Does Indian Market Suck?

post scriptum: I wrote this post on Tuesday. On Wednesday morning, the Reporter came out and I read the Whole Damn Thing cover-to-cover. The only mention of Market at all was a piece on the Native Cinema Showcase, so the inspiration for the piece Was Not True. However...it's still a nice story.

So today, I was standing in the foyer at SWAIA talking to SWAIA PR Director Stacy Golar when the phone rang, and suddenly, I was plunged deep into the heart of the imaginary movie in which I find myself living most of the time. The movie is called "Art Town", and its the story of the continuing drama of a city "where all actions are fueled solely by the cash of wealthy white people, where the Creative Impulse and the Art World Aren't even in the same universe - and artist Bob Haozous is a brilliant feral animal who loves to spit in the face of those who love him."

The call was from Zane Fischer, arts columnist for the Santa Fe Reporter and my good friend, (most of the time, though perhaps not after today.)

"Hello Zane Fischer," I chirped into the phone, as I often do - I am little more than a trained bird in this ongoing movie, trained to speak my lines like a parrot, though I occasionally detract from my lines when I forget the prime directive of the tag-line above. (My opinions often keep me from the big juicy roles - the money is not in opinions, y'see.)

Staci sighed and slapped her hand against her forehead.

"I don't even want to know," she said.

I was puzzled and continued the convo about a party this evening for a magazine I don't write for anymore, then I rang off.

"What's up with you and Zane?" sez I.

"The Reporter is doing a cover story on Market tomorrow," she said. "We hear it's mean."

"Fuck that," sez I. "Call all your sponsors and tell 'em to pull their ads from that rag for a few weeks - those cowards follow the money just like everyone else in this town. Gerry Peters does it all the time - and how much negative press do you see about him?"

We had other more pressing things to talk about - like did they get me inside the SWAIA auction this year? (And they did, just so you know whose payroll I'm on in the access department.) But an hour or so later as I was pulling into the Baking Co., I called Zane and asked about the skinny.

"Yo no se," sez he. "I just write my column and send it in from home."

"Well," sez I. "Rumor down at SWAIA is that the Reporter doing a smear story on Indian Market tomorrow."

"Well, I hope they do," said Zane, perhaps the Most Important Art Critic in Santa Fe (after me, in my own narcissistic mind) "I think Indian Market sucks."

I shouldn't print that. We reporters rarely print each other's opinions - yet, I always seem to be the one with the vocal opinions, the no-compromise in-your-face dickhead don't-come-to-my-cocktail-party opinions, so since Zane had one inflammatory comment (for a change) I think I'm cool to print it now.

We proceeded to have a heated conversation (we have them all the time - Zane Fischer LIVES to bait me into writing more screed that gets me in trouble) about how Indian Market stifles creativity with its criteria for inclusion, its insistence on certain types of materials, and its "frozen-in-time" stance towards Native American arts & crafts. Clearly, Fischer hadn't bothered to read my story on contemporary native american artists that will be coming to Indian Market - but that's okay too, because we never read each other's shit either. We just pretend we do and argue from the hip about it, most of the time.

"Have you heard what people say about Indian Market? People who participate in it?"

Hee hee. Isn't that something? It's like - "I hate that chick, but I'm dating her 'cause her dad is rich." Kinda unseemly, don'tcha think, to participate in something but secretly hate it all at the same time? Man. And yet the question arises: Does Indian Market suck?

Here's my stupid narcissistic dumbass opinion on that point-of-view:

The idea that an organization stifles choice and creativity is an interesting one, because it essentially places the oppressed (the artist) in a position of more or less utter helplessness. Thus the detractors from the organization in question, (say, Indian Market, or perhaps, in my own case (for I've done it too) Site Santa Fe) look across the wide expanse of what is being displayed (say, at Site's beer-hall warehouse) or the Santa Fe Plaza) and sees not an endless supply of interesting and pretty objects but instead sees what is not there, either by dint of outright ommission, or worse, all that *might* have been created by all those unknown artists who *might* hgave created something INFINITELY COOLER were it not for the fact that the organization's criteria were so restrictive to the artist's "fragile little mind and delicate creative sensibilities."

The beauty of the latter argument is that since the imagined work is without question So Much More Fantastic than what has actually been produced, (since it exists, after all, ONLY in the detractor's head) there is no reasonable argument that can be made against the detractor - because his point is, again, Completely Unreasonable, on par with the logical capabilities of the nimrod in South Dakota who wants to outlaw abortion simply because an Einstein or JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF might lie somewhere in those vast fields of aborted seeds.

The issue at hand here is whether or not Santa Fe Indian Market (and perhaps the Heard Museum Show and possibly dozen of other "tokenistic" (my phrase, do you like it? I stole it, really) shows throughout the Native American Arts & Crafts world are totally fucked organizations because they have certain material criteria about what can and can't be produced by "official" Native American artists. (And hey, while we're beating on what can't be made, why not attack the DNA requirement as exclusionary and wrong too?)

Pushing aside the fact that criteria of *some kind* exists for every damn show and contest and production in the known world (except, of course, at Burning Man, which no one in the straight Art World has any respect for because it's not "archival" (they burn it) and there's Nothing to SELL when it's all over) let's look at some of the criteria that Indian Market has in place, both according to their own guidelines and complaints I've heard as I skip, merrily about town, parroting my lines to those who will listen:

(INSERT CRITERION CONTENT HERE)

For years, I've written all kinds of (mostly) worthless copy about music, technology, and the arts, and so some losers in those fields actually talk to little ol' me about their fledgling careers. And what they talk about most are complaints like these, "the bar that won't book us," "the company that thinks our idea is dumb" & the ever-popular "the curator who won't hang my paintings." And my response to such things is more or less always the same:

*** Book your own damn show. (ya wussy.) ***

*** Start your own damn company. (ya wussy.) ***

*** Hang your own fucking work and the work of your friends. (ya wussies.) ***

Be an imaginary David against the Goliath of your mind. DO IT YOURSELF. Really. You can. And you should. And unless you're a self-indulgent asshole like me, you'll do it *without* attacking the cash cows that make your independent work possible - you'll be graceful, instead, and pretend they're Not Even There.

The hypocrisy of those folks who'll tell you they hate Market (behind closed doors) and then still show up bright and early to participate in it -

Wait! Please. I have to tell you a story, you really have to hear it . I have a good friend named Gregory Lomayesva, an artist of Hopi descent, who was practically raised in a booth at Spanish Market, who swore up and down that he'd NEVER do Indian Market. And guess what? He didn't. He hasn't. And he's still famous and makes a good living as an artist. I ask you, man, WHAT DID HE DO WRONG?

- are just the kind of people who are too damn afraid to build their own Rolodexes. Indian Market, of course, has the biggest one in town, made up mostly of Those Wealthy White Patrons who Control the Native American Art Market (with a MAFIA, I was told today. Can you see it? Rex Arrowsmith and Sam Balleen and the ghost of Al Packard riding six-guns around the booths on the Plaza, ready to shoot any Injun who dared to show innovation in their work.)

So they HAVE TO DO IT. They MUST compromise and play the game of Indian Market. But what exactly (pray tell) keeps these folks from making all that cutting edge work they'd be making if they *didn't* have to fall pray to THE MARKET (you know, the market, the same one each and every one of us making any kind of stuff have to think about when we're pitching a story - don't you think I'd LOVE to make a living making this fucking blog every day? I SHOULD BE ALLOWED. And yet I'm not...sob....)

Sorry. WHAT KEEPS THEM FROM MAKING THAT CUTTING-EDGE WORK? And if they are, in fact, making other stuff, is it *really* so terrible that Indian Market is their cash cow that maybe gives them a little flexibility to make that super-duper stuff?

In either case - cutting-edge or traditional - the patrons will still be wealthy white people. Just like the rest of us. So...what's the problem again?