Week 26: Art Work

(Opening greetings and chatters)

[Scott]: Hey Salem, can you hear us okay?

[Salem]: Yeah.  You're a little soft.  I'm going to try and bring you up.  Hey everybody, like always, those of you that are on this all the time knows that if you're not talking mute on your call which will help everybody here.  And then, if you want to talk you can just butt in and text on the chat and let us know.

[Scott]: Awesome. Yeah.  So uh, we're really psyched to talk with Salem this week about the Art Work publication.  A national conversation about art labor and economics.  And we have a ton of copies here.   But Salem, you'll actually be slightly, I'm not really sure what to know that we have them stuck in storage. At a certain point in the conversation, I'm going to run and dig them out because I didn't realize that happened two nights ago.  So, um, so yeah, we actually have a bunch of copies here that we'll pass out to everybody.  At least before or somewhere in the middle before you leave.  But in any case, yeah, we're really interested in this and really interested in this network of events that have taken place around this single publication that a bunch of people have contributed too.  

So, I thought it might be good, rather than giving a long introduction, to just ask you to describe the publication a little bit, Salem?  If you're down with that?  Oops, can you hear me?  Oh no!  Did I drop Salem (laughing)?  I think so, okay, hold on a second.

(Laughter)   

[Scott]: Yeah we'll just wait for Salem.  (Laughter, reading text) "Cat pulled the plug, be back on in a second" (laughing).  Okay, we'll try here back as soon as her computer gets back up and running.  Its real world stuff, cats.

Okay, yeah, for everybody who wasn't in the chat earlier on, here's the link to the Art Work publication website.  You can at least browse it while we're waiting for Salem to get back online.

And, uh, if you didn't catch a link where we sort of reiterate some of what's on that site and sort of describe a little bit about how we think it fits into the Plausible Artworlds or sort of embodies some of that, there's this.

And, there she is...

(Background noises)

[Salem]: Okay, I'm back.

[Scott]: So, let's reintroduce Salem again (laughing).  That was pretty awesome.  So if you don't mind if I share this Salem.

[Salem]: Yeah, please.

[Scott]: (Reading text) "Cat pulled the plug, be back on in a second bwahahaha".  So yeah, this is good times.  We have two cats here too but just not in the front space.

So yeah, so we're welcoming Salem from, who is part of a group called Temporary Services based in Chicago.  Also part of a lot of other initiatives.  Temporary Services and Salem are responsible for instigating the Art Work publication, which I've just sent you guys some links too, and which has sprung up conversations about art and economics all over the country.  Mostly in the US, right Salem?

[Salem]: Yeah, it's mostly in the US, but in the first couple of months that it was out into the world it was brought over to a small annual of sorts in Amsterdam.  So, it's been elsewhere in Europe, um, trying to get it to some people in Australia and Asia as well.  Um, but the, we'll talk about it in a second, the contributors are from the US and Puerto Rico and we, along with Spaces Gallery in Ohio, made a concerted effort to get copies into every single state as well as Puerto Rico when it came out.  So, there have been free copies available everywhere since then.

[Scott]: Yeah.  I don't know if you caught this part Salem, but you know that Spaces sent us like 500 copies and we have them but I'm going to take a break probably while we're conversing somewhere in the middle to go and dig them out of storage because we just did a push to do a big cleanup at BaseKamp and I didn't realize that they were among the things that got stuck into the storage loft.  So, I'm going to have to dig them out.  So, uh, sorry about that.  But everyone here will have actual copies to give to you so you can check it out.

[Salem]: Cool.

[Scott]: But yeah, so I was just sailing, not sailing, SAYING that rather than giving a longer intro, I want to just kind of ask you, if you don't mind Salem since you've probably done this a lot over the course of the year, do just give us a brief intro to the project?

[Salem]: Sure.  I am a member of temporary services, which many of you know is a group of three people; myself and Brett Bloom and Mark Fisher.  We have been collaborating on public projects and publications since 1998.  Mark and I are based in Chicago and Brett will be based in Denmark soon, he is currently and Albania, Illinois.  We were approached by spaces gallery in Cleveland Ohio in their early part of the summer of last year to see if we would be able to participate in the exhibition series there and do something with them.  We decided that from the support that they were offering us, it would be a really good thing if we could figure out some way to extend the money that we were getting for the exhibition and also the people support that they could offer us into something that would last longer than just that short exhibition time and that would reach farther than just the people who were able to go to Cleveland to see the show.  And they were excited to work with us on that, and that's kind of the way the Temporary Services has worked in the last few years.  We see it as one of the, one of the responsibilities of groups and individual artists that are in a position, when you start getting opportunities, it's our responsibility to share that in some way with other people whose work that we admire for one reason or another who are maybe not getting the same opportunity.   And then we also have a love of collaboration, working with more than just our group of three.  So that came into play in making us.

 So the newspaper itself, I think all of you probably got the PowerPoint that I sent through scribed website.  But if you're not seeing it, I think that someone can copy you are all in the chat box again.  I think I can do that in a second.  The first slide is what the cover of the newspaper itself looks like.

[Scott]: Um, say when we are actually looking for that right now.  Give us just a second.

[Salem]: I'll copy and paste it.

[Scott]: Oh I see it.  But if you have it, that's fine.

[Salem]: I have it.  OK, there you go.

[Scott]: Thank you.

[Salem]: Um, so we have this love of publication.  It's something that Temporary Services has done along with every project that we've done thus far.  It started with just doing a real copy paste and Xerox kind of booklet that a company made our first exhibition at temporary services the space back in 1998.  And we have just continue that tradition and we are doing, the three of us who are in the group now all had a background of doing zines, of doing independent publications.  So self publishing is something that comes from far back for all of us.  So making a publication like this isn't too far of a stretch for us.  It's not too much of a challenge to think about.  But since we've had a little bit of time and more support than normal, we really wanted to do something pretty spectacular.  Um, also at the same time that we got this invitation we were in the middle of the economic situation that all of us in the states are in still, which is the depression, and it's affecting people in all fields.  Not as people who make art, but people who do other kinds of creative things in their lives and people who work in other kinds of fields.  I think all fields are creative, I think people are connected by the same problems and hopes and work really.  So artists are not living in a vacuum and we're all affected by these kinds of economic situations.  And one thing that was frustrating us a little bit about the situation in the states here is that we're carrying a lot of people, you know, quietly talking about the same experiences.  You know, someone had planned on doing a publication and then the money ran out.  Someone had been working for a couple of years for an institution like a college or something like that and their position was dependent upon some sort of grant funding and then their money ran out so suddenly they don't have a job. (Inaudible 0:12:15.0) and we would hear of people having these kinds of discussions quietly, you know.  And the conclusions were always like "oh that's too bad, what can you due for work blah blah blah".  We thought it might be a good time for people to start having these kinds of conversations publicly and for other people to really get a sense of others who work in the same ways that they do.  And others who also (inaudible0:12:46.1) are artists who may be not be working in exactly the same spaces or using the same techniques that they do.  We thought it might be good for all of us to gather together and compare notes basically and see what we could come up with out of that.

So if you will go to the next page of the presentation, for those of you who haven't used scribed the button that says "next page" on the bottom of it, especially not too hard.  For some reason I thought I (inaudible0:13:27.9) but I don't.  So great.  All right, so, we set off on publishing this newspaper, you can see files of them at that space.  Oh, Robert (inaudible 0:13:42.5) is calling me.

[Scott]: Yeah, um, hey guys if you get extra calls don't pick them up (laughing).  It's too easy for anyone who gets dropped off the call to press the little green button.  There's nothing we can do about it except for ignore it and add them back.  So, in, it will add lots of confusion.  So, sorry to interrupt, but its better than fracturing the conversation too much.

[Salem]: no, no, no, it's totally fine.  And for those of you who haven't participated in a Skype chat like this before, it does get kind of frazzled and stuff like that.  So I should say right off the bat that if you miss anything or have any questions feel free to type on the check box if you don't feel comfortable talking.  If you want to talk, you can interrupt me.  And if you would rather talk after this in a less texty setting or something like that, you can feel free to email me or really you can give me a call if you'd like.  I try to sleep as much as possible but, you know, I will try to return your voice mail.

All right, so, back to the little presentation online here.  So we set out to try to talk to as a diverse of a group of people as possible about this.  And I know that means different things in different contexts.  Diversity it means a lot of different things depending on the nature of the project that you were working on as well as who we were already working with and the kinds of things that you were setting up to do.  For the oftenest context, really the biggest part of it was making sure that we replicated something that anybody is familiar with.  Plausible Artworlds, the banner underneath which the Skype chat has happened, would be what you were familiar with.  We are trying to get a lot of people to contribute to this publication that came from diverse parts of what we all refer to as the art world.  You know, some of us within the group are academics as well as artists.  We will teach sometimes for our money.  Some of us, we kinda had a quick chat about that on the chat box before I started talking, some of us will do extra outside activities for our money and different kinds of capacities.  Some jobs there may be vastly considered liked working class jobs vs. white collar jobs.  We can talk later about whether or not those things really apply in this economy.  For us it was really important to make sure that we got a diversity of kinds of artists as well.  Here in Chicago there are some people who have commercial galleries and they're very involved and the local commercial gallery system who don't necessarily go to an event such as Chicago's (inaudible 0:16:47.6) where there is more of an experimental event, there's a lot of talking that goes on, where there is more of an artist academic (inaudible 0:16:58.2) is sometimes represented there.  There's people produce street are here in Chicago who were not connected to any of the other places that have mentioned already.  You know, they are not students, they are not teachers, they are not interested in some of the social justice components that of the work that they do.  They're just putting their work into public spaces.  So we find all of this variety of ways of expression of people who call themselves artists.  We really wanted to make sure that if there was some, that there was some representation of a lot of different kinds of people.  The biggest part of it was that we felt that, you know, in this economy everyone is affected.  Every single job is affected.  You know, and we all affect each other's work whether or not we want to.  What Temporary Services does in some way indirectly affects what happens in a commercial gallery, which affects what happens in a nonprofit gallery.  You know, I'm not trying to create a hierarchy there like they all affect each other at the same time.  But I think you get the gist.  

So there is 40 pages on paper, it's a variety of articles written by people of personal experiences as well as some history.  There is a timeline that we edited together.   A variety of different art projects and publications and writings about art and labor and different economic forms that we found.  There are images from a lot of different kinds of people.  And so it's a variety things.  One of the things that we found that brought everything together is that when we first asked people to contribute in some way, people were interested and those who ended up contributing express some sort of worry about their personal situations.  Quietly to us, like "just between you and I, it was great to write this piece and collaborate with you since I've been dealing with this stuff on my own and in the town I'm in for a while".  And it was funny that those who couldn't contribute, because we…  I fail to mention that in the beginning of the summer we had to go to (inaudible 0:19:50.0) in September so this was a really quick turnaround and we were publishing a 10,040 page paper and we had to get people to get things into us within two months, which was ridiculous.

[Scott]: Yeah, that's sick Salem.

[Salem]: Yeah, with that kind of a deadline it was kind of hard I think on our contributors.  It makes me even prouder that people were able to bring so much stuff into it.  But I did notice that the people who couldn't contribute at the beginning, and also in September, so that when we were just going through our final edit all of them had the same, you know, " I've got too much work.  I've got this work and it had to take on this extra job.  I have to take my kid that earlier than normal because they can't pay for the child care that I was able to pay for last year" so we heard those things over and over again.  So it's really striking to us at the same people were in the same boat.  Which is something that, I think from talking from people who lived through the great depression era as they called in the thirties here in the states, people will say "well everybody was poor.  Everyone had a garden for the food, not just for the luxury of having an organic garden.  We had to grow our own food because there was not enough to go around".  And so you have that kind of sensibility and I think that part of having artwork was an attempt to normalize the situation, at least for ourselves to understand that we are all in the same boat and we all need to recognize that we can work together ports making real changes in whatever our communities were working in.

So this picture in this Scribe publication, you can see...

[Scott]: Which slide are you on?  Sorry Salem, which slide?

[Salem]: I'm sorry, it's still slide two.

[Scott]: Okay.

[Salem]: On the left hand side there is a photograph of the piles of newspapers at Spaces.  And then on the right hand side, is the three C's I think that sometimes they collaborate on.  Chris Kennedy, Carolyn Mallard and Cassidy Thorton on the far right there, were three people who all contributed to the newspaper and different articles but also the three of them had the audacity to ask us if they could publish it right away.  Carolyn has been invited to do the media arts bi-annual in the Netherlands so she actually facilitated the first printing of that.  If you got a copy from her I can tell you there are at least six typos in that version of it.  And then we printed the completely copy edited version about two weeks later in Cleveland.  So just a copy editor in me wants to let you know that (laughing).

Let's move on to the next page.

[Scott]: Well Salem, to me that seems like such a tight deadline.  One thing that Jessica was just mentioning, if you don't mind me saying, is that in the world of arts writing the invitations can be even shorter, you know.  Like," can you read this article for us in a week or two weeks"?  So, what am I trying to say?  Its still seems really cramped to me.  But that's actually totally awesome because we're actually happy to give people really short deadlines for invites.  So I guess I don't feel like such a jerk (laughing).

(Laughter)

[Salem]: I don't know, I thought it was a really tight deadline but people really stepped up to the plate with what they gave us.  And we gave ourselves maybe two weeks to edit.  Chris Lynn from Spaces, actually I think he found the chat tonight, he and his partner were actually do in our last minute proof reading for us like two days before we went to print and caught a tremendous amount of things that the three of us had completely missed.  So, you know, it's only by the grace of group work that something like that happened and I think…

[Scott]: Who was helping with that did you say?

[Salem]: Christopher Lynn is Director for Spaces and who is currently…

[Scott]: Who is on the chat?  All I see.  Hi Christopher!

[Salem]: Yeah who was on the chat?

[Christopher]: Hey guys!

[Salem]: Hi Chris (laughing). So I...

[Scott]: Awesome.

[Salem]: So I think that it's definitely a lot of, and I will talk about the distribution part in a little bit.  I me this is the way the temporary Services Works and a lot of ways our projects (inaudible 0:25:15.0) inventions, which I know some of you know about.  It couldn't have come to publication without the work of about 20 people, you know, not including ourselves and Angela, our collaborator on that.  So, you know, we're kind of use to the idea that other people are great collaborators on any project that we can do.  But yet, back to the editing part of it.  I think that having such a tight deadline made us feel like we're going to lose some people, and we did.  Some people were able to do the turnaround because of jobs or other things or projects that they were working on in that kind of stuff.  I think people will publish like a regular publications like newspapers and magazines and stuff like that, that they take that into account and just try to get somebody for the next time.  But there seems to be an urgency for us to do that.  Like this was the right time for us to do this, the right time to instigate such a conversation and the right invitation to do so.  

We had a lot of support from Spaces at the beginning for us to make this happen and actually Chris is also, I should say, Chris Lynn helped us put together the artandwork.us website which some of you may have looked out already or will be looking at soon.  It turned out to be a great (inaudible 0:26:54.3) to have alongside the newspaper for those who were able to find a free copy or not able to get a copy for themselves.  You can download a copy for free off of the website as a PDF or you can download it straight to your of mobile reading device.  You know, your IWhatever, your Amazon, your women on the Moon things or whatever it might be you can get a copy that way to if you like reading that way.

[Scott]: Awesome Salem.  Hey can I ask you a quick question?

[Salem]: Yeah please.

[Scott]: Just, I mean, not to stumble over anyone else who might have one.  If you do definitely just say something or type and or just flag is down if you are here.  I was curious about how you guys got the conversations rolling in different cities.  You know, because the idea is that's what will happen here throughout the rest of this year and maybe in a couple of different sessions starting at a certain point maybe in combination with some kind of an installation or exhibition or what you want to call a visual presentation of this project that seems to draw people, which we will be helping with your.  How did you guys get that rolling?  Did you have any, oh I don't know, success stories or sort of tactics that seem to work okay?  That, you know what I mean, that worked in different places so maybe is reproducible. Um, did you just kind of hang out with people?  You know, talk with them?

[Salem]: (laughing) the first thing that we did was... I should back up and explain part of the idea of this newspaper is that it's a catalyst for other stuff that can happen in your own community and in your own city or town or whatever, whichever way you organize yourself.  We really wanted people to do that and so when we went through the process of finding people who would be distribution points for us and type of distributors and, in a way, and let those people know and ask them permissions and a lot of times for us to just send them free copies of the newspaper and explain to them that they could distribute those to people or spaces and their cities or areas for free.  We kind of planted the seed with and that's we are interested in people using the scenes in the paper as jumping plates for making their own conversation.  We really wanted people to see that there are people from all over the States were talking about these issues but also to bring it back to what was going on in their own cities and in their own situations.  Whether it be like a college community or whether it be just, you know, neighborhood in a city or what have you.  We really wanted people to kind of bring this back to what was going on in their daily lives.  Several of the people that we initially distributed to where people within our personal networks and temporary services who we knew were adept at putting together events and exhibitions.  Either they were employed by a place that was open space or that they had an experience with us or otherwise doing some sort of public event.  So we did kind of pick out people in different states where we thought there might be an interest.  In the few states where no one who was involved in the projects had a connection, we reached out to university communities and nonprofit arts centers and experimental art centers.  Squat spaces, (inaudible 0:31:15.4) spaces and stuff like that.  Places where getting a free newspaper might not be a totally weird kind of prospect.  

[Joseph]: Hey Salem?

[Salem]: And then kind of followed through.  Go ahead, I'm sorry Scott.  

[Joseph] Q: Oh no, it's actually Joseph.  Hey Salem.  I wanted to just follow up on that kind of lead.  It seems to me that one of the really exciting things about the paper is that you were able to bring together so many different things happening across the country whether it be Feast and that kind of incubate guys doing the Sunday Soup or the people kind of protesting in New York.  And that kind of moment where you brought them all together and the magazine is a sort of a way to see the whole kind of related activity right?  And I'm wondering is if when you get these kinds of event, these exhibits and projects in conversations around the country, if you're kind of like tacking on or parasiting onto existing programming or, do you know what I mean?   

[Salem] A: Yeah, I mean, I need to point out that we actually have not…  Temporary services did not facilitate the majority of the events and talks and exhibitions that have happened with this artwork.  People have contacted us and said "well we got these newspapers and we want to do something", and then they've just done it.  So there's maybe only three of them where we've had any included all.  Which is exactly what we wanted to happen.  Um, and…

[Joseph] Q: Right, but  like the people from Wage  for example in New York, who I was thinking of, I mean I know that they have been kind of reaching out and trying to establish a network.  And I know what kind of relationship you have with them.  I know some people sort of feel like on defense of about what they are doing.  But I just wonder if you guys, if you talk with them about establishing something through the paper or if the paper was kind of used in some way or appeared at an event of theirs.  You know, if you have any sense of that.  A start any echoes from that kind of exchange with people who are sort of running parallel organizations.

[Salem] A: Yeah, while one experience that I can talk about first hand is that temporary services also does a separate kind of thing that all three of us run called Temporary Press, which is a web store online as well as a publishing imprint.  The three of us are technically not temporary services when we do it, but it's like all three of us own in this business called Path Letter Press and all three of us happen to collaborate as Temporary Services.  Just to throw that out there.

There is a similar kind of concern called Ground (inaudible 0:34:09.6) which is this group based out of Boston which a lot of you may be familiar with.  And, um, David Morgan who, oh, thanks for the linkage there Scott.  David Morgan from Ground Swell, who is an avid blogger and avid Twitterer, as we try to be.  Twittererer, Omigod. It's like tinfoil. I can't say that word either.  Um, (laughing).  You know, he kind of like, he saw the parallels between what they were doing with the journal that they were publishing and our publications and so he has instigated conversations with a couple of different presses.  I think maybe Just Seeds is also involved in this where we're all trading stock and trading ideas.  

You know, we're all like either cooperative businesses or cooperative partnerships or things like that.  None of us are in it to make some sort of profit that's beyond paying back what we put into it.  As so we're all in the midst of talking about what ways that we can combine resources for that.  And so that is definitely separate from artwork and it didn't necessarily come out of the artwork publication.  But it's kind of a conversation that we've had had after this has been out.  

You know, I think that I know definitely in Chicago here about several groups that share resources, especially like in terms of AV there have been a couple people here who have instigated kind of these open store rooms where you can borrow equipment.  Projectors are like a huge thing, you know, where you can like borrow a projector from one person and use it for your event or what have you.  In those little ways, there's always this kind of collaboration around.  So, I think um, really what we were hoping with artwork is that something that happened in Grand Rapids, Michigan, might collaborate on.  Mark was invited to come speak there at one of the universities there as well as speak at (inaudible 0:36:33.1) which is an alternative space, kind of a self run space much like BaseKamp in some ways.  And, um, what happened there was when he talked at the alternative space, it turned into a larger discussion of people talking about what was going on in Grand Rapids and there was this kind of sentiment even before Mark, Mark didn't necessarily need to be there for that part of the conversation because he wasn't part of the Grand Rapids community and the things that they'd be talking about. You know, that he could actually weigh in on this as an outside observer but the indecisions that people would want to make together would have to, you know, be true to people who were living in Grand Rapids and doing art in Grand Rapids.

 And so now, as far as I know, this is still going on but at that time they were instigated a monthly conversation which is like an open kind of form for anybody who, anybody who, and I think this is the important thing for anyone who self identifies as being part of this conversation as having these issues as important to them.  You know, and I think that to me, sounds like a pretty successful model in terms of, you know, you can decide to localize which is a really great way to actually get things done with people that you're living around.  But, to also be aware of our own tendency to put people into particular genres and say like "I'm interested in collaborating with people but I don't know if I need to talk to anybody who is involved in the film community because I don't really do film".  Well, that's not necessarily true.  You probably both have printing needs.  You know, you probably both have editing needs for the writing that you do.  I mean maybe that's something that you can work on together.  There are all kinds of ways that you can make connections with people that you may not necessarily work with on a daily basis in your town.  So, to keep it open, to keep these kinds of discussions available to whomever feels the need to show up, is a really big, that kind of shows your community's commitment to actually creating a new idea of change and that kind of thing.

 I'm seeing a lot of links on the chat here.

 So yeah, I'm like Wolf, who is most of the time based in Chicago, started this AV equipment lending project.  That actually, here in Chicago, it's influenced a couple of people to do the same thing with their equipment.  There's a non-profit gallery called Three Walls here that also does that kind of quietly, but they have a tremendous amount of equipment and I've borrowed stuff from them just for exhibitions that I've done on the fly and they've been really great about it.  So, um, you know, a long time, kind of, I feel Iike I'm getting off on a tangent here so I'll get back to it.  But, I mean, a long time technique that those of us in Temporary Services have used is finding somebody who is currently employed by a university who has an AV department and that person will sign out the equipment for you to borrow for the weekend.  And then you return it to them so they can return it on their own.  There's all these, you know, anybody who has worked in an office knows about the brilliant stuff that you can do extra legally with your office photo copier.  You can make a publication which in turn can, you know, completely change lives (laughing) and that kind of stuff.  So yeah, all these things are always available.

I did see a question earlier in the chat from Patricia, who was asking if Art Work was like a current version of the 1967 Artwork Coalition.  It's kind of funny that's asked because that is written about in Art Work.  Um, Art Work itself, I think the main gist of all of the articles is that the way things are is not the way things could be.  The way things are doesn't seem to be sustaining the most amounts of people.  Um, and the way things are not necessarily working for the most amount of people.  So in that, I know that some of the values that the Art Work Coalition had match up with that.  But, I would hesitate to say that Art Work as a project has dialectic or has any...  I mean, there are lots of different articles, lots of different writers each with their own experiences.  You know, each drawing their own conclusions.  So, you know, we kind of had a conversation here in Chicago about the Artist's Union of the 1940s.  Nicholas Lampert, who wrote an article in Art Work about that subject and knows a lot about that part of history and that part of labor history as well as art history.  It was kind of shocking of our dependence on the WPA as a metaphor within the introduction especially in Art Work.  And pointing out the flaws in that in his presentation.  So, it was quite interesting to see this more in depth kind of examination of people working towards, you know, solidarity with other kinds of labor unions and all these kinds of things that at that time in the States, which is something that we don't necessarily have on a really widespread basis any longer.  People kind of know that history exists but artists and artists were union workers were working in that way to create change but also working in that way on a daily basis.  And for some people that are an answer to what's going on in their local economy like that would be a really great thing.  For other people, it may not work.  It really depends on what's happening and how you're already getting your money.  So Art Work exists to create conversation around those kinds of things to compare notes between a couple types of approaches.

So, if there's not any more questions at this point, which I'm happy to stop myself...

[Joseph] Q: It's me again, Joseph.  Sorry.  Um, okay.  You mentioned that you guys were involved in three exhibition events?  You could talk about them a little bit?

[Salem] A: Well the one that I can really talk about with any kind of skill right at this moment, because we were involved in it directly and it happened here in Chicago.  We were invited to use the space at Gallery 400, which is an exhibition space on the campus on the University of Illinois at Chicago.  There kind of interesting in terms of a university exhibition space in that they, throughout their history, they've shown almost exclusively regional and mostly Chicago based artist's work and a tremendous variety of contemporary artists here working in a lot of different ways.  They've done a lot of challenging exhibitions before and we were happy to work with them.  We worked with several of the people who happened to work for the university in different capacities before so Anthony Elms, who is the Assistant Director at Gallery 400, also is the publisher of White Walls, which is the artist book imprint.  And White Walls helped us to publish Prisoner's Inventions a long time ago.  So we knew it was a good situation to be in.  For that, we basically, well the big difference between making an exhibition out of Art Work there vs. the first time we did, which was at Spaces, was that at Gallery for Hundred, we decided to make a poster that would chart out the money involved in this exhibition and in making the publication.  How much everything costs, how much we got out of that and what we did with the money.  Gallery 400 was able to give us enough money to do a reprint of the newspaper, which we desperately needed at that point because we were almost out of the 10,000 copies we had printed in Cleveland.  But then we also had a little bit of money left over to pay our contributors which was and to our next thing that we really wanted to do.  So in one of the rooms at the space…  Well, while I'm talking I will see if I can find some of the pictures that are online for you to look at.  But, in one of the rooms at the space, we made large copies of the text that we wrote to people.  Two writers and two people have contributed in the images.  We had decided to do for the images, people got a certain separate and had the writers got a rate per word.  And of course, when we finally sent people checks which we didn't promise at the beginning because we didn't know if we would ever have money to actually ever pay people which is another kind of strange thing that happens when you were doing these sorts of work.  Anybody that we sent a check to based upon their writing sent us a note saying "oh, if I would have known that you were paying by the word I would have written more" which is kind of, it's funny the first three times and then after it happens ten times you are kind of like "GAHHH".  So, it was nice to be able to be transparent about the money in that situation.  I hesitate to say if we did or did not get paid because I think it depends on how you look at it in.

 But three of us and contemporary services did at the end of f it, write ourselves checks for just over $100 each.  But we also put in months of labor and time and to me that always means missing out on other ways to make money because the money that I make to pay bills and my rent is all dependent on time.  I do a lot of freelance work and I need time to get the work and let people know that I can do stuff for them, and all that kind of stuff.  So when I'm working on my art it's always taking away from time to work on my money and I have not really bad and a lot of situations where working on my art and working on my money are the same.  I suspect that a lot of you are on the same boat.

So, it was kind of interesting part to put that up there.  We have this poster telling everybody how much money spaces gave us and what all of that money went towards.  How much money USC gave us and what that money went towards.  Most of the money in both cases went to print and, actually printing papers.  Um, so it's one element of the exhibition that I think I would love to see in a lot of different exhibitions, not just at places like institutions like colleges and I kind of thing.  But I think it would be really interesting to see that an alternative spaces as well.  You know, for people to say "Okay, it cost me $3.00 to get the duck tape and it cost me $2.00..." You know, all that kind of stuff.  

Someone is asking for images of the exhibition, so I'm going to continue to look here.  I'm copying onto the chat room again.  God, there's something about this that all of this technology is really fast.  I'm talking to all of you people around the world but just going back and forth between windows I seriously feel that I'm  about 85 years old and I have some kind of hand eye coordination problem.  Does anyone out to get that feeling?  No, okay.  That's all right.

[Scott]: Sort of (laughing).

[Female group member]: That's because you were talking.  You have to be texting.

(Laughter)

[Salem]: Okay, now I get.

(Laughter)

[Scott]: Definitely.

[Salem]: It's just, it's hard out there for a joke.

[Scott]: Greg, are you having trouble hearing Salem or us?  Or someone else?!  Oh Damn!  I'm being so slow tonight.  I just never mind me (laughing).

(Inaudible background chatter)

[Salem]: Greg, get those kids off your lawn!  So, that's what I'm saying.  So, I just put up a link to the page where we have the announcement about the gallery 400 and, you know, I'm not (inaudible 0:50:57.9) either.  I mean, I just, I feel like, you know…  There is just something about fast technology that makes me slow down, which is counter intuitive.  I am still kind of looking for some of the pictures.  I think there is a Gallery 400 block where we can find some of that.

[Joseph] Q: Hey Salem, while you're looking can I ask another question?  One of the things that I love about the newspaper is the personal economies and that kind of anonymous contributions.  I wonder if you could say something about the decision to do than and, I don't know, how they figure into that kind of rubric thinking around the paper.

[Salem] A: Yes.  Actually I'm glad that you brought that up and because that's one of my favorite part about the paper as well.  A kind of came out of those little snippets of notes that people were sending us along with their actual contributions.  And then we had a few people who at the beginning, we had asked them to contribute a piece of writing or a work.  And we got more than one response saying that "we would really love to tell you about how this place screwed me over" or how "this job that I had really wasn't sustaining me" or "how I have no time but I can't talk about it really because I'm still employed by them" or "I do this".  So we said, "what if you made an anonymous contribution and we would be the only people who would know.  And if we see anything that might lead back to you we would edit it.  You know we would take out names and stuff like that."  And then, it kind of occurred to us that everybody has not just negative stories about working with employers but neutral stories about how they get paid.  

And not everybody likes to talk about how they get paid or how they sustain or don't sustain their work and their livelihood.  I know that it is an American thing, but I think that is wider than that.  It's a cultural thing.  And many cultures, you just don't talk about money.  You either talk about it if you grew up really poor or maybe if you're rich you don't talk about it or not, I'm not sure.  You know, everybody seems to be in that same sort of middle class place sometimes or everybody seems to be without money or everybody seems to be doing really well.  And no one really talk specifics.  We thought maybe that if we gave people the opportunity to talk about what was really going on, they would be a little bit more candid and totally happened.  So we have these personal economy's which is a section on the Art Work site, all of them are kind of put together in one area but also they are scattered throughout the newspaper.  We have printed a few on the artwork site that we didn't have time or space to bring in the newspaper.  They are actually a pretty wide range of just very simple "this is how I make money.  This is what my job is.  This is what I do to make art" to a more wide ranging " this is one particular situation that I had was not getting funding or getting too much funding and here's what I did that".  And I think taking the names off, for a lot of people, gave them the feeling that they had freedom to print the truth.  

You know, I think personally that money is attached to the idea of sustainability when you really talk about people.  It's been taken out of that context of and put into the idea of greening and the environment and stuff.  But sustainability is also about people and the resources that we create for ourselves.  It's all kind of attached to this emotional landscape as well.  This is my big thing for the past few years, talking about this stuff.  People really feel that when they're out of money and they are not getting paid for their work they feel like it's not as important as other work.  They feel like they're not doing as well as other people were getting paid are.  When you are broke in can't afford to do that your friends can do, you feel like there's something wrong with you and this comes from childhood.  You feel like if you have holes in your shoes and somebody else doesn't, you feel like there's something apparently wrong with your family and that you're dirty and are bad.  I think that even if you didn't grow up and those kinds of circumstances, you still hold on to these kinds of unconscious ideas about how you would respect money.  So when you take away people's identity and say " Okay, now you can freely talk about this in an anonymous fashion" people just kind of flock into it.

It was pretty amazing.  Some of the stories that are shared on there, it's the sort of stuff where you are just like " Oh, okay. Yeah.  I've had that exact same thing happened to me too" or " I was promised something and it was taken away and then two months later I realized that the institution had spent money on XYZ's salary or on buying more property in a downtown city that shall remain nameless instead of rehiring some of the people that they had laid off last year" that kind of situation.  It creates a situation where people feel unable to say that like "Okay, this is how one to be an artist and I'm going to do this job".  It's like nothing is permanent or real.  So, you know, who do we depend upon besides ourselves to do this kind of work?

Sorry if I'm a downer.

[Scott]: No, no, no, not at all Salem.  It's tough that is important to everyone who is working in the arts.  Except of course, for people who were doing really well financially as artists.  Probably, this might not be quite as interesting.  Um, yeah.  Quick question, if I can quickly for off the mic to Michael.

[Salem]: Yeah.

[Michael] Q: Just a quick question that is sort of along those lines of what you were just talking about.  What are some examples of sort of strategies, I guess, in terms of how people are kind of making it happen?  I mean, there is the idea of alternative personal economies.  A number of really interesting, I think, platforms are set up to kind of enable people that had access to resources and that sort of thing.  I'm interested in sort of hearing about that.  Thanks.

[Salem] A: Yeah, I think there is definitely a little bit more of the formal networking…  Oh my mom is calling me, I'm sorry.  I have to hang up on my mom (laughing).  Um, that's one strategy, keep good relationships with your parents and then every once in awhile suggest that day help by a long arm stapler instead of giving you a gift certificate to Applebee's or something for your birthday.

[Scott]: (laughing) we won't tell your mom that you hung up on her.  Don't worry.

[Salem]: Oh, she knows I did.  Yup, it's fine (laughing).

(Laughter)

So, anyhow, I think there is definitely…  One of the nice things about the Internet is that you know, just to have communities get together there are (inaudible0:59:23.1) conventions and a kind of thing.  Like, that's one of the more funny (inaudible 0:59:28.1) to that.  But, on a getting things done kind of tip, it also means that anyone who lives in such and such a place and that wants to do like, have a workshop on how to make a booklet with people that they live nearby, they can get on the Internet and for meet up or propose a class to their local public school.  You know, they can, by that I mean the public school group not necessarily, you know.  So and then that strategy is the same strategy that has always been there.  Like creating a newsletter or finding your community and sharing those kinds of resources and knowledge of them.

  But I really do like what's then going on, oh lord, I guess one of the BaseKamp members as a (inaudible 1:00:27.5).  But that's cool.  There's a place for all of us.  

I think that I really like the projects that I have seen that are leaning towards other people making their own projects and doing their own work in the ways that they want to.  In one aspect, something like the group Incubate that is Chicago based in one of the member live in the Ukraine.  So they have this Sunday Soup, which Joseph mentioned earlier, which they hadn't been actively doing in the last few months.  But, the basic idea if that's the outside community by the couple or a bowl of soup from them, a different soup is specially made for the occasion every week.  The money from the soup sales goes into this community pot and at the end of the month someone receives all that money as a grant.  And in the Incubate version everyone was bought into the soup gets to vote on who received the grant every month.  By buying the soup become kind of a stakeholder in to receive this grant.  And there's other ways of doing that to.

 And other example of kind of a money resource sharing situation that I really love is something that a group called Chances Dances does that a Chicago based and really has been Chicago focused and its major.  It's chancesdances.org for anyone that is fiercely typing into the check box.  Basically it is three or four times a month depending on what other special things are happening those months.  It is these dance parties and actual clubs and venues and the people from Chances, a lot of them are artists as well as DJs and artists as well as other things in their lives. It's an LDB, GQ and Allied dance party where the focus is on everyone having a good time.  They are open to people of all ages, while 21 and over depending on the venue.  And so they have one that happens once a month where there was always a $5.00 cover and all that money goes into this fierceness grant, which is basically a grant that will go to an artist or dart group or a collaborative work on some sort of creative project.  And, um, it...

[Scott] Q: Hey Salem, I think I missed what that was.  Fierceness Grant?

[Salem] A: Yeah.  Chancesdances.org if you look at, and I will type it in here.  If you look at their projects, I'm typing the URL in now, so if you look at their project age you will see the critical fierceness grant, which is completely from the ticket sales of one of their dances that they sponsor where it's like $5.00 to get in.  Um, so, on the average I think for the last couple of years they've been able to give three different people $500 grants, which is like a huge boom to a lot of different kinds of projects.  I was excited about at the beginning and I was even more excited about it after a few rounds of them actually successfully getting money to people because it's totally homegrown, it's based on this experience that doesn't rely on the grant in.  Chances was actually just voted in one of our local weeklies as one of the best dance parties and the city and so totally, the audience for that  may not be the same audience that's actually going to be using or enjoying the art projects  that its funding.  But, it's guaranteed money because people pay to drink, people pay to go dance.  So they decided that instead of pocketing that, these people would support their community and a lot of ways.  Which I think is really tremendous.  You know, it's the sort of thing that you will see…  For me I think, and again I think I'm going on a tangent here said write me back down to reality if you feel like you need to.

[Scott]: No, maybe I'm not joining and quite enough but I'm just marveling at the, well I'm interested in the examples that you brought up that I'm not aware of yet.  Which is cool.  And if I was, it would still be interesting.

[Salem]: (laughing) Okay, great.  I mean, the last thing I wanted to say about that was just that, you know.  Platform, the group that is based in London, and I can find this link later on, but they just made this map of all of the cultural institutions that BP give some sponsorship money to.  BP, you know, that is short for British Petroleum.  They are this company that is not necessarily just about Britain or petroleum.  A lot of you are familiar with them they had the well that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico a little while ago.  And this map, when I was looking at this map, that Platform made of all these institutions that get money for their cultural programming from BP.  It started to make me think not only about BP funding so many of these things, but also, wouldn't it be great if each of us who have a space or have a group who do these kinds of projects, we should be having that kind of list that we help these kind of people do this.  Like members of our group go over and help put together this publication.  What we are also sponsorships of our own lives.  We can take care of each other too.  I think in a way, the Chances grant does that.  I mean, it's the small gesture, but it could be...  I mean, $500 to the right project could be huge.  They could be totally huge.  And it's like, we don't have to rely necessarily just on corporate funding for these things.  Oh, there's the Platform.  Thank you Patricia.  You know, we can do that to.  So, okay.

[Scott]: definitely.  So Salem, if you don't mind someone has a question who has to go fairly soon and then we can get back to this and a second.

[Salem]: Yes.

[Scott]: Do you want to turn your mic on and just ask out loud?  Great.

[Salem]: So, take yourself off of mute, which is right next to the... Yeah.  It's on the bottom left.  Not the pause button, but the one next to it.

(Laughter and chatter)

[Carlos] Q: sorry.  Hi everyone my name is Carlos and I was in the residency program at BaseKamp, I don't know if you remember me at BaseKamp (laughing).

[Scott] A: Yeah, sure!  How are you?

[Carlos]: I'm fine, I'm fine.  I'm from Columbia and right now I am at the (inaudible1:08:37.5) Center for the Arts in Canada doing a residency program.  I'm doing a little bit of work right now that is a about what you're talking about.  This is born from a question I have about being (inaudible 1:08:56.8) as an artist without having like other kinds of works and how to list my own work about just having to go to work out a note to like McDonald's or anywhere for  additional jobs for economical success.  So my project is about the CMG Performance Art Services and what I am trying to do is (inaudible 1:09:34.8) team of performance art and for selling performance art.  So I am like looking for artists who are interested in giving me an action that will put in the catalog of actions.  Like you give me an action and then you would have to pay for that catalog and for being in the (inaudible 1:10:00.7) and maybe like works like maybe (inaudible 1:10:06.0) or something like.  So the conversation that you were having is like a real interesting.  Unfortunately I have to leave but I want to give all of you guys my email and if someone is interested in entering or maybe receiving some information on the artists who are ready.  I will be happy to send it to you and well that's it.

[Scott]: Thanks Carlos.  

[Salem]: Thanks Carlos.  Um, yeah, and if you have a web presence or something that you want to type into the chap box before you leave, that would be great.

[Carlos]: I am developing the work right now so I have no website yet.  But what I can do is…

[Scott]: That's okay.  An email is totally fine and that way anybody...  If you do want to send it in the clear, you can send it here.  You can also send stuff to the discussion list too, and that's a good way to connect.

[Carlos]: I can also send my portfolio if anyone wants to see it.

[Scott]: Sure, feel free to do that on the discussion list too or here is fine.  Thanks a lot.

[Carlos]: Okay, so here is my email.  And that's pretty much...

[Salem]: I think that you pretty much confused the word "services" in it, by the way.  Just a personal, everybody in services, we once met (inaudible 1:11:44.4) and um, when he was leaving us, he actually put his hand by his head in the gesture where it looks like you're tipping a hat, when you're not wearing a hat, and he goes "KUDOS!"  So I do the same now.  Although, you cannot see me, KUDOS!

(Laughter)

Um, okay.  So Carlo's stuff is up on the chat box right?  For anybody who wants to see it, that's cool.  That's great.

Are there any other questions or points to ponder or things that I should type or go over.  I understand some people are having problems with their sound.

[Joseph] Q: I have another question Salem.  It's Joseph.  What about Art Work Issue 2?  Is there a chance that there could be another newspaper somewhere in the future?  Do you have any thoughts or ideas about that might happen or what a follow up conversation might look like?

[Salem] A: Um, you know, we've had some people ask about that (laughing).  Christopher Lynn just said "Art Work 2 - The Revenge", um, I think which is probably better than my response which would be "Art Work 2 - The Electric Boogaloo".  I mean, that's like an old joke.  Uh, thanks.  Thanks for the bone Chris, thanks for the bone.  Um, yeah, I don't know.  There's definitely been some conversations about more writing, and people have been asking us to make their projects they are working on to be connected to these... It's a wide variety of things.  So, there's definitely a lot of, to use the marketing world's terms, content, for us to get back out there into the world.  It's like we were just able to republish the original again because a group in Minneapolis called "Work's Progress" had some money for printing and they had originally wanted to buy a bunch of copies from us that we didn't have enough copies for them.  And then they said "well what if we just get it printed here?" And they took it upon themselves to get a quote from a local newspaper printer, were actually does one of the dailies in Minneapolis, and we gave them all of our files. And they printed it and returned, they gave us, we asked them if we could throw them some money to get 1000 of the papers and they were able to do that.  So really, the newspaper part of it is all based on on funding unfortunately.  It's possible that we in Temporary Services will be able to either raise funds or get another partner who is able to do that.  Definitely I think that the question that came up about maybe online, we're still kind of experiment and what the website should develop into so that the possibility.  You know, I think that we might be open to having people who were outside of our group contributing to the website because there's so many different contributions from so many different people on there.  We actually have an interview with (inaudible 11:15:14.3) who is based here in Chicago, was done for the original publication and that I've been sitting on, we are supposed to put it up on the website, and I will probably have the top of the next couple of weeks.  I still have all of this new to the site stuff that hasn't made it yet.

So yeah, I think that if there is interest there is also, also I think that what would prevent us from diving into it right now is just that Temporary Services is doing concurrently 5000 other different projects.  Plus after this week, my collaborators in temporary services are not on the Skype chat because everybody is either taking a break, and actually, my collaborator mark just got married on Sunday so he's going to be on his honeymoon.  So that puts a wrench into making some things happen quickly.  

Steven, I'm exaggerating, I said about 5000 but it's really more like 4500.  Yeah, I tend to exaggerate (laughing).  Yeah.

So I think that might be interesting another thing that is kind of happened is back in the effort of us just asking people to take on this as their own, and just do with it as they will, things that we had really even conceived of happened.  Joseph, who is there at the BaseKamp space tonight, took it upon himself to start making the audio book version of Art Work, which I find very exciting.  Joseph can tell you exactly where that is on the Internet.  But several people have read articles and they are available to listen to as MP3s.  It's at the San Francisco (inaudible 1:17:25.4) site.  Joseph?  The link is coming soon.  Chris asked, since you are still publishing material on the site, are you open to submissions for art and work?  Um, yes.  Actually we are.  Especially within the anonymous contributions part.  You know, if somebody reads those over and feels the urge to share what's going on with them, we would really like that.  People have been using the comments in some sections to share their own things and so you can e-mail any of us directly.  I guess it's not completely anonymous because you do have to email one of us in Temporary Services.  But you can even pick the one of us that you are the most comfortable, there are three of us, and send it directly to us.  And then we won't sure the name with the other two and we'll put it up on the site.  So there is that one moment of outreach that you have to do.

Um, so yeah, there are still a bunch of different possibilities of what could happen with this project.  A lot of the projects that we do and temporary services tend to be open ended because in the middle of the projects we will realize that the ride lot of different things that could be done with the subject matter and other things that we would like to explore.  I think that this is true for a lot of artists in our group, when you're working with such a big crowd of people and you were working with a lot of big ideas you realize that.  I think that any art project sets out to be the solution, of course going to have the problem attached to it where there is a big moment of failure there.  Especially where you were talking about art, money, sustaining themselves, and how we work in the world that the solution is going to be different for everybody.  And that's something that we've all explored in Plausible Artworlds throughout.

[Alyssa]Q: I know you talked about a little bit, this is Alyssa, in terms of organizations sharing their projectors and equipment and things like that.  But I wondered, like, in your research for personal or organizational economies what sort of successful models you may have come across (inaudible 1:20:07.3).

[Salem] A: The funny thing is that I feel bad that the first thing to jump to mind are models that were successful for some time but then kind of outgrew or all lasted their natural life span and then maybe completely not good for the people were sustaining them, and all that.  And I'm thinking along the lines of shared space kind of models.  Communal situations with people working as artists and with people working and living together and sharing their resources and that way.  And some kind of emotional connection or other thing that wasn't really working from the beginning and I just kind of exploded.  I feel bad that those are the first things that are going into my mind vs.  The positive kind of things that are out there.  You know, there are groups that successfully sustain themselves for a long time and then some outgrowth of that group does something completely different.  Like Art Metropol, who a lot of you may know as distributor of our first publication as well as a printer, started out of the work of a general idea and the people who were working around the same capacities and in certain ways I don't think that it's a cooperative collective effort on some levels anymore, but is definitely doing what they set up to do which is to distribute artists publications.  There are some things that are miniature successes that in our community in which (loud typing inaudible1:22:29.9) that have been able to give some direct help in terms of (loud typing inaudible1:22:38.0) kind of, you know, after school program and off the streets stuff that a lot of the kids in our neighborhood really used for getting interested in school.  I don't know, that's probably not the kind of thing that you are interested in Alyssa.  But I would count that kind of success on the same level that I would someone trying to create change in terms of a union or that kind of goal.

But the artists union that existed here in the states in the forties, they had, like, you know, there was this great damage that Nicholas used in his presentation, and I'll see if I can find it, when he was talking about the artists union to some of us in Chicago.  Nicholas Lampert, again I mentioned him earlier for those of you who came on late.  Where was basically a WPA (loud typing inaudible1:12:52.8) of the States, their schematics of how people who were being paid as artists under the WPA monies, you know, like how many there were and what they got paid.  It wasn't very much but the idea that this governmental agency was paying people in this regards, which was enough for us to get excited about it.  Nicholas kind of pointed out the failures of that situation, which is why this independent artists union that came up was trying to address those failures.  And they were actually able to get more pay for people and guarantee a little bit of work and have this public camaraderie, which I think it's something we're really lacking a lot of situations these days.  The art institute of Chicago here laid off a tremendous amount of workers in the last three years and then they have one of the biggest amounts of Financial Holdings and real estate holdings here in the city of Chicago and when you look at those numbers I don't know if they match up.  The problem is that so many of us depended on whatever jobs we can get and art schools here in the states, you get into this kind of system where the people are being trained in art school with the same kind of older notions of how you're going to sustain yourself as an artist.  There's a class called professional practices and a lot of art schools, and those of you who went through art school can attest to that, and the ones that have, I have never taught it.  And never actually been required to take a professional practices class.  I didn't go to a traditional art school kind of format.  The idea that your professional practices class I mean, it sounds on the outside like it's going to help you figure out what you're going to do with his education and that you have in the different things you can do when you're out of your school and out in the world and been a real artist.  I'm holding up my hands like using quotation marks.

(Laughter)

[Scott]: You know, Salem, I think it would be a really awesome idea if you and Jessica Westbrook and Adam Troughbridge could connect, if you haven't already, while you guys are all out there in Chicago.

[Salem]: Yeah, definitely.  Well, we were able to meet briefly at a professional artist's conference (laughing).  Yeah.  It was at the College Art's Administration, that kind of thing.  But I'm looking forward to... Actually, Adam did take a class with Mark Fisher from my group like a long, long...  So, we're all aware of each other's presence.  But I'm happy that they're moving to Oak Park is it Jessica?  I love the money sense, it's hilarious.  Um, yeah.  Yeah.

[Scott]: I just wanted to say, I totally hate to cut it short, but I have to be, to play the gong.  

[Salem]: Oh man! I talked so much!

[Scott]: And recognize... No! It's completely awesome, and I just only realized that it's five minutes after eight and we try to stay super strict about that just for, mainly for people who are in different time zones because they will, like fish eating as much food until they explode, they will stay up until they literally pass out from exhaustion.  So just to be kind.

[Salem]: Fish eating as much until...wow.  Okay.

[Scott]: We did start the audio late.  But you know, you can probably expect a general mix of text and audio and then some weeks there is no audio.  It's completely up to the person presenting and kind of up to the whim of how the conversation is going.  But um, this is definelty not to be cut short.   We ultimately need to continue this conversation.  And Salem, I'm actually thrilled about however slim or larger change it is about the possibility of you moving to Philadelphia for however long.  So, if that happens (laughing).

[Salem]: Yeah, that's not really that public yet Scott, but okay.

[Scott]: DOH!

[Salem]: No, that's totally fine.

[Scott]: Move to New Jersey I mean?  Um...

[Salem]: Well, yeah, I might go there for a relationship, but that's cool.  We'll see how it goes.

(Laughter)

[Scott]: I didn't mean to get into...

[Salem]: No, it's totally fine.  Totally fine.

[Scott]: Scratch it from the record, for sure.

[Salem]: I just want to say before everybody gets cut off.  The presentation that I failed to actually present to you will be on Scribed for however long it needs to be.  It will be public and there is another presentation in there that you won't have the malivious sounds of my wonderful voice narrating it, but it's pictures from just a big, kind of huge, general Temporary Services kind of intro, kind of talk.  Also on Scribed.  If you're looking at one of them, you can find the other one when you click on my profile or whatever it is on there.  A lot of you know that you can find any of us in Temporary Services by hitting servers at temporaryservices.org.  You know, we're always happy to talk with you, answer questions if you have them, ask questions if it seems like you have answers.  Maybe collaborate all kinds of things.  So, anything that I didn't get to address that you maybe wanted me to address, feel free to email me and we'll have a conversation in another way.

[Scott]: Salem, thanks so much.  We're really looking forward to starting those conversations here in Philly.

[Salem]: Yeah, definitely  I'm excited about whatever you guys want to do with the paper and what kinds of conversations that those of you who are at BaseKamp now can address what is lacking in Philly and what is lacking, in, uh, and what you would like to see happen.  You know, to help each other, you know, make a better creative work.

[Scott]: Rock on.  Thanks everybody and imagine closing music here and we'll see you all again next week (really bad pretend beat boxing noises).

[Salem]: Oh, maybe I'll just repost the YouTube from earlier, it's my favorite YouTube.  You can get off if you want.  Oh, here's "The Vapors", that's pretty good.  Let's see if I can, uh, here we go.  Here, that's Biz Markie, "The Vapors".

(Closing music;  Biz Markie- "The Vapors")

END OF TRANSCRIPTION
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