@banff

From: at-banff (98/8/14)

FISCAL RESPONBILITY / AKA FLATTERY WILL GET YOU EVERYTHING

While we are on the topic of fiscal responsibility,
I have a question.
Why is it that in the newly invigorated MVA climate
of boosting the emphasis on visual arts and more
respect and recognition of value of staff, that the
visual arts technicians are being told that they
cannot have raises, there is no  money to improve
their facilities, and that the 'budgets are frozen'.

I beg to differ.

How does this fiscal conservatism measure up in
comparison to the fact that just this month,
$5000.00 that was not in a budget, was magically
found to hire a computer technician to help a
co-production artist program her web page and that
certain members of the staff are being offered
substantial raises of $1000's of dollars.

It seems to me that nepotism in this department
continues at a demoralizing rate.  If you are an
artist, employee or outside consultant, as long as
you maintain  a friendship with the management of
this department, money will be found to support
your art, provide you with unbudgeted for technical
support, extend your contract,  purchase your plane
ticket, pay you a consulting  fee or give you a raise.
If you fall outside of this paradigm and you cannot
maintain a friendly or anonymous relationship with
the management of MVA you will be manipulated,
offered no job incentives and systematically discredited,
all under the guise of institutional constraints.

3 Gem-boy's international flights and consulting
fees = discretionary supply budgets and raises for a
year for visual arts technical facilitators.
Think about it; by this time next year, the gem-boys
of the world will still be coming around, and many of
our friends and colleagues will be disillusioned,
disenfranchised and long gone.
- from The Anonymous.