The College Hill Independent: April 7, 2011

THE

COLLEGE

HILL

INDEPENDENT VOLUME XXII, ISSUE 8 APRIL 7, 2011 BROWN/RISD WEEKLY

Road Trips // 9 Copycat Art // 11 Underdogs // 13

IN MEMORIAM:

THE ISSUE:

Matthew Ernest Strickland B’09, famous for his love of life and passion for people, passed away in Birmingham, AL on Tuesday, April 5. He was 23. Born in Huntsville, Alabama, Matty marched to the beat of his own drummer long before attending Brown University; he started the very first club to represent the Democratic Party at his predominantly conservative high school. He was an adept hunter, and not only did he possess an almost inhuman athletic prowess (he inadvertently humiliated Keeney’s gym-goers on a regular basis), he was an Urban Studies concentrator and architecture expert. Since early childhood, he was passionate about becoming a doctor. In 2009, Matty was indisputably crowned Mr. Brown after charming the judges and audience with his outgoing and gregarious nature. And it probably didn’t hurt that he had an impeccably choreographed dance to “Call on Me” although he was already well-known around campus for his unbeatable moves. But what made him a truly remarkable man was his empathy and compassion for others. Never did he pass judgment on a stranger or a close friend. Matty was very confident and true to himself, and that was clear by the way he treated others--with love and respect. His unwavering enthusiasm for adventure and his love of people will be both celebrated and missed.

News WEEK IN REVIEW

by Belle Cushing, Mimi Dwyer, and Erica Schwiegershausen

FAMILY PLANNING & THE FEDERAL BUDGET IMPASSE

by Ben Tucker

p.2 p.3

Metro HYPOCRISY AT THE HOME SHOW

by Malcolm Burnley

PROVIDENCE BITES

by Emma Berry and Jonah Wolf

p.5 p.11

Opinions CAN’T KEEP ‘EM DOWN ON THE FARM BILL

by Ben Tucker

p.7

Features NEW MEDIA TRAVEL JOURNALISM

by Mimi Dwyer and Annika Finne

THE INDY IS: MANAGING EDITORS Gillian Brassil, Erik Font, Emily Martin • NEWS Emily Gogolak, Ashton Strait, Emma Whitford • METRO Emma Berry, Malcolm Burnley, Alice Hines, Jonah Wolf • FEATURES Belle Cushing, Mimi Dwyer, Eve Blazo, Kate Welsh • ARTS Ana Alvarez, Maud Doyle, Olivia Fagon, Alex Spoto • LITERARY Kate Van Brocklin • SCIENCE Maggie Lange • SPORTS/FOOD David Adler, Greg Berman • OCCULT Alexandra Corrigan, Natasha Pradhan• LIST Dayna Tortorici • STAFF WRITER Erica Schwiegershausen • CIPHRESS IN CHIEF Raphaela Lipinsky • COVER/CREATIVE CONSULTANT Emily Martin • X Fraser Evans • ILLUSTRATIONS Annika Finne, Becca Levinson • DESIGN Maija Ekey, Katherine Entis, Mary-Evelyn Farrior, Emily Fishman, Maddy Jennings, Eli Schmitt, Joanna Zhang • PHOTOGRAPHY John Fisher • STAFF PHOTOGRAPHERS Sarah Friedland, Annie Macdonald • SENIOR EDITORS Katie Jennings, Tarah Knaresboro, Erin Schikowski, Eli Schmitt, Dayna Tortorici, Alex Verdolini COVER ART Emily Martin Contact theindy@gmail.com for advertising information. // theindy.org The College Hill Independent receives support from Campus Progress/Center for American Progress. Campus Progress works to help young people — advocates, activists, journalists, artists — make their voices heard on issues that matter. Learn more at CampusProgress.org.

EPHEMERA:

p.9

Arts RUNAWAY PRINCE

by Ana Alvarez

THE ART OF BARTER

by Olivia Jen é Fagon

p.11 p.17

Sports CINDERELLAS ON THE COURT

by David Adler, Gillian Brassil, and Erik Font

p.13

Literary A SENSE OF WHERE YOU ARE

by Sam Alper, Erik Font, Taylor Anne Lane, and Micah Thanhauser

p.15

NEWS|2

APRIL 7 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

WEEK REVIEW

IN

by Belle Cushing, Mimi Dwyer, and Erica Schwiegershausen

FACEBOOK SQUASHES “THIRD PALESTINIAN INTIFADA” After receiving numerous complaints and appeals, including a request from the Anti-Defamation League—a U.S.-based Jewish advocacy group—and a letter to Mark Zuckerberg from Israeli Foreign Minister Yuli Edelstein, Facebook agreed to take down a page titled “Third Palestinian Intifada.” By the time the page was removed on March 29, it had been up for several weeks and had garnered over 350,000 followers. In addition to quotes and film clips advocating killing Jews and Israelis, the page called for Palestinians to take to the streets on May 15—Nabka Day, the date that Arabs mourn the establishment of Israel—and liberate Jerusalem and Palestine through violence.

Facebook said that despite the use of the word “intifada,” which translates to “holy war” and has been associated with violence in the past, the page began as a “peaceful protest.” It wasn’t until the page’s publicity grew that comments “deteriorated to direct calls for violence,” claims Facebook’s public policy communications manager Andrew Noyes. One such comment read, “Judgment Day will be brought upon us only once the Muslims have killed all of the Jews.”

Initially, Facebook seemed hesitant to remove the page, citing the company’s belief that people should be free to express their opinions, stating that though “some kinds of comments and content may be upsetting for someone… that alone is not a reason to remove the discussion.”

Such ethical dilemmas are not exclusive to Facebook; the page directed users to related content on Twitter, YouTube, and other websites. Facebook ultimately rationalized their decision to remove the page by citing existing content regulations that prohibit posting material that contains or promotes “hateful or violent content directed at an individual or group.”

Edelstein and the Anti-Defamation League have applauded Facebook’s decision to take down the page. But not everyone is so easily satisfied: American attorney Larry Klayman filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Facebook last Thursday in response to the page. Klayman, who describes himself as an American citizen of Jewish origin, alleges that Facebook did not take down the “Third Palestinian Intifada” page soon enough, and willfully kept it up in order to further their reviews and the net worth of the company. A Facebook spokesman told the French news agency AFP that these claims were “without merit,” and that the social-networking site plans to fight the suit vigorously. But of course, we all know by now: you don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies. –ES

CRACKED OUT First they stop serving peanuts, and then there’s a hole in the ceiling: the airline industry is having a tough time.

On April 1, a Southwest flight between Phoenix and Sacramento was forced to make an unexpected pit stop when a crack in the fuselage erupted into a five-foot hole. While 34,000 feet above Arizona, the Boeing 737 experienced a sudden drop in pressure; passengers fumbled with oxygen masks, wishing they hadn’t tuned out the pre-flight seatbelt spiel so quickly. All 118 passengers landed unharmed in Yuma, AZ, with the exception of one valiant flight attendant who sustained a bloody nose during the debacle.

Southwest cancelled about 300 flights on Friday, leaving passengers stranded in airports across the country. Engineers conducted inspections on 79 other 737s, turning up five more planes with small fuselage cracks.

When a flight costs only sixty bucks, it’s no wonder that these overworked planes aren’t getting the TLC they deserve.

It turns out, however, that Southwest’s aggressive cost-cutting program (RIP peanuts and personal TVs) may not be the only one to blame for the hole; the fault may actually lie with Boeing. On Tuesday, the company announced that many of its 737 planes would be susceptible to fatigue cracks sooner than expected. Originally, however, Boeing engineers boasted that the aircraft would not need to be inspected until they had completed 60,000 cycles (takeoffs and landings). Their guess was wrong: the tired 737 that split open on Friday had only completed about 40,000.

As per an emergency directive issued Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration is requiring inspections of all 737s over 30,000 cycles. But just because you and the plane you were on made it back from spring break all in one piece, don’t breathe easy yet. In the next twenty days allotted for inspections, it’s anyone’s guess how many more planes will turn up cracked. This is the third in a string of recent fatigue tears, following a similar incident with a Southwest jet in 2009, and another on an American Airlines 757 last October. After the first and second emergency landings, you’d think the FAA would have gotten the need for earlier and more thorough inspections. Third tear’s the charm? –BC

PILLS FOR POPULARITY ILLS This week, the drug world figured out what consumers really need: “Fluent in Klingon?” reads a billboard along a highway outside Charleston, “Consider REACHEMOL.” Another: “Before REACHEMOL, I was just a tool. Now, I’m the whole shed.” Apparently, Reachemol (popularitus maximol) is a drug intended to treat Deficient Popularity Disorder, a disease not listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s standard Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The drug fits nicely into the pantheon of semi-homonym fad drugs—“Aciphex” for heartburn, “Lunesta” for sleep, “Viagra” for youth and a powerful flow). Reachemol, for its part, is prescribed to “increase popularity, boost self-esteem, become more attractive to the opposite sex, win elections, sway juries, and weasel your way back into the will.” As Milton Carrero writes in the Leigh Valley Health Blog, “When I saw the next one asking if my friends on Facebook are my only friends, I almost cried.

‘Oh my God,’ I thought, ‘I’m a patient.’ ” The catch, as you’ve probably guessed, is that Reachemol isn’t real—and it isn’t a dark social commentary on overmedication, either. It’s a new nationwide billboard marketing campaign from Adams Outdoor intended to demonstrate the effectiveness of billboard advertising. You know, like the ones that read, YOU’RE READING THIS, AREN’T YOU? Of course, when the billboard is running next to countless nondescript lawfirm and casino ads, the point is probably moot. Plus, the people who are looking into Reachemol tend to be a little sensitive: as Carrero mourned after asking his doctor for the drug, “I was disappointed because I really want more friends who refuse to get Facebook accounts.” –MD

3 |NEWS ANALYSIS

APRIL 7 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

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s the Independent went to press, legislators on Capitol Hill were still struggling to agree on a budget for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2011. If Congressmen fail to do so by April 8, the government will shut down for the fifth time in US history—which, according to The Economist, would “be highly disruptive” given the current fragility of the economic recovery.

In negotiating a budget, legislators have been particularly torn over Title X, the only federal grant program devoted entirely to family planning and related preventative-health services like prenatal care, educational programs, contraceptive counseling, and cancer and STI screenings. In February, a Republicancontrolled House passed a budget that would have eliminated Title X completely and drastically reduced funding for dozens of other programs. The Senate rejected this bill in early March.

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NEWS ANALYSIS| 4

APRIL 7 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

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week, your correspondent joined physicians from across the country for Federal Advocacy Day, an event sponsored by the American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA) and Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health (PRCH). On March 31, approximately 60 physicians, nurses, medical students, and other participants visited dozens of Congressional offices to argue—not as lobbyists but as constituents—that cutting Title X would have devastating consequences for the poorest women and families nationwide.

ON THE GROUND Title X-funded services must be offered free of charge to those living at or below the poverty line; this, according to the Guttmacher Institute, describes two-thirds of all clients who receive care through Title X-funded providers. The National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA) reports that in 2009, Title X enabled providers to perform 2.2 million Pap tests, over 2.3 million breast exams, nearly six million STI screenings, and one million HIV tests.

By law, no Title X money may be used for abortions.

Early Thursday morning, Advocacy Day leaders emphasized the importance of medical professionals’ stories. Firsthand anecdotes, they explained, make “these experiences come alive for legislators and others who don’t get to see what [medical professionals] see” on the ground. Many participants had stories to share about patients who benefit from Title X and other publicly funded familyplanning programs.

Dr. Catherine McKegney B’76 told of a woman named Olivia who was from rural Minnesota and marginally unemployed. Olivia was unable to support the fourth child with which she was pregnant and would ultimately choose to have an abortion. She would then seek affordable contraception to prevent subsequent unintended pregnancies. Olivia wanted her fallopian tubes tied after giving birth to her second child, but her doctor maintained it could not be done without a husband’s signature. In reality, there was no such law, but it did prevent Olivia, who had no husband at the time, from having the procedure done. When McKegney placed her intrauterine device (IUD), which was covered by a state family-planning program designed for women who neither qualify for Medicaid nor have insurance, McKegney said Olivia “practically kissed [her] feet for putting that IUD in, she was so grateful.” The IUD would prevent Olivia from having further unintended pregnancies or abortions ever again.

Through contraceptive counseling

and services, publicly-funded family planning obviates a total of 800,000 abortions each year, according to the Guttmacher Institute. However, some who oppose Title X do so because providers may give an abortion referral upon the client’s request. This referral consists, according to National Abortion Federation, of “a name, address, telephone number, and other ‘relevant factual information,’ such as what insurance is accepted.” Although many organizations receive Title-X funding—the majority of which are state, county, and local health departments—Planned Parenthood has recently found itself at the center of the Title-X debate due to the fact that some Planned Parenthoods offer abortion services.

Even if a Congressman’s constituents are opposed to abortions—which, in any case, are not funded through Title X—the fact still remains: Title X saves money. In the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, researchers reported that for every dollar spent on Title X, taxpayers saved four.

Christina Nordstrand, a second-year medical student, told a vivid anecdote about the cost-saving benefits of Title X. Ana was one of Nordstrand’s first patients, a mother of four who had been addicted to heroin between ages twelve and sixteen. Due to the prenatal care she received at a Title X-funded clinic, Ana gave birth to two healthy children despite being addicted to heroin. Following two uncomplicated deliveries, neither child required a stay in the neonatal intensive-care, which costs $3,500 per day according to a recent article published in the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics. Nordstrand said Ana currently has four children and, though “healthy now, Ana is still far below the poverty line and continues to receive care at similar clinics.”

of positive influence.”

During Advocacy Day, Dr. Neelum Aggarwal, a Chicago-based neurologist specializing in Alzheimer’s Disease, explained to a Congressional aide that cutting funding for Title X—while better than eliminating it altogether—would be extremely damaging for the communities that rely on it. “With cuts,” Dr. Aggarwall said, “trust is lost. That’s extremely hard to rebuild and repair. People expect to come to these clinics and be able to get the care they need.”

When they can’t—when, for example, one clinic can no longer offer reducedcost STI screenings—a patient may forgo screenings and other preventative-care services for years at a time. Or if a cervical cancer test result is inconclusive, a doctor may not be able to repeat it due to lack of funding. Dr. Aggarwal said that “normally, when funding gets cut the biggest hit is in the hours that the clinic stays open, the hours that someone is handling the phone calls—and, if cuts are severe, it limits access to physicians. A clinic may have three to five physicians and with cuts it goes down to two physicians. This causes overload for everyone, long waits, and with long wait times, people leave.”

While visiting Alzheimer’s patients in their homes, Dr. Aggarwal meets women who care for loved ones with Alzheimer’s.

She said they quite often rely on Title Xfunded clinics for free cancer screenings, contraceptive services, and other preventative health-care measures. One of these women told Dr. Aggarwal, “I need to keep me strong so that I can take care of Mom. Mom can’t go in a nursing home; I promised I wouldn’t do that to her.”

Most physicians attending Advocacy Day agreed that entire families—not just women—benefit from Title X.

THE DEFICIT Still, there is no escaping the fact that many programs will need to be cut if Congress is to reduce the nation’s $1.3 trillion deficit. Last Thursday, the halls of Congressional office buildings were filled with various interest groups, from insurancecompany representatives to park advocates to religious groups to the AMWA/ PRCH physicians, all of them hoping to leave an impression on lawmakers.

According to the nonpartisan, nonprofit Congressional Management Foundation, in-person issue visits from constituents are most likely to influence an undecided legislator’s decision; constituents’ individualized letters and emails, phone calls, and comments during telephoned town-hall meetings are each at least ten percent less likely to have “a lot

POLITICS AS USUAL Unfortunately, some Representatives are firmly opposed to compromise. On Monday, The Hill reported a House aide as saying that the Republican leadership was “preparing for a shutdown. Instead of coming to the table to work with Democrats and the White House, who have offered $33 billion in cuts, Speaker Boehner is taking his marching orders from the Tea Party, who want to ‘cut it or shut it.’”

In digging their heels in, some Republicans have framed the elimination of Title X as being more than just a budget-reduction measure. In reference to health-care reform and Planned Parenthood, Roll Call recently reported Representative Jack Kingston (R-Ga) as saying, “There are some things that we have to be able to go back to our base and say we got a victory, not just a mathematical accomplishment.”

For politicians like Kingston, cutting Title X would seem to be as much about political leverage as reducing the deficit.

According to The Wall Street Journal, President Obama said that “there can be some negotiations about composition” of the budget cuts, but that he would not compromise on ideological matters like abortion at a time when the priority should be preventing a shutdown. The same article quotes Obama as saying, “We don’t have time for games, not on this.”

If the government shutdown of 19951996 can provide any political lesson, it’s that no party wins when a government shutdown occurs; the public loses faith in the government as a whole. Mark Hetherington argued in The American Political Science Review that voters’ declining political trust can actually contribute to future voter dissatisfaction by “creating an environment in which it is difficult for those in government to succeed.”

So much is at stake, both politically and in terms of affordable health care, but as it stands now, the future of Title X is unclear; it may be cut entirely, partially, or not at all. The best one can do at this point is hope that Americans living at or below the poverty line will still have access to contraceptive and reproductive-health services after April 8.

ERIN SCHIKOWSKI B’11.5 wonders whether the zoo will need volunteers during a shutdown.

percent (compared to 8.8 percent nationally)—sees sustained improvement, Elias expects the demand for lowincome residency and affordable housing services to rise.

“We go to bat for them, because we know how to speak the language,” Elias says of his job. During faceto-face meetings, he provides budget analysis and risk assessment, then puts together a re-modification package to send to mortgage companies, a blueprint to keep families in their homes. While the package may take just weeks to make, mortgage companies rarely respond for months, if at all, often allowing foreclosures to proceed. Without refinancing a mortgage, there are few options left for Rhode Islanders who face eviction.

Even the state’s emergency loan services are also beginning to dwindle in number and lose funding.

The hidden turmoil of housing in Rhode Island

F

rom March 31 to April 3, thousands of Southern New Englanders flocked to the annual Home Show sponsored by the Rhode Island Builders Association, a gathering of various segments of the housing industry— from lenders to lawn-care specialists, geothermal installers to septic designers—who set up shop in the massive second-floor hall of the Rhode Island Convention Center. The $10 admission gave convention-goers access to a maze of over 400 exhibitions pitching home products that ranged from mortgage loans to steam-powered mops, all part of a carnivalesque atmosphere.

If the Home Show is indicative of the health of Rhode Island’s housing industry, the spring of 2011 will be a cheery time for homeowners. Positivity emanated from exhibitors, who handed out free candy and showed renewed optimism in a resurgent housing market. Around every corner were deals and sweepstakes on anything remotely related to a home: low-priced window installations, roulette wheels with home insurance policies, jars of jelly-beans promising100 gallons of free oil for a correct guess. Most significantly, lenders, bankers, and realtors were enthusiastically catering to customers, with hope unfelt since the housing boom ended in 2005.

“It’s a buyer’s market,” Bruce Lane, the Head of Finance for William and Stuart Real Estate in Cranston, says, voicing the consensus opinion in the housing industry right now. “There is an unnatural combination of low interest rates and low prices,” which makes for opportune conditions for first-time buyers and investors alike.

“The damage of the bust has been done. From here on in, all the opportunities are for buyers, because reality has set in for sellers.”

Over the past year, he says that properties have been selling at 75 to 80 percent of their peak 2005 levels, and up to 40 percent down in some instances—that means buying a $270,000 property for only $180,000. But Lane’s assessment oversimplifies the current housing market in Rhode Island, where opportunities are not evenly distributed across income brackets. Lane acknowledges that the current market favors home buyers with income over $100,000, who can capitalize on depressed property values; meanwhile, multi-family housing units continue to be foreclosed upon in urban communities, especially Providence.

The Home Show is primarily a commercial housing extravaganza, but its superficial positivity glosses over the troubling state of affordable housing in Rhode Island.

Underneath the event’s brightly-colored balloon animals and promotional glass boxes filled with billowing money is the stark reality: a dreary present and volatile future for

by Malcolm Burnley Graphic by Eli Schmitt

low-income housing statewide.

OCEAN STATE HOUSING WOES Cranston’s William and Stuart Real Estate saw a 15 percent rise in sales from 2009 to 2010, part of a slew of encouraging figures recently released that cite an uptick in first-home buyers across the state. According to the Rhode Island Builders Association, building permits for single-family homes rose in 2010, up 6 percent from 2009—but still down 50 percent from 2005 levels. Yet even those slim signs of progress in the housing market have largely passed over low-income districts, where multi-family units have been hit hardest in the housing crisis.

Of the 1,213 foreclosures in Providence from January 2009 to December 2010, 816 were multi-family homes; statewide, they accounted for 58 percent of all foreclosures. In multi-family units, tenants can be paying continuous rent and then suddenly find themselves evicted because another tenant balked on monthly payments or an owner failed to pay the bank. Much of the state’s $5.6 billion lost to foreclosures, has been incurred by low-income residents living in multi-family units. Furthermore, when multi-family homes are boarded up, they become noticeable blights on neighborhoods—since they’re visibly larger than single-family homes—and negatively impact surrounding property values.

Census figures from 2000 to 2010 indicate the persistence of high foreclosure rates in low-income communities throughout the state, particularly in Central Falls, Providence, Pawtucket, and Woonsocket. In part of the Smith Hill neighborhood in Providence, about 20 percent of all homes are vacant. At the Home Show, this sobering reality is barely accounted for, except for the few booths manned by non-profits, such as Rhode Island Housing.

Rhode Island Housing is a 30 year-old organization that has become a leading provider of loans, grants, and counseling for Rhode Islanders distressed over mortgage payments, about to enter foreclosure, or currently involved in one. “There are a lot of hurting people,” Mike Elias, a Homeownership Assistance Specialist for the organization, says, without the unequivocal optimism of fellow exhibitors.

In the past three months, Elias has seen just about every type of person come in for counseling: professors, waitresses, top-level executives, and factory workers.

But most often, he sees couples and individuals suffering through unemployment or underemployment, falling deeper in the hole each month. Until Rhode Island’s stubborn unemployment rate—still hovering around 11

BUDGET CASUALTIES When a family spends in excess of 30 percent of income on housing costs, they become eligible for state money in affordable housing services. A staggering 46 percent of Rhode Island currently qualifies, making for an overburdened system. Building Homes Rhode Island, a $50 million state program that has constructed 1,000 affordable homes since 2006, will have exhausted its entire budget

by July 2011. In order to keep pace with affordable housing needs, it will need another infusion of funds, but no stimulus has been announced.

The state’s affordable housing crisis will be exacerbated in the coming months, as relief programs are threatened by state and federal budget cuts. Rhode Island has the worst foreclosure crisis in New England and one of the ten most depressed markets in the nation. Nonetheless, Governor Chafee is prepared to eliminate $1.5 million in state funding to the Neighborhood Opportunities Program, a state-run low-income housing initiative created in 2001. Rather than scrap the program, which has built 1,200 low-income housing units in 27 communities over ten years, Chafee has proposed transferring its budget to Rhode Island Housing.

If the General Assembly approves Chafee’s budget, Rhode Island Housing will have to cut $1.5 million from its own services to accommodate taking on Neighborhood Opportunities. Richard Godfrey, the executive director of Rhode Island Housing, spoke over the phone about the impact of losing $1.5 million for affordable housing: “Generally, we provide funding at about $40,000 per home,” he says, “which translates to 35-40 affordable homes that will not be built.”

At the federal level, House Republicans and Senate Democrats remain in deadlock over a budget compromise, but both parties seem to agree on drastic reductions to affordable housing. Republicans stand to cut $4.8 billion from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), and Senate Democrats essentially agree, proposing $4.7 billion in cuts. 34,000 Rhode Islanders failed to pay heat and electric bills last year; slashing federal aide for heating, Godfrey believes, will force cash-strapped families to rely on illegal space heaters, “which will create all kinds of fire hazards and violate health conditions.” The contested federal budget will also include significant cuts to Community Development Block Grants and the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, which Godfrey calls, “our primary tool” for renovation, used recently by Rhode Island Housing to revitalize neighborhoods in Olneyville.

About one in ten mortgaged homeowners in Rhode Island faces foreclosure or serious delinquency, a number that will inevitably climb once the budget battles are settled. Godfrey estimates that in two years there will be a 60 percent reduction in the number of affordable homes being constructed in Rhode Island, with major drop-offs in 2012 and 2013 as a result of state and federal budget cuts.

Rhode Island’s troubled housing market reflects the nationwide picture. Even as steady job growth and the rising stock market signal that we might finally be recovering from the recession, foreclosure rates are steady, and even increasing in some states. To help assist lowincome residents struggling with their mortgages, mass refinancing events have been held in convention centers from Orlando to L.A. The Rhode Island Convention Center was bustling last week at the Home Show, but there were few low-income homeowners in attendance. Even for those who did pay admission, there was little sweetness beyond the free candy, because the affordable housing crisis continues to swell in Rhode Island.

MALCOLM BURNLEY B’12 is thankful he’s got a roof over his head.

PROVIDENCE BITES:

APRIL 7 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

‘digestible’ news from around town FEWER KIDS—AND THEY’RE NOT ALRIGHT Despite a crippling recession that left Rhode Island with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, the population in Little Rhody actually went up in the last decade according to the 2010 census—but it only grew 0.4 percent, the weakest increase of all the states in the United States. (Michigan was the only state with a net population loss, driven by the decay of the American auto industry.)

But this week, the Providence Journal reported that while RI’s overall population rose, the number of children in the state shrunk by 10 percent. In some areas, like Newport, the decline was over 20 percent. Meanwhile, under-18s are a more diverse group than ever, racially and, especially, ethnically: the number of Hispanic children in the state grew 31 percent.

Anonymous ProJo commenters saw the data as cause for alarm and blamed it on the usual culprits: gays, unions, automated customer service lines that ask you to press 1 for English. Sociologists pointed to the economy as a factor in both: families with children to support may be more likely to leave the state to seek employment, and people may put off having children during tough economic times. Meanwhile, for many immigrants, Rhode Island is the land of economic opportunity, at least comparatively.

Despite the state’s economic strain, Rhode Island’s child poverty rate is still lower than that of most other states—unfortunately, that still means that one in six RI children lives in poverty. Almost 50 percent of those live in extreme poverty, defined by the government as a single-parent household with two children and an annual income of less than $8,643. Here’s hoping that recent upticks in national employment bode well for everyone.

–EB

THE SAINT COMES MARCHING IN—TO COURT On Thursday, March 24, after three postponements for medical reasons, 69-year-old Anthony “the Saint” St. Laurent—whose faulty bowels have earned him the sobriquet “Public Enema No. 1”—finally appeared in US District Court, pleading guilty to charges of murder-forhire in a conspiracy against his former associate, Robert DeLuca, 64. In exchange, the government agreed to dismiss St. Laurent’s extortion, dating back to 1988, of two Taunton, RI bookmakers—a crime for which his wife, Dorothy, and son, Anthony, Jr., were already serving time.

The rift between DeLuca and St. Laurent opened in 2001. That year, DeLuca, already in prison for shaking down local restaurateur Paulie Calenda (DeLuca threatened to blow him up in his car if he didn’t hand over his diner, the Fore ‘n’ Aft), appealed a prior gambling sentence, chalking his initial plea of “no contest” up to ignorance of the fact that his codefendant, St. Laurent, was a government informant.

In his plea agreement, St. Laurent admits to meeting his would-be gunman on April 12, 2006, and driving to the Sidebar restaurant in downtown Providence, where DeLuca’s attorney, former Cianci aide Artin Coloian, had set the paroled mobster up with a kitchen job. St. Laurent was arrested for extortion the following day. As the plea agreement states: “During the last six months of 2007, while incarcerated at the Federal Medical Center at Fort Devens, defendant solicited another inmate to find someone who would kill DeLuca. This inmate expressed concerns about the problems that could befall someone who killed a “made” member of the LCN [La Cosa Nostra]. Defendant indicated that he received permission [redacted]. Instead of offering financial compensation for DeLuca’s murder, defendant offered only to ‘propose’ the killer for membership in the LCN as reward for carrying out the murder.”

Also included in the plea agreement was the Saint’s confirmation that Luigi “Baby Shacks” Manocchio had served as the head of the New England branch of La Cosa Nostra. On January 19, the same day that St. Laurent initially filed his plea, Manocchio was arrested (along with 126 other alleged Mafiosi) in what Attorney General Eric Holder called the “largest mob bust in American history.” –JW

METRO|6

Anthony “the Saint” St. Laurent

Robert DeLuca

by Emma Berry & Jonah Wolf Illustrations by Andrew Seiden

7 |OPINIONS

APRIL 7 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

T

his Tuesday, students from ten mostly elite colleges and universities throughout the Midwest and northeast held protests against the latest farm bill, a massive piece of federal legislation passed every few years that funds a wide variety of food-related programs (from nutrition research to food stamps to farm subsidies) and sets food trade policies. Brown was among the universities involved; in a rally at Providence’s Burnside Park, concerned students and citizens objected to the subsidization of factory farms that drive out smaller, more sustainable farmers and make processed food artificially cheap.

Despite the wind and rain, there was a large turnout with good-natured call and response chants (“I don’t know but I’ve been told/ Grain subsidies are getting old”). Jonathan Leibovic B’12, one of the organizers of the Providence protest, described it as an effort to “call attention to this bill and its perversions, because it’s not a very well-known bill, even though it contains $288 billion worth of programs.” The timing of the protest coincides roughly with the beginning of hearings for public comment on the 2012 farm bill, and protesters are hoping that raising awareness and calling for more hearings will spur dramatic change. Leibovic added that despite limited reform in 2008, “agribusiness subsidies persist, and that’s why we’re protesting.”

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE FARM BILL The farm bill hasn’t always been this way. The modern farm bill—multiyear legislation supporting the price of crops and income of domestic farmers— came into being in 1965. It’s firmly rooted in Cold War concerns: its goal was to support a heroic, classically American way of life and make sure that our food supply would be produced domestically, keeping it safe from foreign threats. In the early years, that rhetoric largely lined up with what the policy really did. The 1970 farm bill capped payments to farmers on a percrop, per-farmer basis, and dictated that unsold surplus was to be collected and distributed by the government. In this original system, overproduction and factory-style, single-crop farms didn’t pay, but small farmers producing a variety of crops at the level they expected to sell experienced a new level of security. As more Americans left farms for salaried jobs, this guaranteed income was supposed to bolster the security of rural life, right at the time when American cities faced the tumult of civil rights struggles.

The 1970s saw a change in federal policymakers’ approach to farms.

Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, announced the new attitude in unambiguous terms, famously telling farmers to “get big or get out,” and advocating single-crop commodity farms over diverse farms appealing to local market demand. The transformation of the farm bill’s function— from protecting the classic American farm to supporting the modern factory farm—continued through the 1980s, following the transformation of American agriculture. In 1987, new rules were published specifying how the multiple financial entities that operate a farm should be counted as “persons” for payment purposes, indicating the American farm’s change from family enterprise to corporate operation.

In 1996, the Freedom to Farm Act, also known as the 1996 farm bill, instituted a system of direct payments intended to allow for a smooth transition away from the old system and into a free market future. The direct payments were to be a temporary measure that would continue to support agriculture without the market distortions of guaranteed prices. Neither the old system nor the ‘temporary’ program have truly come to a close. Today the ‘temporary’ payments alone send billions of dollars to factory farms.

WHAT YOU SAY ISN’T ALWAYS WHAT YOU GET Though the implications of the farm bill have changed drastically over the last 50 years, the rhetoric hasn’t. President George W. Bush, signing the 2002 farm bill, said: “American farm and ranch families embody some of the best values of our nation: hard work and risk-taking, love of the land and love of our country. Farming is the first industry of America — the industry that feeds us, the industry that clothes us, and the industry that increasingly provides more of our energy. The success of America’s farmers and ranchers is essential to the success of the American economy.” The farm bill has less than ever to do with the classic American farmer, but that farmer continues to be valorized in defense of agricultural subsidies. Bush’s celebration of the American farmer brings the classic figure into the 21st century by associating it with the hopes for a corn-fueled future. Indeed, the discussion of corn-based ethanol as an energy solution in the 2000s renewed the rhetoric tying farm subsidies and national security, as energy independence took up the place that food independence held in the Cold War. But just because the administration has changed parties doesn’t mean it

by Ben Tucker Illustration by Katherine Entis Graphic + Design by Eli Schmitt

CAN’T ‘EM DO THE FAR

STUDENTS PROTEST AGR

T KEEP OWN ON RM BILL

RI-BUSINESS LEGISLATION

APRIL 7 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

OPINIONS| 8

has changed talking points. Current Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack sounded a lot like Bush when he defended agricultural subsidies last month: “Those folks are good people, they populate rural communities and support good schools and serve important functions.... There’s a value system there.

Service is important for rural folks. Country is important, patriotism is important.” The only point he added to signal his party affiliation was highlighting rural poverty: “In terms of abject poverty and significant poverty, there’s a lot of it in rural America.” For Vilsack, these were all reasons not to touch farm subsidies.

There’s a certain irony to this logic, both in the way it combines common tropes of political rhetoric and in the policies it produces. Though the contemporary farmer appears to receive subsidies because we valorize him, by receiving them he comes to resemble the welfare recipient, despite the normally different treatment these two groups get in political rhetoric.

Some Democratic Representatives, such as Oregon’s Earl Blumenauer, have identified “the rather expensive support we provide to agriculture” as a place to cut the federal budget. However, the legislators defending agricultural subsidies, House Republicans on the Agriculture Committee, recently signed a letter to the chairman of the Budget Committee expressing their opposition to cuts to agricultural subsidies and advocating cuts to food stamp programs instead. The notion that the urban poor are victims of the market holds little ground with the Right, yet when it comes to rural folks, there seem to be billions of dollars available as protection from market fluctuations.

If the rhetoric of the farm bill accurately described the effects of the policy—that is, if the farm bill were really just funneling money to the classical American farmer—then swapping food stamps for farm subsidies would amount to little more than a preference for the rural poor over the urban poor. In fact, the rhetoric is more an ideological cover for the farm bill than an accurate description of it. From 2003 to 2005, the largest 1 percent of farms received 17 percent of the subsidy payments. In the last few decades, the farm bill has shown a preference not only for the rural over the urban, but also for the big over the small. Given the misleading rhetoric, this seems like a preference that today’s policymakers, savvier than Secretary Butz, don’t want to express publicly.

But bringing home the bacon is essentially what the public has come to expect from their Representatives, and that seems to be why the current system of agricultural subsidies has persisted so long. The 24 districts of the House Republicans on the Agriculture Committee receive over a billion dollars from the farm bill in direct payments alone, and they’d hate to see them go.

THE SILVER LINING Fortunately, as recent protests indicate, voters are watching, and they’ve noticed that the oratory and the policy don’t line up. For years, New York Times editorials have decried the inequitable and wasteful spending in the farm bill. Environmentalists and ‘real food’ advocates like Michael Pollan have pointed out the consequences for ecological and human health. The United Nations Development Program has noted that first-world agricultural subsidies cost third-world countries tens of billions of dollars. In taking up these criticisms and questioning the official face of the farm bill, protesters are transforming the issue of agricultural policy from an instance of special interests overcoming the public good to a moment of resurgent democratic self-assertion.

Rhode Islanders getting off the bus in Kennedy Plaza talked to the protesters and made phone calls to Debbie Stabenow, the chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, to ask for subsidy reform and more public hearings. The protesters’ goals seemed to be just as much about making the legislative process fairer and more open to the public as it was about bringing fairness to the legislation itself. Explaining what brings college students from around the country into their communities, Leibovic said: “These students feel empowered in the political process, and therefore are likely to raise their voices when they see injustice.” Regardless of whether the protest itself did more than fill up a congresswoman’s voicemail inbox, that feeling of empowerment pervaded downtown Providence.

BEN TUCKER B’13 didn’t think he could ever feel comfortable holding a sign with “stop big ag” painted on it, but here we are.

#MUSINGS new media travel journalism

Some house alarm systems have a speaking feature that is difficult to turn off. The mechanical chorus of “rear side door to the backyard porch open” is perfect for parents trying to bust their stoner children. Nestled in the woods outside of Washington D.C., this voice made us hyper-aware of whenever a house’s innards were exposed. It didn’t even have a Garmin British accent but it made us feel abusive whenever we left or entered. For bodies to function we need our skin to stay sealed at all times. It’s easy to deride security systems for being dehumanizing but voices can help us anthropomorphize them.

What if the voice was saying something like “Close my window, I’m bleeding!”

As we later learned, “Don’t go to that Mexican restaurant in Galax because all the waitresses are women.”

The curtains in McLean Family Restaurant are plaid; there is full bar in the back corner of the restaurant, where no one will see it. The clients are old. They suck oxygen from wrinkly nostrils. Scrub-clad nurses wheel them to the register; they bring their checks to where the cashier sits—usually a teen girl, but no one today. Decrepit Cliff pays his check in exact change to the penny. He used to ask me to open my mouth when I sat at the register. When I complained to waitress Mean Deena, she called Cliff over and he said you got a problem with me? I am ninety-three years old! Off the register stand, Cliff doesn’t look at me twice. Senile libidos need an identifying pedestal.

ARTS| 4

JANUARY 7 2012 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

Near the Mason-Dixon line, pride for the south is fleeting, noticeable only in the occasional Confederate flag on a pickup.

Battlefields mark themselves on familiar Park Service plaques: FIRST CONTACT. LEE’S RETREAT. SPOTYSYLVANIA BATTLEFIELD. STONEWALL JACKSON SHRINE. What stays in a place where things already happened? The houses are new and modest with fake palm trees but the churches are old and lit up like flags in the night. A store marquee with removable letters: “Candles, cigarettes, tanning.”

Fiddler’s Roost in Galax, Virginia did not have a security system or locks on its doors.

This was a place of loving and places of loving have got to be open in every sense of the word. As we were told upon arrival, “We had to kick the kids out because people like to walk around naked.” The cabin was porous and skin-like, more welcoming to flesh than flesh itself. It was at the end of a dirt road. We noticed small cat statues on top of all the doors.

The guest book had an exquisite drawing of a man dressed in an owl suit holding a flag.

There was a couples hot tub on the porch.

Massacre!

To balance the clarity and mistiness of the early spring Blue Ridge Parkway, a city kid gets dark. Pass a biker and pretend to hit him, turn the music up, hostile takeover in the woods. The men in the vehicle have selected us for the quality of our wombs. No gas stations for sixty-three miles and a quarter tank. Coo at a squirrel then hit one shortly after. The thud is small and gratifying.

What’s up, UVA? Labels, marriage, secret societies and colonial buildings. History and (a copy of) the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson built all this shit, you know. If you lie upside down on the steps, the colonnade looks like a reflection of the sky over a river because it is so symmetrical and also you are six Sam Adamses in. Nice work, Jefferson. Everybody smiles on this weird campus. The coolest students are selected by popular vote to live on the green next to the coolest Professors. Everybody wants in.

Once, they said, Winston-Salem was the biggest city in the east after New York. Now, there’s a smooth jazz station three towns over and the pastime is to answer its trivia questions, or at least get a shout out. Does a nub mean your woman might not be all woman? The Wachovia Building is modeled after the Moravian Star. The company moved to Charlotte ten years ago.

Things are in there now but what do they know about Moravia? Therocking-chair porches down the city streets are all painted white. No one smokes the cigarettes you’d think they would.

What should we really be scared of?

Machines? Ghosts of secret affairs and marriages before children, after children? Drugs? Megalopolises/megalopoleis/ megalopoli? That big rave in Charleston? Probably all of the above. The world is a scary place. Never go outside.

By “Meme” Dwyer and Anni“qua” Finne Graphics and design by Annika Finne

11 |ARTS

APRIL 7 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

RICHARD PRINCEand the

ETHICS

of

APPROPRIATING

art

by Ana Alvarez Graphics + Design

by Eli Schmitt

T

he Post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin once said, “Art is either plagiarism or revolution.” But after a landmark decision by the United States Southern District of New York last month, it seems that Richard Prince might have brought a revolution to the art of plagiarism. Judge Deborah Batts ordered Prince—one of the most successful appropriation artists of the contemporary art world—and the Gagosian Gallery, which represents him, to destroy over $10 million worth of Prince’s work as part of her ruling in favor of French photographer Patrick Cariou. Cariou called foul on Prince’s well-know appropriation technique after Prince used several of his photographs for new pieces, garnering Prince and the Gagosian millions while leaving Cariou empty-handed.

This copyright conflict stretches back to the 1990s, when Prince was gaining notoriety as the-next-big-thing among a host of other appropriation artists like Barbara Krueger and Sherry Levine. While Prince was selling prints of “appropriated” Marlboro cowboy ads for millions, Cariou spent most of the 1990s in Jamaica living with Rastafarians. Once he returned from Jamaica in 2000, Cariou published Yes Rasta, a photography book that featured portraits of young Rastafarian men. In 2008, Prince found Cariou’s images from Yes Rasta and decided to use 35 of them as “raw material” for a piece entitled Canal Zone. He later expanded Canal Zone into a series of 29 paintings, of which 28 contained Cariou’s work in some form. Although the paintings from Canal Zone rely almost entirely on Cariou’s material, Prince altered—i.e. collaged, enlarged, cropped, or painted over—most, though not all, of the images.

The Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea later showed 22 of Prince’s paintings, of which eight were sold for over $10 million.

At the time, the owner of Manhattan’s Clic gallery, Christiane Celle, was planning to display Cariou’s Rastafarian photos. But once Celle became aware of Prince’s show at the Gagosian, she refused to feature Cariou’s photographs because she did not want to exhibit work that had been “done already.” After failed negotiations, Cariou sued both Prince and the Gagosian Gallery for copyright infringement and demanded that all of Prince’s paintings be destroyed if he was found guilty.

THE CLOSEST THING TO THE REAL THING One of the most intriguing aspects of the case against Prince is that it has taken this long for a lawsuit to occur. Appropriating images for new artworks has been a staple technique of 20th-century art. The examples of appropriation in modern and contemporary art abound: Picasso appropriated everyday objects like newspaper clippings into canvas paintings, and Dadaist artist Marcel Duchamp’s “readymade” piece L.H.O.O.Q appropriated DaVinci’s Mona Lisa. Appropriation artist Barbara Krueger, Prince’s contemporary, appropriated images from advertisements and juxtaposed them with text, raising questions about feminism and consumerism. Sherry Levine, another artist from the time, even appropriated sculpture in her 1991 bronze-cast Fountain, which was modeled after Duchamp’s infamous urinal.

The term “appropriation art” and its tie to re-photographing photographs didn’t

APRIL 7 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

ARTS| 12

AN IMAGE BY CARIOU AND ITS USE BY PRINCE arise until the 1980s, when photographers, influenced by postmodernism, began photographing previously produced images. In doing so, these photographers attempt to challenge, or “deconstruct,” modernist artistic traditions that envision the artist as a sole genius, elevated above the rest of us. Instead, appropriation artists claim that all the visual resources of our world have already been exhausted. As art historian and critic Douglas Crimp explains, the work of these appropriation artists challenge “photography’s claims to originality, showing those claims for the fiction that they are, showing photography to be always a representation, always-alreadyseen.”

Still, even though they base their work on previously taken photographs, appropriation must go beyond simple re-photographing. Appropriation art questions “the truth function” of photography and draws attention to power relations and consumer tendencies that saturate the images that constantly surround us. In Prince’s most celebrated appropriation series, The Cowboys, he re-photographed Marlboro advertisements depicting cowboys. Prince eliminated the advertisement text from images and cropped them to solely feature the cowboy, “The Marlboro Man.” His final product is a “new” photograph which depicts the cowboys outside the context of the Marlboro ad. In doing this, Prince questions the reality of this hyper-macho character, and overall, the reality of advertisement images. As Prince explains, “By generating what appears to be a double, it might be possible to represent what the original photograph imagined. The result is a photograph that’s the closest thing to the real thing. […] I find the best way to make it real is to make it again.”

In the contemporary art world, appropriation artists have garnered both financial success and critical skepticism. One of Prince’s re-photographed Malboro ad pieces became the first appropriation artwork to raise over a million dollars in auction. Yet many contemporary artists question the validity of appropriation photographers like Prince, who gain millions off of work that essentially isn’t theirs. Cariou’s own opinion of Prince’s work sums up many artists’ concerns about appropriation photography: “If it’s to steal photographs or paintings to create something, you shouldn’t be an artist in the first place. To me Richard Prince is more of an art director than an artist. I think he’s a good art director, and a great thief.”

THE NATURE OF TRANSFORMATION Clearly, appropriation and copyright lawsuits are nothing new to the art world. Fellow appropriation artist Jeff Koons also got sued for copyright case infringement in 2006 after he appropriated a magazine image of a woman wearing Gucci sandals.

The image was stripped from its context and used along other images of woman’s legs in a collage entitled Niagara. Unlike Prince, however, Koons won his case. Another well-known copyright case involved street artist Shepard Fairey, who appropriated an Associated Press image of President Obama for his iconic HOPE poster campaign during the 2008 elections. Like Prince, Fairey declared “fair use” of the AP’s photo. But after admitting to destroying evidence of the act of appropriation, he reached a settlement with AP. What distinguishes Prince’s case from these other examples is Judge Batts’s legal basis for Prince’s defeat. The first question addressed in the case was whether Cariou held proper copyright of the Rastafarian images. Although Prince’s defense claimed that Cariou’s photographs were not “creative works” eligible for copyright status, the court upheld Cariou’s sole copyright of Yes Rasta. However, even with a copyright, Prince claimed he was still entitled to fair use of Cariou’s material.

The application of fair use onto Prince’s work, and perhaps onto all of appropriation photography, became the defining question of the case. Under the legal clause, copyrighted material can be used fairly only if the purpose of the new work is in some way “transformative.” In order to be considered transformative, a new work must alter or comment on the meaning or character of the previous work. Derivative works, or works which merely adapt copyrighted material without added commentary, are not considered transformative. As Judge Batts stated in her ruling: “If an infringement of copyrightable expression could be justified as fair use solely on the basis of the infringer’s claim to a higher or different artistic use... there would

be no practicable boundary to the fair use defense.” Judge Batts referenced Section 107 of the 1976 Copyright Act which defines fair use as only for “for purposes such as criticism [and] comment.” She concludes that unless the intent of a new piece is to comment on the previous work, even if the new work is intended to be creative and new, it is not transformative.

Yet Prince testified that for Canal Zone he had no particular interest in the photographs he appropriated. On the contrary, Prince testified that his work “doesn’t really have a message.” Instead, with Canal Zone, Prince intended to pay homage to artists Willem DeKooning and Paul Cezanne and allude to a post-apocalyptic script he is writing which features a reggae band. In other words, it was never related to Cariou or his work. To Prince, deciding to appropriate an image is “just a question of whether [he] like[s] the image.” When pushed to testify on the intended meaning of one of Cariou’s appropriated photos depicting a young Rastafarian, to which Prince added a cut out of a guitar, Prince responded, “[H]e’s playing the guitar now, it looks like he’s playing the guitar, it looks as if he’s always played the guitar, that’s what my message was.”

The other factors for constituting fair use also worked against Prince. One factor considers the portion of copyrighted work used, which in Prince’s case was substantial. Another factor considers the effect fair use had on the copyrighted work’s potential market. As was shown with Cariou’s cancelled exhibit at Calle’s gallery, Prince’s paintings “usurped” the market for Cariou’s images. On top of denying Prince fair use, Judge Batts also ruled that Prince and Gagosian Gallery acted in bad faith because neither sought permission from Cariou before using or displaying his images even though they knew he held copyright. Consequently, the judge complied with Cariou’s request that all of Prince’s paintings using any of Cariou’s photographs must be handed over to Cariou. It is up to Cariou to decide what to do with Prince’s work; in an interview he said he hoped to raise money from the pieces to donate back to Jamaica, although it is still illegal to sell the work. Prince has not announced whether he will appeal the judge’s decision.

THE FUTURE OF APPROPRIATION Regardless of the effects this case will have on Prince and Cariou, its most important impact will likely be how it affects other appropriation artists—who, in light of this new legal precedent, will have to be more conscientious of their intent when they appropriate others’ images. Judge Batts’s definition of “fair use” in this case might be too restrictive and discourage future artistic work.

Still, in Prince’s specific case, perhaps this ruling was called for. Prince’s earlier appropriation work engaged with the content he was appropriating, namely images from advertisement. But with Canal Zone, it seems like Prince has become too comfortable with his appropriation technique, to the point that, as he testified, he takes images without any consideration. Ultimately, this lack of consideration only weakens Prince’s work. When looking at Cariou’s photographs and Prince’s appropriations side by side, one can’t help but wish Prince hadn’t ever reworked the beauty of Cariou’s images. His work doesn’t render the depictions of Rastas any truer than Cariou’s; instead, it simply degrades what were originally striking images.

What’s even more troubling is Prince’s sense of entitlement over Cariou’s work, which seems to stem partly from Prince’s art-world status. Since he is a well-known, wealthy artist, Prince apparently feels little responsibility for the work of an obscure photographer, or the need to ask for permission. “I was in the room when Prince and Gagosian were deposed and they have an overwhelming sense of power,” Cariou said. “They think that they’re untouchable. Prince got away with it for 20 years.”

Perhaps this ruling will improve appropriation art by requiring artists, and the galleries that support them, to include a critical approach when borrowing work. Cariou himself hopes the ruling might ultimately “bring some sanity into the appropriation world.”

ANA ALVAREZ B’13 is the closest thing to the real thing.

13 |SPORTS

APRIL 7 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

Jesus Christ

CINDERELLAS ON THE COURT

Although the son of God, Christ Almigh mother. The road to prophecy was not endured numerous challenges and bou early age, he was betrayed by his best f got lost from his parents in Jerusalem. L into a showdown with the devil that las desert. But Christ persevered before m hands of the Roman Empire. Still, even for this great underdog—he was resurr days! Jesus stands on the list of the Ind because although he is one of the worl messianic figures, his teachings of love remain afterthoughts in this world of m shout out to Moses and Muhammed. --

Why underdogs in the NCAA aren’t actually overco No one roots for Goliath, and the sports world is no exception. Underdog stories are perennial headline grabbers, from the 1980 Olympic hockey team to one-legged NCAA champion wrestler Anthony Robles. This year’s March Madness tournament featured one such underdog: Virginia Commonwealth University. Sports pundits heralded VCU’s trip to the final four as the most remarkable one to date, overcoming 820-to-1 odds. The hype for the team was enormous; profiles on the players, the coach, and even on the university itself exploded in media outlets across the nation.

The day after their shocking victory over Kansas University in the Elite Eight, the number one Google search was “Virginia Commonwealth University”; at number two was “VCU.” According to the Washington Post, VCU was mentioned 3,200 times in the media in the same time span it usually gets just 300 mentions; over 11 million people visited the university website. But this publicity is not necessarily warranted—both the validity of the statistics and quality of VCU’s journey are questionable. In reality, there’s a reason why March Madness churns out so many Cinderellas: the underdog storyline is built into the NCAA system.

SELECTION SUNDAY The Cinderella stories of the NCAA tournament grow largely out of the selection process that determines which teams qualify. 68 teams enter the tournament; 30 of these teams automatically qualify by winning their conference tournament and the Ivy League regular-season champion also automatically qualifies (there is no tournament), leaving 37 others to be selected by a committee. The selection committee consists of ten members—eight of them athletic directors, two conference commissioners—from uni-

versities across the nation. These committee members are supposed to represent every national conference, giving all teams a fair chance to enter the tournament. In order to avoid conflicts of interest, members leave the room when their university is in question.

The criteria with which the members are chosen remain shrouded in mystery: some claim that choices are based a statistic called RPI, ratings percentage index, which basically assesses the quality of a team’s record based on their opponents and their opponent’s opponents; others believe the choices are based on stats like how much a team scores in a given game.

Nevertheless, the conclusions of the committee remain entirely subjective, and every year the committee finds itself justifying its selections to the general public to quell protests. Of course, of the 37 teams selected, most are not surprises: nationally ranked top 25 teams almost always qualify.

However, there are always teams that are “on the bubble”—teams that aren’t sure about their chances to make the cut. These teams often face the verdict only when the official lineup is announced on television on “Selection Sunday.”

In the end, teams that should make it don’t, and others are shocked to discover their entry. The Missouri Valley Conference is renowned for being ignored by the NCAA tournament, with many quality teams high in the national rankings failing to make it.

For nearly a decade, Missouri State has not been selected despite ranking well within the top 37 teams in the nation. In 2004, Utah State did not enter the tournament despite its 25-2 record for the season. In these surprising instances, both the method behind qualification and the motives of the committee have proven to be unreliable.

In their attempt to add the underdog ingredient, the committee shies away from recognizing that some conferences are simply better than others. It is undoubtedly more entertaining, and an inspiration to smaller universities with lesser athletic programs, to have the tournament structured to allow teams from all these conferences to qualify automatically.

However, if the aim is truly to put the best talent on the center stage, there is a clear structural flaw—the Ivy League gets a free in? But the surprising outcome of “Selection Sunday” should not necessarily come as a surprise: it’s not clear whether it is, in fact, in the best interest of the tournament to allow teams like Utah or Missouri—who should technically qualify—to play.

It makes good sense to ignore some of the more qualified teams in favor of lesser-known underdogs that are “on the bubble.” First, it makes the pretournament hype much more exciting, introducing an element of anticipation that has led to the development of an entire field of sports analysis.

“Bracketology,” in which sports analysts make educated predictions about the findings of the selection committee., results in hours of television, radio, and Internet coverage of the tournament even before it gets underway. Second, in addition to increased exposure, the selection committee’s more interesting choices are a win-win of sorts for the NCAA. If these underdog teams are eliminated in the early rounds of the tournament, then the homemade brackets of fans and pundits alike are enhanced, as most bracket-makers opt for the likely winner. Thus, potential viewers are compelled by the success of their brackets— interpreted as March Madness clairvoyance—to continue to watch the tournament, thus benefitting the NCAA. On the other hand, if the underdog pulls off an upset, then the NCAA gets to bask in the pub-

underdogs through history Sidney Prescott

(Neve Campbell) in Scream, Scream 2 and Scream 3.

Neve was already in a bad mood when she went to high school one day and found out her best friend Drew Barrymore had been killed. The killer, a masked ghoul with a nasty knife and a nastier tongue, was still on the loose. Alone at home, Neve receives an eerie phone call before being ruthlessly attacked by the ghostface killer and barely escaping with her life. Soon, the bodies of her friends—including the seemingly immortal Henry Winkler, aka the Fonz—turn up everywhere. In the end (SPOILER ALERT) Neve discovers that the killer is actually two people, weirdo Matthew Lilard and hottie Skeet Ulrich, whom she just lost her virginity to.

With a lil’ luck and a lotta gut, Neve smashes a TV on one murderer and shoots her (now ex-) boyfriend in the head. As if high school hadn’t been hard enough, a year later Neve would have to battle more psychotic killers in college during Scream 2. Four years later, more killers would return in Scream 3. Only time will tell if she survives Scream 4, set for release April 11, 2011. You go, Neve. --EF

Toon Squad in Space Jam

When his extraterrestrial theme park “Moron Mountain” starts hitting the pits, the evil Mister Swackhammer (voiced by Danny DeVito) sends his minions, the Nerdlucks, to Toon Town, hoping to capture the hilarious animal characters for a new attraction. In a battle for their freedom, the Looney Tunes challenge the puny Nerdluck minions to a classic game of B-Ball. However, Bugs and the crew were unaware of their alien powers and the Nerdlucks traveled to earth to steal the powers of some of Basketball’s greatest talents, transforming them into the infamous, all-powerful Monstars. Fortunately, Bugs comes up with a plan to summon the game’s greatest and recently-retired player: Michael Jordan. As the game begins, the Monstars play brutally, sending half the Toon squad to the bench with devastating injuries. After a prep talk for the ages, Jordan, Bill Murray and the Toon Squad lead a furious comeback. In perhaps the most epic game of all time, the Looney Tunes’ freedom comes down to the final posession. Down by one, the ball comes to Jordan’s hands. But as he goes to dunk, all five Monstars hold him down. It seems like he’ll never make it to the basket. Using his recently acquired Looney Tunes powers, Jordan extends his arm from half court to the basket and dunks, winning the Looney Tunes their freedom and restoring happiness to Earth. If only. --EF

Erin Broc

When she w becoming a Pacific Coas without an court for al town of Hin on top? Bio every good Now, w group calle own websi provides a p each one u a header th blonde hair she remind

SPORTS| 14

APRIL 7 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

Ma-Ti from Captain Planet

hty was born to a single an easy one, and Christ uts of self doubt. At an friend Peter and once Later on in life, he got sted for forty days in the meeting his fate at the death was no match rected after only three dy’s greatest underdogs ld’s most famous and respect often money and war. Holy -EF

Captain Planet was the childhood hero of a generation, saving the environment one episode at a time. With a turquoise mullet and largely undefined powers—able to fly, telecommunicate, manipulate the weather, and shape-shift depending on the challenge at hand—he remains the illest hero to date and also the most pertinent.

His team was composed of five members from five different nations: Kwame from Africa, Wheeler from Brooklyn, Linka from the USSR, Gi from Southeast Asia, and Ma-Ti from the Amazon rainforest.

But while all the other Planeteers of the show got totally badass powers—Earth, Fire, Wind, and Water—Ma-Ti, raised by a Kayapo Indian shaman, was cruelly shortchanged with the power of Heart, to instill empathy into others to care about the planet. As powerful as compassion can be, no way Ma-Ti stood a chance against all those evil corporate foes. In the end, though, Ma-Ti was the true Cinderella—he had his own monkey sidekick, Suchi: by far the best character on the show. --DA

oming odds

by David Adler

licity surrounding their Cinderella, and again, major boosts in media coverage and viewership ensue.

STATISTICAL LIMITATIONS The success of these underdogs through the years highlights the problematic structure of the tournament itself, allowing good teams to slip through the cracks. The defining element of the NCAA tournament is that every game matters: win and move on, lose and go home. In each game, teams are fighting for their life and for the one chance they may ever have in their short college careers to claim basketball glory. But the effect of this one-and-done tournament style is that the good teams fall prey to the underdogs far more easily than they would in a 7-game series, like those in professional basketball. Trivialities like the team’s dinner or the quality of their sleep become determining factors that could decide whether a team will imprint itself onto the historical memory of the NCAA tournament—which, for the majority of the players on these teams that never go pro, will be the most famous they will ever get.

Virginia Commonwealth had only to play five games to reach the Final Four—and while their chances were very slim, the reality is that the insane 820-to-1 odds cited by sports analysts fail to display the heightened capacity for flukes particular to the NCAA tournament. While that statistic has been thrown around a lot in the past week, its origin is largely a mystery. It is the compilation of various factors—wins and losses from the regular season, injury status of players, point-difference in games won and lost, efficiency ratings—all of which neglect the intangible factors that dominate the tournament. In March Madness, the victor is not always the one with the best mathematical probability of winning—much more so than in other tournament styles. It is often

ckovich

Illustration by Becca Levinson

the result of momentum, passion, and emotion. For example, consider the matchup between a team that casually demolishes its opponent by 20 points on its way to the next round, and a team that had to battle and push themselves to the last second in an exciting matchup in its previous game. Though the former’s domination would add up statistically to portray them as the likely winner, the momentum carried through from the emotional performance of the latter is a major factor to drive them in the next game.

When it comes to the NCAA, such stats are reductive, though they are ironically the information most treated as gospel—the computer models that produce them are so complex that few sports analysts can actually understand what 820-to-1 actually means. It becomes a digestible sound bite that can make pundits seem particularly erudite, and in the process, make VCU look like a miraculous Cinderella rather than a fortunate opportunist.

Though the NCAA tournament tale of Virginia Commonwealth University ended last Saturday, unable to break down the stalwart Butler defense, the spotlight remains. Coach Shaka Smith will face a barrage of offers from more prestigious athletic programs; players like Jamie Skeen and Joey Rodriguez who emerged as stars for VCU may even have NBA prospects. All the while, the NCAA gets a nice slice of the merchandise pie as the university sells out of all its Final Four shirts, mugs, and hats.

For most of us—drinking a beer, watching the game—VCU is the paradigm of NCAA entertainment. The world of big-shot college basketball programs is replete with corruption and rule violations, pampering athletes like poodles with plenty of under-the-table cash tossed toward recruits. From the Fab Five at Michigan University—a group of freshmen

by David Adler, Gillian Brassil, and Erik Font

was a Kmart employee, she had big dreams of a beauty pageant queen. When she was named Miss st, she had bigger dreams of saving the world. And ny legal training, she took Pacific Gas and Electric to ll they were worth, earning defendants of the California nkley $333 million for the PG&E’s malpractice. Cherry opic starring Julia Roberts as Brockovich. We think d underdog story should end with Julia Roberts. with her J.D., she runs her own consumer advocacy ed Brockovich Research & Consulting and has her very ite. A self-proclaimed “modern-day ‘David’”, Brockovich page on her website entitled “Whistleblower,” where us can report a complaint for her to investigate. With hat features a glowing Brockovich portrait, her silky r tousled and her blue eyes gazing off into the distance, ds us that anything is possible with a good jaw line. --DA

Rosa Parks

Straight out of Tuskegee, Rosa Parks was a tiny woman with a huge appetite for justice. She became active in the civil rights movement at the age of 30, and was the only female member of Montgomery’s NAACP chapter.

And, of course, there was her glorious bucking of the system on a city bus in 1955, the ultimate underdog story: when asked by a white man to give up her seat in the all-colored section, she flat-out refused. Parks landed herself in jail for a night and was fired from her job as a seamstress, but her act of civil disobedience set a city bus boycott in motion and set the national civil rights movement on fire. We salute Parks for fighting for the right to sit wherever she damn well pleased.

--GB

Design by Joanna Zhang

phenoms later discovered to have received massive amounts of money from the university—to Chicago Bulls star Derrick Rose, who reportedly had someone else take the SATs on his behalf, the Goliaths of the NCAA deserve to get punched in the face by an unlikely candidate.

But even though we cherish the underdog storyline, the fact is that lesser teams ultimately enhance the chances of the major universities. The consistent success of underdogs in the tournament belies the fact that they are really a gift to the teams that face them later on—evidenced by the fact that almost every famous Cinderella of March Madness never actually won the title. The more effective ‘fuck you’ would be to put the best talent on the court and force the inflated egos of these college stars to throw down. Otherwise, there is really no incentive for mediocre teams to strive for greatness. As NCAAspurned Missouri State coach Cuonzo Martin asks, “What’s the point of having a regular season if it comes down to this?” The NCAA must clarify for whom exactly the tournament is played—the viewers who love the underdog, the teams that often suffer because of the underdog, or the organization itself that gets rich from them.

DAVID ADLER B’14 knows a dream is a wish your heart makes.

APRIL 7 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

15 |LITERARY

Pampa

by Taylor Anne Lane

1.

There is nothing other than the pyramid of tires that seeks amnesty from the flatbed-truck-baggers lurching by, outside city limits.

The diaspora the carpetbags smooth out their disparate fantasies every morning— and the pyramid owns its own frost the herds their soluble graze the fringe their flatbed sack dreams but not yet the pick-up.

The diaspora are in the clammy grips of morning when the eddies of the clockhands swell with the kickings of the day hours.

The other misses— spit spat toddling engine swine gruff daddies laid out on the cradle metal huffy snouts and muted eyeballs astray in the landscape’s mirror that smothers noise— like their moustachery ruffled by the sweet strums of the wind.

Case in point that linearity breeds on flatlands leaving bastards due for a tune-up lube job— the sign reads Pampa but the diaspora aren’t there yet.

2.

The High School lawn the fabric scenery on the eve of everyday —just like that ol’ state road!— where the chummy chums thick faced compadres chugged spat kicked across the avenue sweet leather milk arms by the denim wash —or the light-up reindeers near the porch!— but you’re there you’re there like yesterday it’s Tuesday & like Monday you were there like the ashtray cupid ashes of a fallen last week

SCRIGDIG

you were sipping through the straw in your sordid dungarees you had fertilized your lawn like Friday had put change into the jar for a car wash.

tracks run like roads goading every dog & the casts of angels

Without the piano bench nothing goes for harmony without the window onlook to Hobart Ave it’s the sheet music that warms the seat the metronome whose reverb rights the whole passersby into pace.

It’s all for the handwriting in music theory from two generations ago under the seat that with geometry they’re yours too.

It’s where the diaspora are so it’s where you are.

You are there. There are snapshots of you there.

These are your sweaty palms in Pampa, your bedside table & your beauty shop in Pampa.

—cotton fields for the outskirts for the first time!— and the inskirts is you making ginger snaps & struggling with god.

She is touching the English Grammar edition 1854.

No one sees her thin wispy hair onset at the bookshelf the collections from Lorena she rubs their oil before lunchtime & her face greasy & bittersweet.

Her robe is silky Her trees fall apples Her hands are abrupt but lotioned Her Sundays are the same but the others are different She grips the wrists of her grandchildren tightly & slaps their backs hard in love.

Alleyways like derby

by Sam Alper

Remember when that orange soda bottle exploded in your hand?

You weren’t clutching it hard or anything.

One time you asked me why I don’t write proper poetry.

We were at one of the tops of the world, up the Santa Monica hills off Barrington, looking out over the scriggly diggly lights of LA. I asked what you meant, took a hit first, So it would come out on a cough and sound casual.

You don’t write poems, you said, you use no poetic language, you say ‘scriggly diggly,’ you don’t try very hard.

You didn’t sound very casual and I got a tear in my eye because I guess you’d hit a nerve.

The lights got more blurry and squiggly.

I was feeling the hit I was feeling scriggly diggly what’s wrong with that, I said.

Would you rather I told you that the warm wind tonight blew as if from the mouth of A sleepy lion?

That we are cradled in the dusty soil thinking about Rome?

Would you rather I talk more about Rome?

Because I can do that, I said, I can do the Rome thing.

My head was light I wasn’t breathing.

You were staring through me like you were waiting for a street light to change.

You don’t get it.

No I don’t, I said.

I try to but, when I try to reach out and grab it everything gets all diggly.

You said you poor thing, all casual.

That may have been the first night we kissed I don’t remember the rest is all, um, you know.

3.

Pampa is the second largest township in the Panhandle of Texas.

Like the ambivalent wasp in your neck it is there snap snip zipping throughout your neck & this is like Pampa that pinch of the heartstrings ever so squarely but a jagged pinch nonetheless.

A SENSE

LITERARY| 16

APRIL 7 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

America: 12/17/10 - 1/25/11

by Micah Thanhauser

Mencius Confucius, Caddie, Caddie Inbox alarm clock days ticking Bonetired getting into car a Pale cold creature.

Get lost on the way out of Providence Lose self, sleep till New York Traffic jams and stop lights blaring So long cold Brooklyn, Roaring into the soft Virginia night.

Cheese water pumpernickel bread Smokey mountain sunset A great shit in Georgia Into Texas, Kentucky Whiskey and a ripe loaded grapefruit tree, The bayou sky glowing red With the imagined fire at the end of the road.

The Mississippi river Big bowls of tamales Sunflower husks cracked and spit Into an empty box of fiber cereal, Racing shaking into the full moon Breathing and sighing Setting tents with rocks whipping In the wind, the chatter of bones and cascading pebbles.

Dive into caverns Spiked icicles growing and clinging With all the chaos and energy of life, Millennia of patient silted water drops Wind and acid, elements combined And formed in the earth’s wet womb.

Climb into caves For fifteen years filled With baskets of corn and red plumed birds Red rock with closed mouths of mud Long-gone people dancing, praying, making love, Left, leaving pasty white ghosts To haunt and wander Murmuring and singing echoes.

Find west at last Drink a Manhattan in LA From big sky back to box homes Men in ties, women eye-lined lipstick Frightened and clawing Sad small lonely tired.

The Pacific so wild and calm

Mussels and jellyfish crash upon the shore Exploding into bits, to gather and burn With driftwood, twisted and huge Rocks like mountains Air even vast and free Water thundering echoes Electric green moss crawling over trees, Soft sunglints of snowflake Frozen stillness of treetops in postcards Snow-rain mud squishing under silent boots.

Drifting into backseat slumber Head on warm lap A whispering “let them sleep,” Falling in again Naked body wrapped in sleeping bag cocoon Headlamp beam falling quiet Against the crashing sea.

Fall into a warm soft-haired new years bed Lying childish together, Warm wet hands held On this edge of gaping ocean, Tomorrow will I wake up where I am?

Trade bags in a coffeeshop Tired of travel, cutting through space Cutting and cutting finding only new outsides, Skidding down a snowy mountain pass Alive, winding into dusk Among ridges like teeth ripped wide Swerving into gentle January wind Swirling up dust, harsh in the headlights Soft in moon.

E OF WHERE YOU ARE

All day through deserts Scrubby grass and sometimes cactus Streaks of salt, ravens and smooth-eyed foxes Sunrise too beautiful country too big Racing to America’s Best Value Inn, Fried pie in Oklahoma closed at 5 Teenagers with cowboy hats and pickups Kids and dads with camo hats Sipping soda in gas station diners Long straight roads, North Carolina mountains, cashews Ripening avocados bought in California A cold floor mountain shack Curling close to the fire A clay face on a clay pot Curling smoke and banana pudding.

Drive East - to home Cold air, clean toilets, Warm arms, and a cozy bed.

photos by John Fisher, design by Joanna Zhang

Étretat ‘79

by Erik Font

in the corner of Brittany a cliff at Étretat dips its finger into the water like a piano player here they met the wind the water bore twins on tricycles parked on tall grass under a shadow of concrete they peer over the handlebars and through their bangs the century ends

APRIL 7 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

17 |ARTS

I

n 1969, Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe hawked their sketches and paintings for a month’s rent at the Chelsea Hotel. Pablo Picasso traded his sketches for coffee and the bar tab in Paris throughout the 1920s. A sheriff in Shenandoah, Virginia owns two gestural paintings

by Jackson Pollock, works he used as bail for convictions of drunken and disorderly conduct. Last month, New York-based artist Dave Vinod traded a painting with Designer Braces, an orthodontics office, for his thirteen-year-old’s braces.

Amidst the past six years of economic insecurity, working artists have been stuck in a double bind in which money isn’t greasing the cogs of artistic creativity, and artistic creativity isn’t paying the rent. Bartering, then, a common practice for those in the art trade, has accordingly become a survival tactic. In May 2010, the O+ festival was set up Kingston, New York, in which uninsured artists and musicians exchanged and bartered their work for medical attention from participating physicians and medical firms. Innovative swaps like this demonstrate a collective effort by the art community to breathe new life into bartering.

The logic behind bartering, a form of exchange that preceded the invention of money, is simple: You have something I need, I have something you need, and we trade. The barter system allows you to negotiate the worth of your object or service in relation to products or services that you want. This formula has always resonated within the art community, where carving out innovative ways to sustain creative production is a must.

The appeal of bartering lies in its options: any object, good, or service is on the table.

Greenwich-based artist Tracey Ellis once traded a mural series for a down payment on a car, and a piece of artwork for a Hasselblad camera that came with three lenses. For Ellis, bartering is a “way of life.”

“Any time you can save your money, and you can get your work out there, it’s key.”

Ellis, like many other artists, barters purely for the satisfaction of doing business on her own terms. “I’ve bartered art pieces for meals, yoga and pilates classes, graphic design work, so many things,” Ellis explained. “It’s such a great way to strengthen ties with the art community around you and support one another.”

Far from relying on arbitrary pre-

THE ART OF

BARTER Hawking your creative wares for goods & services

by Olivia Jené Fagon scriptions of worth, artists who barter do so with a definite understanding of their works’ value—a value that is intimately tied to what they need. New York artist Avani Patel’s art supplies cost her around $5,000 per year, so when bartering she tries to exchange her work for items that either equal or exceed the amount of money it took to create that particular piece.

In recent years, bartering’s grassroots popularity has made the transition to more large-scale art events. “Art Barter,” an innovative new exhibition concept started in 2009 in London, gives the public the opportunity to acquire artwork through bartering. Over the three or four days of “Art Barter,” participants make offers on artworks (whose creators are unidentified in order to prevent calculations of market worth).

The results of the event, which has taken place in several locations around the world, are a testament to both the wideranging answers to that question and the art community’s eagerness to harness that potential: 30 hours of French tutoring for a Tracy Emin sketch; a Jason Dodge painting for a week-long stay in Scotland; three months of psychotherapy for a Gavin Turk installation. Commerce can get a lot weirder when you’re bartering.

Unsurprisingly, art bartering has made its way online. OurGoods is an online community of artists, designers, and cultural producers who swap skills, spaces, and work amongst themselves. Catering predominantly to the New York area, OurGoods is geared toward reestablishing face-toface exchange and inperson networking

in arts dealings. “If you’ve got a show coming up, you may need somebody to run your lights, write your press release and design your postcards,” said Jen Abrams, the network co-founder, “OurGoods is about finding those three people, and reciprocating. It’s simple.”

It’s exactly this simplicity that makes bartering so attractive. In the modern economy, our understanding of what things are worth has far exceeded the dollar-for-dollar equation, with the space between an individual and his assets now occupied by the digitized processes of online banking, credit cards, interest rates, premiums, automatic teller machines, and electronic-funds transfers. “I went straight from Maryland Institute for the Creative Arts to the East Village, and nowhere did I learn about financing, market values, investing… I really only understand the recession in that no one is buying my work,” John Michaels, a D.C.-based artist, explained. While artists and finance are in no way mutually exclusive, bartering remains attractive because of its comparable straight-forwardness—because it works in the hand-to-hand exchange of what’s mine for what’s yours.

While bartering’s resurgence is in no way exclusive to the art world, art’s complicated relationship with money makes the practice of bartering, and its exclusion of the dollar, especially dynamic. The opinion that art should transcend monetary value is common. “I paint,” Michaels stated. “Sometimes it takes me months, even a year to complete a painting. All the time, the effort, the failures, the electric moments of inspiration that go into a piece—to put a final price tag on that… it’s brutal. Almost irrational.”

Much of the tension between artists and the art

market can be explained by the seemingly arbitrary—and perhaps fundamentally inappropriate—prices of art. In January, Jenny Seville sold her painting Branded at Christies for $3 million, a little above its market value. At the same time, Michaels traded a large oil painting to a broker for a portion of the down payment on a studio space. Two exchanges of art—yet the disparity between the two is one not of ‘good art’ versus ‘bad art’ but between those in demand by the market, and those outside of it.

Michaels explained that for him bartering offers any artist the “freedom to assign the world with the value we believe it should have, regardless of the market.”

Perhaps this is why, “even when it is inefficient,” as Michaels explains, “people barter to feel good; people will barter to feel free.” Because bartering places value on a localized scale—the scale of individuals, rather than the ‘value by mass consensus’ that money and the market supposes—it puts the terms of exchange in line with the terms of the individual artist.

While bartering’s resurgence in popularity could be considered the development of a parallel economy, the traditional characteristics of capitalism are still in full play. Artists still consider the market value of their works when trading it, and even write up bartering contracts, outlining specific terms of exchange. But without binding contracts or a universal value system, bartering lacks an established system of checks and balances outside of notions of trust and reciprocity, bringing up concerns over what constitutes a fair trade.

While bartering can liberate artists, it also creates situations in which they have the most to lose. Unable to sell their work, artists are often forced to barter pieces for less than their market value out of immediate need; they need the medical attention now, their children need braces now, they need studio space to work now.

There is nothing risk-free about any exchange, bartering included.

There is an almost unavoidable idealism present when talking about off-the-grid practices like bartering—it’s an anti-institutional tactic! a testament to the bulletbiting artists’ ingenuity in the face of the repressive market! But reasons for bartering are more often than not about making ends meet. When it comes down to it, is bartering ever an artist’s first choice when it comes to exchanging his work? Ellis, Vinod, and Michaels would probably prefer a gallery visit and a cash purchase of their work, money they could spend in any way they wanted, received in an exchange that could be contractual and binding.

First choice or not, and romanticized or not, most artists today are working headwind, and there is integrity in attempting to carve out new pathways for subsidizing their creativity while reaffirming the value of face to face trade. Ultimately, bartering has the potential to silence the questions most often heard when acquiring anything: Can you afford this? and What are you willing to pay? and one that, in a culture in which money has become part and parcel of the language of identity, perhaps isn’t asked enough: What do you have, besides your money, to offer?

OLIVIA FAGON B’13 will trade this article for pretzel M&Ms.

illustration by Robert Sandler