It is truly a cultural experience… and influence. What you have grown up experiencing will shape your understanding of gift. Being an American I have grown up giving gift that I spend time and energy and sometimes agonizing on what the person that I am looking for a gift for would appreciate. My boyfriend on the other hand is from Nigeria and his experience of gifts is very different gifts are expected… but they are given regardless if the person likes it or not. It is more about the sentiment, the fact that the person thought of you, it does not matter if it is something you did not like at all. Gifts are more about the sentiment. Gifts are an interesting thing because what is a gift really about, what embodies a gift? Is it the sentiment, the sacrifice… is it about ownership or continuity of exchange. Gifts become new things, or increasing in value with continuity of giving. What makes a gift/commodity? Is there an expectation of return? What are the ways gifts are given and how does that pertain to us as artists? We as artists learn and are given skills within our profession and the only way to increase the value of our skills as an artist is to use the talent you are given. If it remains stagnant then that it grows. A gift is an exchange of action and energy… yet in the book it is romanticized notion of giving… but could this be promoting power or obligation of them what you’ll receive. In giving a gift is it wrong to give a gift that you take please in because you know that the person receiving it will receive pleasure from it. As an artist is my art work a gift that I “bestow” on society… when many people may not want or even like it. Isn’t that glorifying artists to an unrealistic level.
Gift are sometimes just the right thing to do. The gift is viewed in different lights, in a grander scheme; a gift is a foreign object that one is projecting onto someone else. A gift should be understood as establishing contact because a gift giving is culturally bound. What is considered a gift in one culture is not in another.

Dear Ron,
Sitting in this Fridays class discussion was agonizing. It was sad to hear how you feel and how you took the frustration that you are experiencing...it was miss directed and miss taken. My frustration with Grad seminar is not with your class. There has been no structure, organization, or direction with the class in general. It has been a hodge podge of imput and patch job of making something of nothing because no one has directed it or made it worth while. Going through this program for the past two year we have started with Colonial theory, them something applicatible: personal/artistic developement, them critics with all the class when all of the class could not even fit into the studios... to your class. Which you have devoted your time, energy and insight into the class but the frustration is not to your valid effort. It is that there has been a chaotic disorganization of lack of interests and yet we are require to be here... It could have been beneficial time that has been wasted. That is not your fault it is a lack of care/concern that our required time has been given. I am sorry you got caught in the cross fire.

3/2/07

Authentic culture vs. rehashed one how is it determined? How is it defined? This is the dense piece of writing in this class. The main point is the discussion of bordo, he is commenting on our culture and how education is required to discuss cultural symbols. For example U-tube you were you can put anything weather it is crap or not. At art opening there is an array of people but are they not people who digest the culture the upper class/educated? To use the Internet as an example again, art becomes completely conceptual because all the work behind it is unseen, art is selling an idea. We are switching from pretensions art to culturally relevant work. Or is it just over load of communication? We are infused with information, are we really able to digest it? Can we really fallow the culture being filtered? Mega corporations like Google buy things like U-Tube to control communication. Art can be reduced to all one form. It is democratization of art into academia. Anything can be art… think of Dechamp. Higher intellectual art can be filtered into culture where it may not be understood how controversial it is but within mass culture it is subverting. Folk culture was macro may, but now it can be seen as the Internet, or rap. Is it equalizing our response just because there is more of is or is it a tool of dissemination? Art for art sake: What is an art gallery suppose to be within society. Yet this article is so bias the information is time sensitive and the information so subjective.