During the five years I worked booking music, visual art, lectures and theater at RPI (pre-EMPAC era), I struggled a lot with the balance between the types of art that speak to the gut, and the types of art that speak to the brain. I must admit that I was always troubled by art that required me to read a thesis or artists’ statement in order to understand what I was looking at or hearing . . . I tend to get a couple of paragraphs in, and then start thinking along the lines of “F*ck art, let’s dance.”

The Upstate Wasted board was in its heyday at the time, and this dichotomy was heavily batted around there in a fairly scabrous, but thoughtful, fashion . . . I preserved two of the ongoing conversations related to these matters as part of my “A Play In One Act” series that I curated (wrote would be the wrong word, since only some of the words are mine) first at Upstate Ether and then at Indie Albany. For a light-hearted (but serious, at its core) look at the subject, here they are:

http://indiealbany.com/2010/10/04/art-talk-pretentrix-vs-zorax-a-play-in-one-act/

http://indiealbany.com/2010/09/23/art-talk-at-the-fort-chumley-club-a-play-in-one-act/

Again, this is a great article . . . . one of your best pieces, I think!