Back from ROOTS camp! And what a famous one it was. A rarely matcher level of emotional expression, from collective love to individual anguish and deep anger. Too much to report, really. But for sure, what a good year for the TINYisPOWERFUL team to meet there and experience together the full range of Rooter’s talents.

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To go straight to my essential point, and close the time gap between before the camp and now. Easy enough! I intend to go directly to the reality of art in/with community as a practice and ROOTS. I am going to communicate with Wendy Shoenefelt and with Aimee.

Below, the letter to the two ROOTS staff members I mostly talked to during the past week, were it only for a very short time. These two Black women are amazingly open in their dedication and clear in their output. Like most other members, by the way. But they also know us better. In any case, we will see what becomes of this letter. What moves me here is my belief that facilitating collaboration at the collective level has an effect on interpersonal behavior and, in turn, may force changes in procedures.

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from Jean-Marie – to Aimee and Wendy

Charleston 08-14-2023

Hello,

You are the two ROOTS persons I will approach with some reflexions about what developed at the 2023 camp. We already had very short conversations and I promised I would do some deeper thinking.

To Wendy I talked about the Bauhaus model of how art and the spirit of the arts are capable of uniting often diverging creative forces. Of course, it is not a matter of duplicating a 1920’s model in our times. But I believe that Roots could be as successful at promoting a unifying vision of autonomy and reciprocity in its field as the Bauhaus was at creating a ‘style’, socially liberating and transformational – in its field.

Since ideas come to nothing without points of application, I offer the following:

• create a space where artists and administrators work together, in pairs or in groups …, in the spirit of the arts, on art/architecture/design/craft/conceptual/virtual, socially conscious projects, which will be part and party in the general artistic production of all the Roots cohorts. This does not mean that all staff members must be artists. On the contrary, it will show the benefits of collaborative art practices to promote a creative environment at all levels of Roots production, from values and visions to budgets and administration.
• create a fund, specifically dedicated to projects NOT dependent on foundation fundings, for the creation of original works. (This goes clearly in the direction of Karel McCord’s suggestion of self-financing). This may open unexpected fields of art and art administration research, free from the oppressive dilemma of accepting handouts while hating dependency … and shift the place/role of money in the relationship between staff and members.
• other thoughts to come … if they come!

Imagine that, if all were to work out, it would possibly question and tweak the usual relationship between the art world and ‘capital’! Why not liberate and transform it? Because, if I got the message from Roots week: we will make it together (from bankers to borrowers) or not make it at all!

I know that these ideas are already, one way or an other, sort of integrated, in a dormant form, in many projects I see around. But I believe that, the same way a Vision statement or a Mission statement need to be constantly updated, and contextualized for relevance, the same way should thoughts as the above be articulated and published so that their intent is undeniable and their implementation made urgent: Roots is designing its own non-capitalist model – ready to be shared – while still advocating with what it has.

Let Roots became a crucible for arts administrators of your’s two caliber. (No flattery here).

Thank you for your attention. JM