You have to ask yourself: what resources can I make use of?

Interviewee: Gregory Sholette

I recently gave a talk with Jacques Servin, also known as Andy Bichlbaum from The Yes Men and basically his position was you should just completely turn your back on the art world. Which I can understand on one level, but on a different level even he also recognized that the art world has actually assisted The Yes Men quite a bit in many different ways and that this is useful, and that it has resources. So, I think you are always in that position when you have to decide what resources can I make use of: which ones work and which are something that I should avoid. Being someone who teaches at a public university I’m still in the position where I have to constantly prove myself as an artist or as a theorist because otherwise I wouldn’t get a pay-check. So you do have to participate in the system in some recognizable way, even as you are criticizing it. That’s kind of inevitable. So the question is what resources can I draw and leverage to then do something interesting with? On the one hand of course I’m reinforcing the system, but maybe at the same time I can try to create some sort of opposition in the process. Its an old problem and an old paradox.