure of the artist we have inherited from Romanticism, that is, someone devoted solely to creativity. Nor should we forget that, despite all the vaunted virtues of so-called collaborative, public artwork, the artist always ends up having to do most of the “dirty work” management. The artist has to cook, prepare the table, and do the dishes for a determined social subject to partake in the meal – a humble position that doesn’t conform to the idea of a unique, genius artist. By pushing the managerial aspect to the limit, I seek to define the limitation of that form of art. I confront myself with that exhausting task as the opposite of creative process.

On the other hand, I firmly believe that artists who attempt to influence the world have to at some point make compromises with the current ruling structures. Quite often, past avant-gardes remained inspiring children’s games because they lacked the commitment to set up efficient transformative organizations and procedures. My experience of working within national state structures or supranational bodies such as the UN Convention to Combat Desertfication (UNCCD) or FAO has been as fascinating for me as the beekeeping that I learned from my father and neighbors. Social insects are interesting to study as a state organization; states, as a kind of corporation, have the capacity and power to convert a wish or an idea into an operative object or system. For me, that is the perfect Gesamtkunstwerk, the total artwork dream of utopian artists. In the end, I find structured efforts of consensus and coordination within the mess of mankind and individual agency quite moving and tender.

– Fernando García Dory

I am in Taipei, where last weekend we performed at the Taipei Arts Festival. There were other things I was planning to write about and quote from, but it now seems misguided to write about anything other than the fact that I’ve spent the last nine days here. Some scattered notes:

In the English bookstore in Taipei 101, the tallest tower with the fastest elevator, a young local wants to read some stories in English and is looking for suggestions. An older, pretentious employee walks him through the shelves, describing the books as he goes: J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, George Orwell. I eavesdrop and wonder what these books might mean here, feeling certain, yet not confident, they mean something different.

On the street an old man with four or five small birds in red mesh bags on the ground in front of him. The birds are eating seeds. I don’t know if the birds are for sale and if so if they’re for sale as pets or for luck. Or if he is begging and the birds are simply props. The birds in red mesh bags are one of the most striking, fascinating images I have seen in recent memory and, of course, everyone walks by without notice. It must be normal here but I only see it once. (If I moved here I would probably stop noticing such things within a couple of months.)

In an underground passage way/mall there is a large room full of mirrors. In front of each mirror a group of teenagers are playfully practicing synchronized dance routines, like the ones from hip hop and r&b videos. The teenagers are relaxed but it seems they’ve been at it for hours. They are having fun but really want to get it right. Overhead, at sporadic intervals, mist sprays into the room, most likely to keep it from getting too dry. And yet it seems to me the mist is for effect, like in any good music video. In the corner, on the ground, a few teenagers sleep at awkward angles.

So many streets with no sidewalks, pulling yourself towards the buildings to let each car by.

After our opening night several young women from the audience want to have their pictures taken with us. (For example, this one here.) I assume this is normal after a show in Taipei, but the festival director assures us that it’s not, that she’s never seen it before. Making me wonder what else here I assume is normal is only happening at this particular moment, or because I’m present. (Because a foreigner is present.)

All the food I order is a considerably hotter temperature than the food back home. I keep burning my mouth. And everything I eat, though I often have almost no idea what it is, is completely amazing.

And everywhere I go there are stores open late into the night and people trying to sell you things (in a relaxed, friendly way.) For me, the hectic streets remove all desire to shop, reminding me of this quote from Mark Fisher about call centers, how they are so “fixated on making profits that they can’t actually sell you anything.” It seems one of the main social activities here are the night markets: an endless, crowded walk through jovial shopping hell. (Karaoke is also very popular.)

I feel like I’ve hit capitalism run amok but, once again, find myself not sure if my impressions are sending me in the right direction or if I’m only projecting. As everyone knows I’ve got capitalism on the brain, and am almost comically convinced that it is an eternal and wretched curse on humanity. Yet the people here seem relaxed and okay. Yes, it’s also true that everyone I’ve met complains about being overworked. As an artist it seems you really have to scramble just to make rent. (And artists don’t feel the worst of it.)

“Rich people here are so rich,” someone tells me, and continues to explain that most of them made their money in the recent boom, those days are completely over, and if you’re young and rich in Taiwan today it’s because you were born that way. (In an Ihara Saikaku book I bought at the previously mentioned bookstore I read this quote from 1693: “Contrary to former times, this is an age in which money begets money. Today it is the man of common ability with capital, rather than the man of rare ability with no capital, who gains profit.” It reminds me both of today and of Taipei.) I wonder if I have any of this right. Chaos is lively. The energy here feels good but I believe this is in spite, not because, of the socio-economic situation. And, most likely, I simply haven’t visited the areas where it hurts.

I don’t know what Taipei has to do with Steirischer Herbst, but you have to work from where you are, even if where you are is lost. Tomorrow I go to Groningen.

P.S. While I was in Taipei they were rioting in London and I was reading about it, every day, on the internet. I think the best article I read was this one here.

There are no norms. All people are exceptions to a rule that doesn’t exist.

Trying to revive tradition is like raising a ladder to climb up a wall that fell down. It’s interesting, because absurd, but only worth the bother because it’s not worth the bother.

The only basis for truth is self-contradiction. The universe contradicts itself, for it passes on. Life contradicts itself, for it dies. Paradox is nature’s norm. That’s why all truth has a paradoxical form.

My destiny belongs to another Law, whose existence you’re not even aware of, and it is ever more the slave of Masters who do not relent and do not forgive.

There’s a thin sheet of glass between me and life. However clearly I see and understand life, I cannot touch it.

In a 1954 letter to Reina Reyes, his fourth wife, Felisberto Hernández outlined a story he had just “discovered”: Someone has had the idea of changing the Nobel Prize so as to give the writer who wins it “a more authentic happiness,” and prevent the fame and money currently attendant upon it from disrupting his life and work. The new idea consists of not revealing the identity of the winner even to the winner himself, but using the prize money to assemble a group of people – psychologists for the most part – who instead would secretly study and promote the writer and his work for the duration of his life. The conferral of the prize would be publicly announced only after the winner’s death.