chikenwing
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- Feb 18, 2010
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Yes, it's unusual for artists to find work these days, but according to the article, he had to accept half pay, plus he is caught up in creative endeavors.Also, it looks like he's putting his puppetry to work. Creative employment:
He's working. And you guys are mocking him for his trade.At one of Arts and Cultures meetingsheld adjacent to 60 Wall Street, at a quieter public-private indoor park thats also the atrium of Deutsche Bankit dawned on Joe: I have to build as many giant puppets as I can to help this thing outpeople love puppets! And so Occupy Wall Streets Puppet Guild, one of about a dozen guilds under the Arts and Culture working group, was born. In the spirit of OWS, Joe works in loose and rolling collaboration with others who share his passion for puppetry or whose projects somehow momentarily coincide with his mission. With the help of a handful of people, he built the twelve-foot Statue of Liberty puppet that had young and old alike flocking to him on October 8 in Washington Square Park. Right now, hes working with nearly thirty artists to stage Occupy Halloween, when his newest creations, a twelve-foot Wall Street bull and a forty-foot Occupied Brooklyn Bridge inspired by Chinese paper dragonsalong with a troupe of dancers playing corporate vampireswill inject a little bit of countercultural messaging into the annual parade of Snookis and True Blood wannabes strutting down Sixth Avenue.
Those of harder head or heart may tweetgiant puppets, #srsly? Yes, its hard to draw a straight line from something like Occupy Halloween to the overthrow of global capitalism or a financial transactions tax or student debt relief or any number of goalssome of world-historical magnitude, some straight from the playbook of reformist think tanksthat swirl around Liberty these days. But its creative types, either shoved into crisis by the precarious economy or just sick of making things under the corporate system, who have responded most enthusiastically to Occupy Wall Streets call.
It's ironic that one educated in arts that are benefitted the most by big, private industrialists heavily invested in the markets, would want to tear all of them down in so many ways.
If they eliminate their benefactors' very ability to purchase artwork, purchase tickets to theater engagements, and to build museums and theaters for the fine art and performing arts industries, sadly, they will see further cuts to future work to the point of needing retraining to doing a trade society demands--such as accounting, manufacturing, and bussing tables in a restaurant for other people.
Interesting point,wonder what old Sigmund would say about that.