Otto’s Self Board Meeting (2009)
Pablo Helguera
Otto’s Self Board Meeting
Otto:
Thank you all for coming. I had to call this emergency board meeting of all my top senior selves in order to address a matter of serious importance to the Otto Rumperstreiser Art Career Corporation. As you know, Us, Otto, have not received an invitation to do a solo exhibition for 2010. We are approaching the end of the year and so far My/Our exhibition schedule looks empty. This is an unacceptable situation that I/We all have to work quickly to correct. We just can’t allow this embarrassment. I look forward to your suggestions.
Otto, Senior Marketing Strategist:
To be honest, I have been saying all along that we don’t promote Us enough. People are not aware of our product. We have to be more aggressive. We are up against other artists who have huge galleries with promotional machinery behind them. We need to spend more money, like sending weekly emails about what we do to everyone Otto knows and maybe buy an ad on e-flux. And We have to get ourselves to more important openings. We keep going to the same stupid openings in Chelsea without collectors or decision-makers. We just need a dramatic change of tactic.
Otto, Social Etiquette Supervisor:
We have to be careful with the self-promotional thing. It looks inelegant and desperate. We don’t want to appear desperate. I agree that we need to attend higher-end openings and we need to be more on top of important people’s birthdays. But email doesn’t work anymore. People just delete whatever they get, everyone is saturated even with Facebook.
Otto, Chief Financial Officer:
I am sorry, but we can’t afford an ad campaign right now. Ads cost a fucking fortune. Otto hasn’t sold a work in months and the only money we are getting, from that lecture in that College in Ohio we are going to use it to pay for that stupid photo print job for that piece that Otto agreed to donate for the art auction, and then the rest of the money will have to be spent on that expensive dinner date this coming Friday with the French curator.
Otto, Manager of Getting Laid:
Excuse Us- the French curator actually is a promising relationship. Don’t forget that she said she is very interested in Otto’s work. And in the meantime, let’s face it, she is really hot and Otto is in dire need to get laid.
Otto, Deputy Director of Art Ideas:
Please, let’s focus on the content of Otto’s work. Without the content there is no work, without work there is no career. The other morning We were in the shower We had a really interesting idea for a video piece that would be about the slums of Morocco. It would be a multi-channel video piece and it would show these slums with a narrative of a blind Moroccan prostitute whose story Otto read the other day in Paris Match.
Otto, Coordinator of Reality Check:
That’s ludicrous. First of all, how the hell are we going to get to Morocco to do the video, and then find the prostitute? There is no fucking way we can pull that project together.
Otto, Deputy Director of Art Ideas:
You guys always have to ruin every great initiative. That is why Otto will never make it as an artist.
Otto, Chief Financial Officer:
I am sorry, but we don’t even have the money to buy that external hard drive Otto needs, let alone…
Otto:
Wait a minute. I thought we were talking about getting a show, not about coming up with a new piece!
Otto, Cheating Manager:
How about if we just steal footage from YouTube or something and get a female friend to do a prostitute voiceover?
Otto, Senior Marketing Strategist:
Wait a minute: what if we ask the French curator to do the voiceover, and then once the piece is made we ask for her help to get the piece shown? She may even have contacts in Morocco. Wasn’t it a French colony? Wasn’t she working on a show about post-colonialism? She is totally going to love this piece.
Otto, Deputy Director of Art Ideas:
I don’t know about that idea, it’s too opportunistic…
Otto, Coordinator of Reality Check:
At least sounds doable. We can pull it off.
Otto:
We are pathetic.
Otto, Manager of Getting Laid:
I think it’s a great idea. What do we have to loose? If anything, We will get laid.
Tags: Art Market, Biography, Fiction, Humor, Identity, Psychology of Art, The Art World