This, my friends, is IT. The diploma declaring that I am Master of Arts – nice, no? I heard that the HKU staff call it the ‘Harry Potter’ diploma, but let me assure you that no magic went into the getting of it ….. Will put it in the family safe, next to the negatives, the marriage and birth certificates and the family silver. No, not the family silver – don’t have any. Our stuff all goes into the dishwasher, and if not dishwasher-proof, it should not knock on our door…

Guy on the left is Harry Mulisch, Dutch writer recently deceased. Never liked his attitude towards women much: read his ‘The Discovery of Heaven’ and you will know why. His dismissive attitude towards the other sex also discernable in the quote I give below –  but then again, the guy wrote like an angel. Demonstrating the possibility of being  a sexist and a great writer simultaneously.

Best known among his earlier books is  ’The Assault’ (1982), which became something of a household word when filmed in 1986. Reading this the other day I found a little gem that I want to commit to memory – to this external one, that is.

Page 109, first page of the third episode: “It went  like with a man who is recently divorced: he takes a girlfriend to forget his wife, but to a certain extent this connects her to his wife, and it is only with the girlfriend after that things can start happening again – although a third girlfriend  will stand an even better chance. That what delineates must be delineated itself; but it is a hopeless task, because in this world, everything causes everything. A beginning never disappears, not even with the end.

A subject dear to any student after graduation: how to make a name  for yourself in the art world. Metropolis M – a Dutch art magazine – did an article about this subject  titled ‘how to star‘.

Of course I have my private dreams of stardom, so I read the article with interest. And extracted a to-do list from it. Here goes:

Initiate your own exhibitions with, for example, a group of fellow students and approach gallery owners, curators and art critics to look at your work. Get together with others to set up an exhibition location or artists’ initiative, but do not get too tied up in it for too long.

Open a shop in an empty building.

Get into a graduate programme. Do a residency. Go out and work as an assistant to artists or at art institutions.

Go to openings. A gallery owner will always be more interested in looking at your work if they have seen you in their gallery before.  Turn on the charm. Do not send your portfolio to galleries, curators or museums without being asked.

Building a career is a marathon, not a sprint. Believe in your work and its right to exist. Make work you like yourself, because if you are successful, you may be making it for quite some time.

Pretty sound advice. Pretty traditional, too. What strikes me  is that it is all based on studio-based artistic practice, a model that I consider out-of-date. To quote from my game/essay, the part titled ‘mythology of the solitary effort’:

“Traditionally, artists propel their work into the public domain by a process of linear re-territorialisation so well described in Daniel Buren’s ‘The Function of the Studio’, 1979. The work of art moves from the studio to the gallery to the museum or the collector’s home, abandoning the environment in which it came to be for a place in the institutional framework. Moving thus, the work is circumscribed, is given safe and secure limits; one could say that it is tamed and placed into an easy-to-recognize category.”

Business models for non-art organisations have evolved quite a lot in the 20th century. The early 20th century saw the ‘Henry Ford’ business model emerge – produce huge quantity at low cost.  Then we had the ‘razor and blades’ business model: offer the basic product at low cost (the razor) and make your profit with the refill (the blade). Mc Donalds chipped in in the 1950 with the franchise formula. Mass retailing was introduced in the 1960′s with (f.ex.) hypermarkets and Toys R Us. The spread of the Internet caused yet another business model: mass customisation (Dell Computers, Amazon).

I know of very few examples where artists have taken advantage of the Internet to structure their ‘business model’ in a new way. I’m not talking of ‘net-based art here, but a ‘net-based way of working.  Amazon and Dell invite their customer in at the start of their production process, not at the end. Can artistic  practice be structured along these lines? My own  try-outs include an online art/game/essay and this weblog – I certainly let people in from the beginning.  Would be interesting to see if Internet can change the art world in as fundamental a way as it is changing the world of commerce.

Graduation has to be celebrated, of course. As it happens, I will be fifty in two months time, and my right-hand-man even sooner. So we’re giving a big party to celebrate, and sent out 50 invitations. Hoping the weather will be good the sunday after next, for it will be a garden party with tea and (I hope) lots of sympathy. I’m spending time this week buying crockery from second-hand-shops in a radius of 50 km around the place where I live. Lots of fun to scout for the right-kind-of-ugly cups, saucers, teapots, spoons and suchlike. I’m decorating them, too, to make them even pretty/uglier. The idea is that the guest take home their tea set, so as to have a momento of the occasion.

So the year at MaHKU is meant to go with a bang! Am enjoying the light-heartedness of it all. Note: keep fingers crossed for sunny weather. The week after I’m going to Kopenhagen. Will pack crayons and stuff, maybe the Danes can be surprised into playing.

Later: had the party & it was really great!

Graduation ceremony yesterday – and a surprise: I graduated cum laude (with distinction). Now that is really cool!

Pic shows the dean of MaHKU and the heads of the 5 departments at the graduation ceremony. Klaas Hoek, who heads Fine Art (the one with the glasses)  had a funny little speach prepared for all us Fine Art students – everyone passed, and he told us this was in part due to the support we gave each other this year. Which was nice to hear.

Will spend the next couple of days creating something like order in my workspace – lots of stuff that has been begging me to be thrown away for a long time now. Started today by cleaning out my car. It doubled as a little van carrying all my stuff – and that of other students – all around Utrecht. Now that I put the back seats back in, it suddenly looks like a family sedan again.

Am going to talk with a company today that wants to hire me as a project manager for nov – feb. Great timing: it gives me two months to make proposals for two art projects I’m thinking about, then I will put my other skills to good use while I try to get backing for the proposals. The things I have in mind I cannot do by myself – I’ll have to organise funding and cooperation and such. Also I’m thinking about doing some more street games. And I’d like to visit a lot of exhibitions, And …..

I plan to continue writing this blog. It has served me well in the past year, and I have grown attached to writing a little every day. But right now I am going to luxuriate in the feeling of having nothing much to do and a lot of time to do it in.