Should Public Smoking Be Decriminalized?

After talking to a number of people tonight about the ban some more, I discovered that the most likely folks to think the ban isn't worth fighting:

a) smoke

b) qualify as bona fide hipsters.

People with some sense of political intelligence are more likely to see that this ban is about a LOT more than just a health issue.

For the record - I feel no shame for smoking or being decadent. Sometimes I think about quitting, but for the most part, I have to say that I'll be damned if I'm going to stop doing anything because of some useless law. Drugs, gambling, and prostitution have been part of my past and engaging in all of these can get you busted in some states - I admit I have broken laws that I think are designed to make sure we all act like proper people ***based on someone else's definition of what that is.***

So I wandered over to Julia Goldberg's blog tonight, just to see what the grand dame of Santa Fe's "alternative" newspaper had had to say about the ban. Perhaps there was something I had missed. And this is what I saw:

"I never felt very comfortable protesting this law, and I guess no one else did either, although everyone I talk to about it (just about) has some very choice words to say about it and the city for implementing it.
But in writing? I mean, kind of hard to take a pro-smoking stance in writing.
Unless you're Gregory P. At least someone around here hasn't been completely intimidated by the PC movement. Of course, I think he lives in Albuquerque now."

No one is talking about being "pro-smoking." This law and any protest that might surround it need not have anything to do with smoking. It has to do with what businesses can do to create the environment they want to create, servers to make decisions about where they want to work, and about controlling the outdoors and the public sphere. And so I wrote to Julia and decided to share it with you:

Dear Julia:

I am so totally stunned that "no one feels comfortable protesting this law." (And I have just moved back to Santa Fe, and if I can find a half dozen people who'll agree with me that it's pernicious and worth fighting for, then I'll do it just for kicks.)

You said:

"At least someone around here hasn't been completely intimidated by the PC movement."

Julia, honestly - what's PC about the city enacting the nation's most draconian anti-smoking law for the sake of One Man (Nicholas Ballas of the Cowgirl Hall of Fame, with all due respect) so he can make his business non-smoking and not lose market share, but making sure that a bunch of high-powered men and women (presumably) can continue to smoke cigars at Rio Chama? There's absolutely NOTHING PC about this law except the cowards that refuse to point out that it's

racist
classist
impossible to enforce
and is already creating a sinister air of paranoia throughout this city?

it controls the rights of businesses to make decisions
it attempts to control the outdoors
it makes criminals out of those who weren't criminals yesterday
it turns everyone into a cop (staff members of venues) or a potential cop (See a Violation? Call this Number!)

There is NOTHING PC about this law. But the scariest thing about it is, no one will protest it because they're all ashamed that they smoke. And that's *really* scary.

This morning I woke with a grim realization. Big Brother is the physical manifestation of collective apathy. It's not the state or some bogeyman. It's people like you with the power to investigate and call "bullshit on that" refusing to do so. And I think it's really sad. No wonder we can't shift the balance of power in Washington or get indictments against those bozos - people are too afraid to speak up against something that is clearly a mean-spirited attempt to legislate morality and behaviour for most of us - but continue to allow the powerful to continue to do exactly what they want to do.

shame on all of you - you deserve to lose every last freedom you have
gregoryp(tm)

Sunshine & Roses

I give up. Tonight I read the law in its entirety and decided that between Club Alegria and the Rio Chama's new cigar bar, I'll survive. I need to stop going out to bars anyway. I never spend any time on the Plaza anyway unless I'm at work.

Because I'm under strict personal orders not to do anything that would earn me a ride to jail in the back of a police car, I might even quit. Smoking, that is. I have an accupuncture appointment on Friday and maybe I'll ask about it. If the tide has turned so drastically and I want to be an acceptable member of society, perhaps I could become a part-time smoker, and smoke when I'm on vacation. Maybe I'll just sit in my garden and read more books on culture and religion. Maybe I'll write something nice about what a wonderful world it is, since I'm just as capable of that as anything else.

I just think it's crazy that no one is protesting this but me. I find it...sad. Today I had the startling revelation that no one in America protests anything anymore - they just bicker with each other about petty issues while the real villains rob the country blind. Ho-hum. I see something very dangerous in all of this and everyone keeps telling me to shut the fuck up. Okay. Fine. I'll just move around it and pretend it isn't there. Just like everyone else.

Kill the Smokers And that leaves you with whom?

A reader writes: "With due respect for your pissed-offedness about all this, it's not right for ANYONE to be assaulted. I suspect your crazy waitress had been verbally assaulted by smokers, and that was the source of her reaction to you."

Perfectly correct. And so the brunt of carrying out oppressive laws is left to those least equipped to enforce them, and those they are most supposedly trying to protect.

In regards to our negative interaction the other day, (which I regret, because while I am finding it very difficult to remain civil about this law, it is my duty to do so) I think it's important that you and everyone else understands that my protest about this is not about defending smoking. It's a terrible habit, but one I happen to enjoy - but that's still not the issue.

The issue at hand is one of defining what is personal, private, social and public space, and then determining what is acceptable behaviour in any of those millieus. Let me break down my view of this law precisely:

1) A bar is social space. We can all agree on that. What then needs to be determined is whether or not the owner of a bar has the right to determine the rules of engagement in his or her establishment without governmental interference. I believe that bars can make those determinants all by themselves, using the market, patrons, and audience as a guidelines, without forcing every bar to do as one bar wants to do (the Cowgirl) without losing marketshare.

This law is not, and has not ever been about, "the health of workers." There are *plenty* of other jobs in this city of a $9.50 hourly wage to satisfy the demands of those who must work in smoke-free environments. Furthermore, if the City Council were actually serious about *public health*, we'd all be talking about the effects of "second-hand alcohol" which is far more dangerous and much more actively violent than cigarette smoke, as any bereaved relative of a totally sober driver can tell you following their death in a drunk driving accident.

Already, prior to this law, bars like the Second Street Brewery and the Santa Fe Brewery had made the decision to not allow indoor smoking, and by all accounts, these were among the two most popular live music venues in the city. So the argument that people *needed* this law to be able to go see live music is also a pile of pernicious nonsense.

2) A patio is outdoor space. While a lot of cities like San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles are cited in making the case for this law, I will note that none of those cities disallow smoking in outdoor patios, with some exceptions for places where food are served. Thus, Bushee and Co. want to take the law one step further because we're so darn progressive around here - and I think it's just Dead Wrong. Again, businesses should make those determinations about the rules of engagement in a social space, in my humble opinion. People are FREE to choose whether or not to go to those establishments.

3) "25 feet from any open doorway" means downtown, which means *PUBLIC SPACE.* No smoking within 25 feet of any open doorway is simply an anti-vagrancy law, another means to a) keep the streets clean of undesirables (which in this case means, "the woman who walks the floor of a gallery and wants a cigarette on her break"), and b) to give the police another excuse that they don't need to hassle people. How will this law be enforced? How *selectively* will this law be enforced? Who will receive citations and who will not? A year from now, someone will do that statistical analysis and they'll *probably* find that white males like me are *least* affected by this law - unless they're young or obviously poor.

This law attempts to control business, eliminate choices for social space, and attempts to legistlate behaviour in both social and public space. To a degree, that attempt to change the rules of engagement in social and public space really defines the heart of why this law is terrible. You might feel "protected" - but the problem with this line of argument is that it can SO easily be turned around to eliminate CHOICE for other people in other types of situations.

As I have said before, I actively support a woman's right to choose, and so I watch with utter horror as the same side of the fence that might support that right is also keenly interested in eliminating choices for others: including, in this case, bar owners, bar workers, bar patrons and the smoking and non-smoking public at large. Another supporter labelled Patti Bushee a fascist over this yesterday and I don't think he's far off the mark. The warp and woof of culture is that some people choose activities and behaviours that others in the culture might abhor. You might say that you are offended by second-hand smoke - I could just as easily say that I am offended by a woman's decision to *kill her baby* (emphasis added, but my words are no less emphatic than some of the crap that gets thrown at me for smoking **outside**) and we have choices - we can agree to disagree, or we can do our level best to DICTATE THE PERSONAL AND MORAL CHOICES OF OTHERS IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE.

If that's what you and other supporters of this law intend to do, then I say you're cutting your own throats. I say that all bets are off. I say that if you attempt to eliminate me from the public sphere, you will lose a potential ally. And while I don't mean this literally, I will say in making me and my kind utterly personna non grata, even OUTDOORS, then you are affectively eliminating me from the public discourse. And while I'm sure that Patti Bushee and the rest of those cowards think of me as nothing but poor and undesirable because I still *smoke* (heaven forbid, unenlightened Neanderthal!) the fact of the matter is: "If you eliminate us from the public discourse, then the only people you get are the people who aren't as fond of freedom as I am."

4) What's next? There's a small hipster city just like ours (without the zillion-dollar retail district) called Arcata, California that has actually outlawed smoking *on the Plaza.* That's right. No smoking in what was once the city's primary public space. Before the law, kids and hippies and general malcontents coated the Plaza with their skateboards and hacky sacks. Now - it's just *empty.*

What begins as a health issue can so easily become a crusade. But a crusade for what, exactly? Legislated morality and behaviour? A collapsed social core that no one spends any time in? Laws that eliminate certain people from the conversation, and makes criminals out of them?

If those cats on City Council think they're *any* less reactionary than Bush and Co., they need to think again. This law sets a dangerous precedence and it should be repealed. Any free-thinking person would have to agree.

ps: The waitress *did* feel harassed about the law - and she's a smoker TOO.

Still think it protects the worker? Bad enforcement of smoking ban can get people FIRED

Despite my virulent (some might say violent) opposition to the city of Santa Fe's utterly draconian no-smoking law, I can tell you that I have been vigilant in complying with it. In fact, I have mostly just STOPPED GOING OUT at all, and while my six pints every other night probably isn't having an impact on anyone's bottom line, I will admit I *have* become much less gracious about not smoking in places where it is permitted.

Case in point: Last weekend I attended the Violent Femmes concert at Paolo Soleri, and lit up a smoke while waiting for the band. Some lame-ass Baby Boomer chick behind me had the fucking gall to say, "Oh please, put that out. I can't stand cigarette smoke." Whereupon I stood up and said, (loud. Real loud.) "If you can't stand cigarette smoke, why don't you go LIVE IN A BOX? And don't plan a trip to Mexico, South America or Europe, you fucking whiner," before leaving the area.

Back in the day before the ban, I might've been really polite about it. But hey, these people have the law on their side, so all I can say is "GET YOUR LAWS OFF MY FUCKING BODY." Today's experience at the La Posada, however, really takes the cake for what a fucked up law this is and what a ridiculous time businesses are having with implementing it.

This afternoon, after my day gig, I went over to the La Posada to have some iced tea and write in my journal. This is a fairly routine ritual for me, though one I haven't engaged in since the Ban, since I don't go out anymore, other than to Fatso's, who are circumventing the law on their outdoor patio. But I went to LaPo because I like to hide there, and when I really have something to do on a bright clear day, I could, I reasoned (mistakenly) that I could just go out to the patio and smoke when I needed to.

After a half hour of writing in the bar, I stepped outside. I made a mental note of how far 25 feet from the door was, and saw another smoker sitting at a table. That must be the line, I thought, accepting a light from him and walking even further away to talk to a friend from out of state on my cell phone.

I was meandering around the outdoor water fountain when I heard, then saw, a woman racing up to me, shouting, "No smoking in Santa Fe! No smoking in Santa Fe!" I was stunned, to say the least, then heard my friend say, "Is someone telling you you can't smoke outside? What the fuck?" I started to tell my friend there was this new law, and then this chick grabbed me and dragged me a good fifteen feet across the patio. "What the fuck?"

I hung up my phone. "What is this?" The woman told me it wasn't her fault, it was a new law, I could only smoke at this one table and I had to stand there and be a happy smoker. I was just stunned. I had absolutely no idea who she was, could only assume that she was a drunk patron on a power trip, some friend of Patti Bushee's out to use the law to harass me unnecessarily. She pointed to the other guy and told him to go over to my table, and I just stood there as she went back inside, retrieved an ashtray, and came back, telling me, "If you want to complain, go to www.rockresorts.com, which I recognized as the parent company for the La Posada. "They haven't implemented a meaningful policy so you can imaginet the kind of shit I've had to take for this."

And that was when I realized that this woman works for La Posada. So this psycho trip was some kind of business-sanctioned intervention on my person on behalf of the hotel? Clearly, it was time for me to leave and never come back.

"You're a rude disrespectful bitch," I said to her as I stormed off the patio and into the bar to retrieve my laptop. "And you had absolutely no right to touch me."

I could feel a pile of righteous anger gearing up inside me and I just *knew* I had to get the hell out of there before I got really actively mad. Why the hell wasn't I told what the hell the goddamn policy in any other way but that? Unbelievable that I would be treated like a fucking criminal for smoking a cigarette. I am a grownup. As a teenager, no one pulled that kind of shit on me, and I'm thinking, I'm in khakis, I hold a regular job, I am a respected member of this community, I am an arts journalist, I write about the stuff that people come here to see, and this woman thinks it's perfectly okay to treat me like a pile of garbage because I smoke.

Thank you, Patti Bushee - and the rest of you cowards on the City Council. Thanks a whole hell of a lot.

On my way out, bar manager Don McCoss, whom I'd seen around before, asked if there was a problem, but I just said, "This is absolutely fucking outrageous and I have to leave." And I did. And as soon as I was in my car, I broke another one of Santa Fe's bullshit laws and immediately got on my cell-phone and dialed 411. I felt utterly assaulted - by this woman, by the La Posada, and by this law, that is designed, they say, to *protect* workers (many many many of whom smoke themselves) and absolutely eliminate smoking within 25 feet of everything.

I called the Manager on Duty and filed a formal complaint. I threatened a lawsuit for assault, and actually meant it for a few hours. It didn't help any when I was told she was suspended - yeah, this chick sucks, and she's crazy and she never should've touched me, but what I really want from this incident is this:

The La Posada - and every other bar and restaurant in this city - needs to have a clearly stated policy, in writing, posted outside their establishment, insofar as where smokers can smoke. No more ambiguity. If, as in the case with the La Posada, that the proximity of the bar makes it impossible for smokers to leave the premises to smoke and smoking isn't permitted on the premises, then that needs to be clearly stated AND PUBLICIZED. If the whole place is non-smoking, then I want to know that before I enter the building - because I just won't. I won't buy a drink, I won't waste my time, and I won't pretend that I can just have one over here, because I'll be at home enjoying a drink and a smoke by myself.

Right now, this law is no big deal because it's July. But just you wait until the tourists are gone and it's February - you think I'm going to go out and drink expensive alcohol in bars when no one welcomes me or treats me like that?

If the La Posada is unwilling and unable to post these guidelines in a clearly marked place, then your problem isn't with me - it's with the City Council. And maybe you should think about all the tips that the saintly "workers" that Bushee and Co. are trying to protect are going to lose because this law is wrong and should be contested strongly by the business owners of this city. Including the La Posada.

She never should've touched me and it doesn't matter why she did. But run-ins like that stemming from a behaviour that has only recently been criminalized can only be the result of poor poor planning on your part. And politically motivated poor planning on the part of the city. Which doesn't surprise me in the least.

Flogging A Dead Horse: Site Santa Fe Biennial, 2006

If Site Santa Fe is a Citadel, I'd Rather Pray Outdoors

My Review of the 2006 Fe Santa Fe Biennial (the straight-from-the-hip version):

If someone were to decide to give me the curatorial title for the next Site Santa Fe Biennial, my vision is as clear as day - I'd skim 15% off the top of their $600,000 budget just for my fee, then pull an additional $100K as a show budget. I'd fabricate a four foot by ten foot rubber stamp emblazoned with the word "HUBRIS," then hire a crane for opening night and train some fancy New York artist (Jenny Holzer springs to mind) to operate the crane. We'd hire Kim Jones to reprise his rat-decor on the front end of Site from Biennial 2004 onto the crane, and on opening night, the doors of Site would be sealed shut with super glue and everyone would settle in under the tent to watch the performance, Fancy Artist in rat-crusted crane stamping the word "HUBRIS" over and over again on the exterior walls of Site. We'd spend the rest of the budget on cheap jug wine and seriously bad punk rock bands to entertain the assembled throngs, and for the following six months, Site would be shuttered closed and everyone who works there would have to write their press releases and other institutional drek from their laptops in the front seats of their cars, while graffiti artists and "outsider" artists would have complete carte blanche over the rest of the walls and the entire grounds of the museum.

Now *that's* the Biennial I'd like to see. As you can see, it's a bit reactionary in regards to the current Biennial, but bear in mind that while it's roughly equivalent to what Site 2006 has been all about, it's at a fraction of the cost *and* we end up with a six-month installation tent city of gutter punks and ex-convicts who might actually make work we'd wanna see.

My Review of the 2006 Site Santa Fe Biennial (the sober and clear analysis, made possible by three heavily emotional argument/discussions with my dear friend Zane Fischer):

Dear Zane:

I'm only going to say this once.

I burned my Site Santa Fe card tonight. It was given to me as a gift by my mom, and though I don't particularly need it because I seem to have made the list of press important enough to be sent an email and given a little kit complete with a Valet Parking permit, I burned it anyway because it's symbolic of how I feel about the *place* - not the show, not the art, but the *place* itself. If the conversation that has been had about this show and all of the other shows in town is about presentation, then my feelings about Site and the work it shows won't ever change until they raze the building and present art as something I know it to be - as something fun, spontaneous, exhuberant, and maybe even a little Dionysian.

While Site Santa Fe hasn't always lacked that possibility, and has, in fact, delivered on it on several occasions, it is, as I said earlier, a Very Citadel of Contemporary Art - and all those capital letters have always left me feeling rather cold. The glossy brochures advertising "deluxe" tours of Biennials for the very well-heeled collector don't really help either, though I do understand that there is a difference between downtown warehouse guerrilla art-spaces, and an uptown institution that needs all the contributions it can get to keep hosting high-end cocktail parties for all those well-heeled johns who discretely keep the place open for the sake of their fancy collections of work that needs stacks of press releases in order to be understood.

I like to think that there are two kinds of people in the art world - those who gravitate to Art History departments, and those who gravitate to artist studios. I am one of the latter folks, and I am mostly a sucker for anyone who makes Damn Near Anything - from wax-resist painted eggs and santero carvers to wack-job theorists who make models of the universe with a single prism and a bowl full of water. Makin' stuff is cool, and since I don't make a whole lot more than a few scribbles on a page, people who can create form out of anything seem like deities to me, most of the time. I'm such a true believer in the making of art-things that I once travelled across two states to visit the Museum of Bad Art, and I was really really sad that I couldn't buy a couple pieces off the wall - until I made something even *worse.*

I tend to feel - and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but note that I said "feel" and not think and these are deeply different things - that the kinds of folks who gravitate to Site and stick around are of the former variety. Site's very building implies a certain kind of churchliness about "what you are about to see" and all that hushed and quiet tip-toeing from one piece of work to the next has always reminded me of spending a Sunday afternoon in the Hirschorn (my mother's favorite gallery) as a child. The whole process says, "This stuff is important. Please be quiet. People here are in quiet contemplation of beauty. Don't talk." And above all, of course, don't touch the art.

But I want to touch the art. And, of course, I'd like to be touched *by* the art without having to read a goddamn thing about what kind of ideas went into either it or the decision to select it for the particular room or space that I'm seeing it in. You seemed really ticked off that I hadn't bothered to read your preview before I went to the show - but I also didn't read any of the great big packet of press releases that Site was so gracious to provide me with. I wanted to experience the art, as they say, "in an unmediated fashion," and the fact is that it mostly just confused and bored me. And perhaps that's because, having been to a couple other Biennials, I was expecting some kind of blockbuster event - instead, I saw work left in quiet contemplation for me to pause and reflect upon, there in that Citadel of Contemporary Art. And I rushed off in search of richer content quite quickly, over to Evo and James Kelly and Victoria Price, and with the exception of Price's nifty Native American artifacts collection, didn't really find it at all except in the marvelous to-and-fro of tout le monde, who seemed just as happy to not be inside Site as I was.

Once I started reading those releases today, after our third argument/discussion about this show, I realized that behind all the art that had bored me were living breathing people - the artists - who have probably read a lot of the same books as I have and have probably had all the same wild thoughts as me, and who've probably wandered through dozens of cities around the world smoking hash and drinking wine and thinking about all the cool shit I do. And of course, at that point, I knew I couldn't dis the show - because there were artists inside of it, and people who make stuff, and as I think I've made clear throughout my life, I'm a sucker not just for art-stuff and art-people, but also for madness and frivolity and a damn good time. And all these folks just looked like fun - but the presentation of their work wasn't quite about *fun* - it was about the seriousness of it all, and there was (quite honestly) nothing in there that struck me as particularly serious - other than the space it which it was shown. And I'm just not serious enough for Site Santa Fe.

In the meantime, the rest of the city was teeming with interesting events, that taken as a whole and contrasted against the serious of Site, just seemed to suggest that anyone seeking a good time out of art could find it - providing they were willing to step outside of that building. In the course of the weekend, as you know, I saw authentic Hawai'an hula dancers invoking their gods in the Allan Houser Art Park to bless the Indigenous Dialogues show, drank beer and danced to techno at the Feral Art Gallery with two to three hundred other wanna-be art stars, ate hot dogs with the Renters, and caught the tail end of the Folk Art Market, where hundreds of artists and participants jostled one another in a Congo line to the beat of a half-dozen hand-drummers over at the Museum of International Folk Art.

What struck me as interesting about all of this, as you also know, was that *the* Site for "contemporary art" was without question, (in my meager brain) the dullest part of the whole weekend. And yet, what received the most coverage and what seemed, from the press perspective, the most important thing happening, was the Biennial opening. And all of that struck me as strange in terms of what we think of when we think of the word "contemporary" and what we think, in our little universe of contemporary art, as what is really important about the art we look at, laud, and make important.

Timothy Leary propagated the idea that taking LSD was all about "set and setting," and after this weekend, I would argue that viewing art is all about "set and setting." What puzzles me is why contemporary art, which seems to consider itself so important, cutting-edge, avant-garde, etc. is so often presented in spaces that seem more appropriate for a networking party than actually viewing something as interesting as "art." If contemporary art really isn't "your father's modern art" then why is it so often shown in places that seem about as interesting about my father's cocktail parties?

For years now, I have implored you and everyone within earshot to believe me when I tell you that Burning Man is the most fascinating and relevant contemporary art show in America. Its set and setting create a deep and rich visual and theoretical lexicon that is incredibly satisfying - and you can even show up to the "viewing" half-naked or painted blue, if you like. Compartively speaking, since Burning Man is *not* about sales, commodity, or collectors, it only makes every other space for viewing Contemporary Art seem less like a place to "experience art" than like a brothel where everyone is for sale. And while Site is not specifically set up for the sale of work, the indirect and behind-closed-doors sales that do take place seem so much more whorish to me than the actual sale of items at places like the Folk Art Market, because at least there everyone is aware that sales are an important part of the action.

When it comes down to what I really want from art, personally, what makes a work interesting to me are ideas and inventiveness. Accessibility is nice too, and if I can get my head around the work just by looking at, without having to be seduced by the bios and the press releases that I've written more of than I can count, then all the better. This is why I am delighted by such objects as carved soap boxes made by prisoners or fork-tine and polished stone necklaces made by travelling hippies, as well as the kind of stuff that hangs at Feral, the craft objects that can be found at Indian Market or Spanish Market or Folk Art Market, or the truly weird monumental works like the giant bronze sacred heart that spits fire out of the top that shows up on the Playa every August.

But when I come across a show that actually has a mission, a thing to say, a burning urgent desire to raise consciousness in the way that Bob Hoazous' Indigenous Dialogue show does, then I am tempted to blurt out, in a fit of pique as I did the other night to you, that Site's show blows by comparison and Indigenous Dialogues is *the* show to see right now, because it offers the same quiet contemplation that Site might want to offer, but it actually has in mind a coherent conversation that it would like us to participate in. That conversation has a lot less to do about informing whitey that Native Americans are here to stay than it is about calling all the tribes and asking questions about what they can do to get over the divisiveness between the tribes, but it's *still* far more interesting to an outsider like myself to that community than it is to me, a more or less "insider" in Contemporary Art, to what's happening over at Site Santa Fe. It has substance and urgency and spiritual components - and most importantly, there are high and important stakes about how that conversation turns out.

Site Santa Fe's Biennial, on the other hand, wants to pretend that art is just about stuff, and that the stuff that is presented can be "totally disconnected" (my quotes) from each other, and that the artists that have been selected are just there to be viewed on their own merits, without mediation. But the mediation is an a priori condition made real by the fact that the work is *in* Site, the Citadel, as I have said, of a certain kind of discourse without discourse, a clean-up crew of Art History majors and curators and artists who are more or less invested in little else than the language of Contemporary Art. Collectively speaking, there's no underpinning historical or philosophical agenda other than the agenda of Contemporary Art. It exists primarily to propagate itself and the spaces where work of its kind is shown. And the real beauty of that agenda is that if you don't get it, you just don't understand it, so if you were to bother to state the obvious and say the emperor has no clothes, you'd be ejected from the club because clearly, you don't understand that the point of the club is to propagate the form, not to actually generate discourse about anything but itself, a strange loop-tape, a mobius strip that is always turning but never really going anywhere in particular.

Though I am well-aware that labelling one's self a "Contemporary Artist" is important for those artists who'd like to vie for such prizes as a show in the Chelsea or a spot at the Whitney, Venice, or Site Santa Fe Biennials, I'm coming to a place where the very phrase Contemporary Artist makes me want to retch and run for cover. The pretense of the thing is just astonishing, as if only a few artists making work At This Moment can actually claim the title. Having spent the past few years roaming around looking at Native American/indigenous work of both a "contemporary" and "traditional" nature, as well as "folk art," "craft-objects," "outsider art," and making inquiries as the histories of these "traditions," I'm finding that very often traditional work is just a template of sorts that the "current" craft/folk artist can use to project his or her own visions, and a lot of things that get produced are very "contemporary" indeed, despite the fact that they may have a historical function that might disenable them from being viewed within the Contemporary Art world.

But this sort of thing is really just so much conceit, a means to separate "people we think are cool," and "people we don't know and don't want to deal with." And that's certainly fair for the members of the club - but something tells me it will be a really long time before I, personally, will feel comfortable in that club. For one thing - I never feel like I have the right shoes.

cheers
gregoryp(tm)

ps: Unless you have any strenuous objections, I'm going to post this to my blog as an open letter so that other people can get involved in the conversation, if they so choose.

Make the City Different Safe: Ban Alcohol Too

Alcohol Kills Non-Drinkers - And It's Our Duty to Protect Them

In response to the recent decision by the Santa Fe City Council to ensure that smoking will not occur in any public spaces, restaurants, bars, or other businesses despite whatever opinions those business owners have to say about it, I say - why stop there?

The argument for eliminating smoking in any indoor or outdoor public space goes that secondhand smoke is responsible for the death of non-smokers as well as smokers. It's so true the surgeon general even says so. Yet, we've known for *centuries* (yes, centuries) that alcohol is also a killer of those who do not drink. Why punish just smokers and those who profit from the sale of tobacco products? Let's go after drinkers and drinking establishments too.

The statistical evidence for the dangers of drinking alcohol are quite alarming: at least 100,000 deaths a year for those who haven't had a drop can be attributed to alcohol, including fetal alcohol syndrome, drunk driving victims, accidental and intentional homicide, not to mention the innumerable instances of assault and domestic violence that are perpetrated by drinkers on non-drinkers.

Waiting for voluntary abstinence on the part of drinkers is wishful thinking. Like smokers, expecting any drinker to act like a responsible adult and refrain from drinking isn't enough - tougher drunk driving laws isn't enough either. We MUST ACT IMMEDIATELY to make sure that Santa Fe is safe from all forms of vice that might inadventently kill an innocent, non-drinking person.

A visit to Santa Fe might not be the same with a Margarita that only contains lemonade, but if the lack of appearance of any bar or restaurant owner to the meeting to protest the smoking ban is any indication, then we should easily be able to ban the sale and consumption of alcohol within the city of Santa Fe. And if Bill Richardson is as tough on crime as he claims to be, by 2008 we might even be able to make this a state-wide law.

For those concerned that alcohol provides a means to relax after a long day, we can direct those people to the pharmaceutical industry and the many safe alternatives for relaxation in their pharmacopeia, and perhaps hand them a remote control and point them in the direction of the nearest television set. If Valium and the Weather Channel doesn't relax you, then a prescription for Seroquel will surely do the trick.

As New Mexicans, it's important for us to take the lead on the sale and consumption of this highly dangerous substance. After all, we can't expect people to make meaningful decisions about the health and safety of themselves, much less others. And maybe when we're done, we can consider the possibility of banning the use of automobiles, darts, guns, and pens with pointy tips. And saturated fat too. We can make America safe and healthy, starting right here, right now.

Que viva!

- Gregory Pleshaw
Santa Fe.