“There’s very little room at the top.” - Peter Drucker

“There’s very little room in a casket, and in Hell, from what I gather.” - Milo Santini

PJM: “Creativity” is what you use when you don’t have enough money to get what you need, or when you’re hungry & you need to eat or don’t have a roof over your head & you need to hide or rest…

MILO: So, creativity is the instinct for survival applied, and art is the tool.

PJM: That’s a really interesting point, to frame it in terms of tool usage. I actually put the origins in vision (as the interior connection to the external source, the fundamental perceptual unit) first, with tool making as a secondary phenomenon, in the nature of exchange. We are inferring in our definition of art a translation of vision into an object for transmission of perception to other people along a generational timeline. Creativity is really an entirely different issue. What do you do to survive, which involves both society and environment, society as environment, determinants, so on and so forth. Perceived needs, too, as opposed to wants - a whole bunch of things. Art is singular, and specific, as pointed out by Don Judd. Art’s functions are dimensional, but its prime function is as a perception enhancing device, capable of acting as a packet.

MILO: Or you could just say “Oh!, were going to play rhetorical games? I thought we were here to try to solve problems.”

PJM: The rhetorical games are the are expertise of Epistemologists, starting in the West with the Greeks - Socrates/Plato, etc. - where the thinkers put the Technes to work for them, so they could think more clearly and prosperously for everybody.. Slavery was in, then. I wrote about this extensively in my thesis and elsewhere.. Including several of my responses to questions for the online forum on the National Endowment for the Arts and Federal Arts Policy. In dealing with a significant number of the NEA forum panelists from the various arts fields, and the intent some expressed in pushing “creativity” over art/artists derives I would suggest from concerns that are much more mundane than esoteric. I would describe it in terms of self, except the “self” is a “social self” and its a management understanding of self. The one determines the identity of self, without being accountable for the definition or even applying the same standards to him- or herself, in his or her executive capacity. So it’s social self-censorship, via artist and art management, and it’s about the politics of free speech control & the economic benefits to be derived at the top therefrom. It’s about not sharing money or power with artists, while gaining directly (as an executive or administrator) from the prestige/class that artsiness generates. It’s about not seeing reality except by proxy, and conversely looking through the lens of management society from the top-down, in a scheme that allow the manager to pretend to be the Seer, the visionary, the artist. It’s the equation for management as a liberal art. The two guys I mentioned [Sir Ken Robinson & Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi] have become very successful flattening artistic enterprise (which I can define as enhancing vision through craft/object presented in the social arena) into “creativity” as a sub-industry of management/education training… Which itself has profound political/economic effects, not just for artists, but for every individual, and for the future of free society…

MILO: I see here on your website, a quote by that unpronouncable man. “Creativity is not determined by outside factors but by the person’s hard resolution to do what must be done.” - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery an Invention”

PJM: That’s right. You can juxtapose MC’s definition with mine and discover a subtle distinction that, after all, isn’t so subtle.

MILO: The distinction arises from the onus of attribution - is the force external or internal. Well, isn’t that interesting? I would argue the absence of faith is the subtle subtext. Csikszentmihalyi is by trade a psychologist, correct? Aren’t they all atheists? I wouldn’t know.

PJM: No, that’s a professional courtesy. …And, you’re correct about Mr. Creativity’s POV. He is a head shrinker, of the genus Freud. So, if you want to know Mihaly’s root understanding of creativity…you only have to ask dead Dr. Freud, of course, that fraud - in Hell.

“According to Freud, the curiosity at the roots of the creative process - especially in the arts - is triggered by a childhood experience of sexual origin, a memory so devastating that it had to be repressed. The creative person is one who succeeds in displacing the quest for the forbidden knowledge into a permissible curiosity. The artist’s zeal in trying to find new forms of representation and the scientist’s urge to strip away the veils of nature are really disguised attempts to understand the confusing impressions the child felt when witnessing his parents have sex, or the ambivalently erotic emotions toward one of the parents.” - Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, “Creativity” (etc.), pg. 100

So, when reading repeated references in the NEA panel to “creativity” (and MC is the world’s first creativity authority, and the rock star of the field is Ken Robinson, followed by demographic accountant/anthropologist Richard Florida and his ruminations on the so-called Creative Class, and tracing all this back to the Drucker term “Knowledge Worker,” PD’s cruel term for the pensionless servant of corporations who has to go back to school every few years or face “creative destruction,” the cruel notion of Schumpeter, euphemized to metre as a human equivalent of mechanical planned obsolescence)…

MILO: To review the context - we are examining excuses by arts field managers for not re-instating the direct artist grants of NEA. Are we not also describing the potential reversal of 40 years’ campaigns from a variety of directions to destroy the singular legitimacy of artistry? Art has been substantially replaced by the Super Class art and the SC all-stars. These are creative types who are best at making and buying things or no-things that are best at making fun of others’ lack. The SC art market is the second  commodities market, the exclusive market, unregulated and always managed to demonstrated upward movement. The cake is eaten at the top by the few, with crumbs for everyone else, and all crumbs are art. Art is loosely defined in this schema, is it not? The NEA even recently labeled kitchen table discussions for oppressed middle-class American families as art. I call that brand inclusive! But the Super Class also can horde the best of the best for their own indulgences! They in turn fill the museums they buy with the choice cuts… I understand your annoyance.

PJM: Of course I’m annoyed, and I find it remarkable that all artists are not annoyed ($7000 avg income per artist per year according to the Census, in which “artist” is a very broadly inclusive term should make any artist annoyed)…

MILO: You realize of course that these developments in the field of art are not coincidental, though they are dimensional, and they do have effects, even though they are executed with plausible deniability as the mode of application, rather than as a function of purpose. Educators/executive/arts org administrators all have a stake in the definitions of art and creativity, as do art writers and critics. To deny this is ridiculous. Especially when the context is formed into an unequivocal up or down vote yea or nay as to whether the pre-eminent art-defining governmental body should define art/artist distinctly enough to reward deserving artists with awards - financial awards - one of the effect of which will be the further distinction of merit, distinguishing art from “the creative.”

PJM: Exactly. To understand how the corporate world is fostering a “creativity” industry, and co-opting the art world in the process, is to understand the tactics of message management, and impulse control. The overarching goal is to manage creativity to serve productivity, and the overall aims of business, or the economy. To understand education’s use of the term it is necessary to understand critical theory, the war on art by culture studies advocates, Marxians, gay rights proponents, Christians, feminists (plus more) comprising a fluid combinative movement of agents - dimensional, if you will - and how all are in some measure actively pursuing strategies to redefine or appropriate the arts and culture infrastructure of for their various agendas, some conflicting, others converging, some righteous, some downright evil.

MILO: …Because the one who controls vision and its translation/representation determines the outcome - what We do Collectively - and that is power - the power to determine accountability is the conjunct.

PJM: So, let’s do the math. Vision + translation/representation = (art)… Making vision+representation one’s property/control/command power = the power to determine accountability» = “I am in charge of what we do, because I control how we interpret what we see & therefore what we decide to do about it - therefore I can manipulate control the outcome, & ultimately I get to decide who pays for it and who gets away with it. & if I get to be in charge, we work for me and I get all the good stuff and never get held responsible for the damage that happens along the way.

MILO: Sound familiar? Does this sound like Bush, Rove, Cheney, et al… Or any other tyrant/tyrannical regime in history?

PJM: What I find ceaselessly surprising is how the social compact - the Commonwealth - somehow grows on the foundation of art.

MILO: I would say Science also.

PJM: Yes, but art is the indicator. Not creativity. Not Freud’s idea of where art comes from (the first time you saw Mommy or Daddy’s peepee or when they put peepees together, like when they made you). Or Lacan’s idea that if we could just get back to womb (which actually a very uncomfortable place - just ask the Tibetan Buddhists, who have a very different idea) …………… Creativity IS most certainly a derivation of perceived internal need based on external factors or conditions. As such, while art is the fundament of social commonwealth, creativity is the fundament of science, of innovation - of progress. Not Productivity.

MILO: Which makes me want to make art about bombs hitting Aetna. Or Dick Armey suffering a stroke. Or, whatever: as long as its still a free society I Could. But because of what I see my task as an artist, my gift, my calling - that’s not my responsibility. I deal in realism, in representation, in Vision. Dick hasn’t had a stroke yet or a bullet lodged in his festering despotic brain, nor has Aetna yet been Molotoved, though these things may yet happen. My task is not to do these things, my gift is to do a realistic representation resulting from a Visionary inspection followed by the creation of a set scan of possible outcomes. It is my responsibility to then introduce suggestions or warnings based on those assessments and throw them into the arena for all of us to consider.

PJM: You couldn’t see a point where your commonwealth might need you to rise up in arms against tyranny.

MILO: Yes, daily. But I would not act then as an artist, but as a soldier, which as you know, I have been before.

PJM: I see. To return to our point, the issue of “creativity” in its current iteration, for clarification. I can point out that it might be helpful to consider the source of MGT’s definition of creativity. Would someone who has proven of tremendous value to Maggie Thatcher, whose recent appearance in LA was hosted by a multinational monopolistic banking concern (now folded into Wells Fargo, one of the corporate culprits behind the current economic catastrophe) - meaning Sir Ken Robinson, “creativity” expert - be a reliable guide or inspiration for my work? Guilt by association set aside, after listening to Robinson speak, and doing some cursory research, my answer is “no.” The same for Mihaly. And therefore, would I be suspect of the NEA panelists and other proponents advocating along these lines - and against the reinstatement of NEA direct artist grants - which are in my interests, which I hope to align with yours as peers - equal in the Commonwealth’s eyes/rules - to which I adhere - the answer is “yes,” I do suspect their answers.

And further, does this place me in opposition to the celebration of Drucker’s Centennial? The answer is “yes.” Why? Just because these powerful people control and command accountability (or lack of it), my research - which I have made available to all - and the same data I relied upon is available to all - though the access to the main players (those not already in Hell) that I purchased over the past several years is not available to all.

MILO: The one for the many, the many for the one.

PJM: My research has demonstrated to my rigorous satisfaction that Drucker’s ideas and praxis, his design for social topology (“ecology” he termed it, though in my view, Drucker’s managed life is hardly a life worth living to one who has had the beautiful experience of free society) is largely responsible for the progressive degrading of Democracy and its freedoms over the past 50-65 years. And just because Costco and the Harvard Business Review and Paul Krugman can be name-dropped as backers or collaborators in promulgating a patently false message - that it’s all under control, and Drucker in the end is right and all the Super Class, their Greenspans and Cheneys and EXXONs and Halliburtons are not responsibile or can be relied upon to save us or fix it and protect us and torture the real bad guys -  I don’t have to buy it. Neither do you.

MILO: I only barter, anyway. Who can trust a Dollar today?

PJM: What’s more, I don’t have to buy the promise of an egalitarian, corporate-controlled, global society, free of fanaticism or tribalism - a creative society achieved on a micro- or macro- scale through the agencies of government working with business to produce that society, one that will profit the right people what they think is fair in a free market, based on your consumption and the satisfaction of what they perceive your adequate needs to be. I can choose against this new noblesse oblige of the International Endowment for the Creatives.

MILO: My friend, you can join my team. I have much better alternatives, as do we all.

PJM: We’d do better to trust ourselves. We’d do better to once again overthrow our oppressors, the creative tyrants, and replace their terminology and terms with the ones that we know already work, or would distribute costs most equitably, or would more likely reduce suffering and conflict, and would more likely produce a livable society, where people have a decent chance of enjoying life and leading meaningful existences…………