of mission statements consider the following excerpts
(a) a facilitated workshop identifying communications objectives to underpin newly defined vision and values - analysing key stakeholder audiences and outlining desired messages (b) easily accessible data and knowledge of key facts and research through an extensive dissemination network underpinning policy for future practices and resources in terms of professional development and financial sustainability (c) proactive and determined in estimating the proportion claimed in a stimulating atmosphere of mutual support while able to adapt to handling change working in partnership with the private sector
(a) is a commercial consultancy advising Railtrack on their probably inadequate safety systems (b) is a-n in its most missionary position - introducing Indexing Intelligence - and (c) is Dame Eliza Bullying-Manner of MI5 advertizing for graduate staff in her brochure Assuming a degree of intelligence
a-n’s mission statements give us a textual version of the fearsome Negative Poisson Ratio - a state during which against all reasonable expectation a subject bulges on being stretched rather than contracting - a-n’s unintendedly comedic introduction to Indexing Intelligence - in concordat partnership with the Skills Sector Council for the Creative Industries - prefaces an equally preposterous pull-out - a free-with-this-issue list of papers both hard and web on perception - policy and practice - on approaches and patterns - career trajectories and markets - cultural forecasting evaluation and strategies for measuring impact - and more - reminding the perhaps oddly informed reader of the lists produced by Intellect Books : Publishers of Original Thinking - publishers of near insane and very under-employed academics whose works arise from the confluence of art science technology and consciousness research
the Artists Information Company’s vari-skilled multi-tasking staff raids its ever so slightly dated buzz-word-box to labour bullet point after bullet point in a fashionably past-the-post postmodern variation of obscurum per obscurius - not to explain the obscure obscurely but to state the obvious obscurely - staff are flagged as being positively abecedarian in their string of tick-a-box qualifications and art contextual engagements - an arts consultancy here - an associate post there - here an exhibition coordinator - there a networker - here a rôle player - there a research advocate - heroically they pull together their complex portfolio of knowledge - to adapt metaphorical significance while remaining concerned with notions - while all the time wholly focused around issues identified by future forecast research
elsewhere a-n’s development toolkits provide self-reflective material for artists at all career stages - toolkits to develop the self and the practice - toolkits to develop a studio complex - contract and fees toolkits for employment and artists’ charges - perhaps soon a toolkit on outsourcing the production of art to inexpensive 3rd world studios - so clearing the way for the really important activity - the promotion of the individual entrepreneur-flâneur’s self-image
when Keats wrote On [not] looking into the Chapmans’ œuvre he was referring to the Eminic-Chapmaniac trivialization of the visual arts for the amusement of a middle class contentedly embedded within the insidious social order of concierge capitalism - a condition reducing visual art to gewgaw and gimcrack - as though tricked out in some Liberty’s bijouterie of ersatz freedom - a-n represents this corner of the social field - it is the revenge of Thatcher’s children - embracing the well-cushioned fashionista’s hands-free blue-toothed free-but-fair-trade philosophy - boasting that 81% of artists look to a-n for key facts - of £340,000 pa from subscribers augmented by an ACE revenue and unspecified project funding from other sources - but for all that this artists information company may have travell’d in the realms of gold - their magazine seems little more than a gallimaufry of keywords sprinkled onto a tale of genetically modified consumerism - set in a shiny sea of wishy-washy contextuality
Condolençia de Riz Reader in Feminist Methodology and Judicial Terrorism Orifice of Specious Proposals United States Department of Defense
published a-n November 2006
No comments:
Post a Comment