Helloooooo fellow democrats—that is—fellow small-d democrats!

Entry #1, 23 September, 2011

Helloooooo fellow democrats—that is—fellow small-d democrats! I don’t care what your party affiliations are, only that there is a creative political spark left in you, after all the mean-mouthed muck that’s been tossed around the political arena and the internet, thoroughly gunking everything up.

Would you like to see things be different? Would you like to experience some sort of civil dialogue about the art of politics in the public interest, or for the common good?

Impossible! You say. Naïve! Soft-headed! Well … maybe so. Maybe not. Let’s find out.

In 1983-84 I conducted a campaign as “An Artist for President”, to advance the idea that if every citizen were truly an artist, any president we elect will also be an artist. The only difference between an artist and those who are not artists, to my mind, is that artists are willing to take aesthetic responsibility for what we create, whether it is art, or simply a mess. My impression today is that almost everything becomes a mess because too few people view themselves as artists, understand the discipline, or take collaborative aesthetic responsibility for anything.

In 1983-84 my co-creators and I wanted to challenge the foregone conclusion that Ronald Reagan would have a second term. Reagan, though highly skilled as a practitioner of the arts of acting and persuading people to believe things that had little to do with reality, was not an artist. He was an artifact. He took no personal responsibility for the consequences of his administration’s policies. I detail some of those consequences in the upcoming book about our Artist for President campaign. Reagan’s policies set the nation firmly on the course that is bringing us, and the whole planet today, toward a fearsome reckoning.

Of Course the Artist for President campaign was invisible in the national political arena of the Reagan years, except as minor entertainment. Nevertheless the views and ideas that fueled the campaign have, to my mind, been proven ever more valid as the nation has moved into this rancorous new millennium.

On November 1, 2011 my book, AN ARTIST FOR PRESIDENT, will be published by Hyphen-Media. The book is a recap of the campaign, but I hope it is also a persuasive argument of why the ideas that drove that campaign are even more relevant today. I recommend everyone should read it.

Over the next I-don’t-know-how-many weeks I will be posting blogs to highlight the relevance of ideas about art practices of all kinds, including the arts of economics, politics, spirit, and anything else involved in the Artist for President campaign or that grabs our attention. I hope you will weigh in with your responses to these blogs.

If we live as if the future will reveal itself as the consequence of rigorous art practice it just might do that!