Proposal One

My projects are magical.

You can’t really get to where you can see and appreciate them, unless you suspend your concepts.

My projects aim to be about everybody, encompassing all 360 degrees of a circle.

Most of the time we tend to get stuck in a tiny slice of that circle, feeling satisfied seeing just one color.

But if you got born into a red, and then deeply encountered a blue – well, then your world turns violet.

Add all the colors together, of equal intensity, and your world turns completely clear.

That’s where the magic begins.

Consider the other, as deeply as you consider yourself, and you will always find that he or she is thinking and doing, exactly what you would think and do, if you were him or her.

We are all the same person, living different lives, based entirely on foundation and life experiences.

What’s unique about this time is that all the colors are starting to crash into each other. We can’t ignore the other any more.

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There is so much hate in the world. It is not going to go away. Certainly not now - now that it has found such profound expression. This is a great time to be a terrorist - and there are endless numbers of the poor and oppressed to fill those roles.

We need to start investing our time and energy, getting to know people who are different, before everything starts blowing up.

Isn’t that what The War in Iraq is teaching us? What other people think - the way they see life -is just as important as how people in the USA view life. If we want to successfully work with those people, then we have to consider the truth of their lives, as deeply as we want them to consider the truth of our own.

Otherwise, there will be no favorable outcome.

It’s all about respect. Respect is what people really want.

Look at you. Look at everyone. Most everything that everyone does, they do, because they want other people to respect them. It’s not the car – it’s being seen driving the car.

So we look at the world situation, and we say this is obvious. Yes. Nations should start taking an interest in others who are different, especially suffering others, and try to understand their situations and help them.

Once we do, we naturally care about them - just like we naturally care about anyone’s situation that we personally know about. Family. Friends.

The other will then take a healthy interest in us also. How could they not? They begin to look at us with respect and wonder.

We balance out each other’s spectrum.

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Cincinnati has a race problem.

I’ll bet if you mention “Cincinnati” to the average person in NYC, they will think “race problems”.

The race problem in Cincinnati is no different than The War in Iraq, in that there are interchangeable good guys and bad guys, depending on foundation and life experiences. Neither side has much respect for the other.

All conflicts are like this.

I think racism is Cincinnati’s gift.

You can’t really do anything about The War in Iraq – but you can send a message to the world as to how to solve conflict by addressing your own. You already have the world’s attention. Use it as your microphone to change the world.

Make it a stated goal of the Cincinnati art community to solve racism.

Just saying that, would get you A TON of attention, and respect. How noble! How utterly fresh! What other art community has ever attempted such a thing?

Artists would be challenged, knowing they were working in a real spotlight.

How else can artists in Cincinnati get attention? By showing in A, B or C Gallery? What if you don’t fit into A, B or C?

A lot of new, fertile ground for creative exploration would open up over night. “You can get media attention if you do something that works.” A level playing field at last!

Give artists that kind of opportunity, and I’ll bet their creative minds will come up with all kinds of never-before-thought-of magical and fun ideas that would then generate spin-off projects addressing every kind of problem in society.

This would in no way endanger what existing art institutions currently have going in Cincinnati. It would simply create a bigger art scene: an infinitely more engaging one, as in this one, anyone can play. There would be a lot more exchanging of more diverse viewpoints. People would be challenged to think more, consider more, and become bigger people in every way.

People would start wanting to get out of bed in the morning.

It wouldn’t take away from existing art venues, but rather bring tons of new interest from segments of society that never before took an interest in, or participated in, the art scene.

Their involvement will blow like a fresh breeze through stuffy corridors. Their involvement will be welcomed and appreciated by everyone.

I’ll bet the art, in all the existing venues, would deepen and become better also - simply because those artists would now be thinking about bigger things, as bigger things would be all around them.

We are what we experience.

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So this is the project I’d like to propose:

I want to do a series of writings and paintings, addressing the racial situation in Cincinnati, in fun and creative ways. The paintings would all be partial portraits.

I’d like to show a few of them in a traditional art venue.

The others, I’d exhibit in designated homes and shops covering a wide swath of what’s out there. I want to challenge the viewer to visit homes and shops they would otherwise never go into. I want to challenge them to engage the people they meet there, ask them how they are doing, and hang around to listen to the answer.

Of course, I’d photograph the entire show, and post it as a project on my website. Maybe I’d have a feedback section.

Maybe hardly anyone, who is truly different, would dare to see the entire show – but at least they would be challenged to. They’d have to start thinking about why they don’t want to – why they don’t think that this is a good idea. It would open up all kinds of room for public dialogue.

Looking at the photos on my website, reading my own observations and recollections – I’ll bet they would start wishing that they had gone and seen the entire show.

“Yeah. What would that have been like? An opportunity to look in on an entirely different movie for a day – to become a participant in something totally different - like the different kinds of movies I like to watch on TV.”

This kind of thought will begin to take root, and every project by every artist who comes after it, will add to that momentum, until there are spontaneous collaborative projects between diverse others bursting out all over the place, where once there were riots

The backdrop for all of this would be the increasingly dangerous world that we live in, that might become extremely frightening to each and every one of us - if we don’t start considering others who are different, like we want the world to think about us, when it is our city that is being attacked.

Tim Folzenlogen
August 13, 2004

www.timfolzenlogen.com