who´s afraid of an artist escort

ARTOUT is an experimental art service that allows those (with the financial means) to spend time with an artist. To get into their minds and hear first hand what they believe and how they represent it through their work. A novel idea, but not an insane one. Like it or not, we are in the thick of capitalism, which means that any and everything we as consumers can conjure up to ‘need’ have and will be addressed and cured.
...Artistic creativity results from the dialectical relation between the acceptance of the market as the underlying principle of social reality, and the need to escape its imperatives of obedience and consensus; its locus is the individuality of the artist. The artist plays the “messenger” and the “message”, the self-medium that finds its legitimacy through the charismatic negation of conventionality.

...Spending time in the company of the artist is a creative act; it reveals power relations within the existing artist-patron paradigm and leads to the mutual liberation of both artists and art-patrons from the condition of simple material production and accumulation to the next level of the direct creative exchange and immediate human solidarity.

ARTOUT is the first to create such an open forum of exchange between the art producer and the art consumer and help the artists to retake the economic territory that is rightfully their. This is the territory of the instant utopia and today we are here to claim it.

Olivia Wadsworth

ARTOUT artist escort services include spending time with the client, discussing art, culture, politics, personal and other issues, accompanying the client to the movies, theater plays, restaurants, art shows, museum and gallery openings, performances, attending birthday parties, weddings, bar mitzvah, funerals, academic conferences, fund-raising dinners and other public and private events.

Each client gets a special certificate, confirming participation in the project. Photo and video documentation is available upon request.

Now you may say why should I pay for an artist, they grow on trees, just enter the next pub and you get a dozen for free. But most likely you wouldn´t call this service an an illicit business. And this is where we come to another episode from the let there be brain section:

In September 2007 A. Kozlov, a well respected artist and writer, was accused by Parsons Paris management of associating the school's name with "an illicit" business, thus damaging the reputation of the school, and forced to leave his teaching position. The reason for such an accusation was his participation in the ARTOUT project. This accusation is groundless, ludicrous and unworthy of any self-respecting academic institution.
source


Parsons The New School for Design describes itself:
Parsons focuses on creating engaged citizens and outstanding artists, designers, scholars and business leaders through a design-based professional and liberal education.

art angst? Maybe they should rename themselve to Parson

You can support Anton Kozlov by signing a petition against this ridiculous behaving here