THE ART REVOLUTION                                      VS.                        CORPORATE ART?                                                                          by Tom Hendricks                                  aka Art S Revolutionary                                                                       (from "Sex, Death, and Ronald McDonald", vol#3) There are two things that are notable about all the arts today: music, film, tv, publishing, radio, art, theater, dance, etc. --- they're lousy, and the media says they're great. From about the 80's on we haven't been in a golden age of anything in the arts. Excluding tech-nological advances (special effects in movies for instance) these last few decades have been barren of either quality or creativity. There are three things that are notable about the media today ---tv & radio news, news-papers, newsmagazines, etc. There are more news outlets than ever before, they all seem to cover the very same stories in the very same way, and they cannot be questioned about anything they do. What a mess! As a musician, artist, writer, I was getting nowhere. It finally came to a point that I saw that unless I did something on my own no one would see my art. I also noticed that the same thing was happening to talented artists friends of mine. So I, under the name of Art S Revolutionary, started the art revolution for those artists outside of the system. At first I was against radio that refused to play indie records, then I saw that they were under the influence of a handful of record companies. But they were owned by bigger conglomerates that owned other companies producing other types of art too. They also owned much of the media that reviewed the art. While I was studying these conglomerates, a strange thing was happening --- they were gobbling up every small art company in sight. Then, hungry for more, they began gobbling up each other --- and that is still going on today. Along the way, I came across the book "The Media Monopoly" written by Ben Bag-dikian in 1983 (it's a classic with six printings to date. Get a copy if you can find it). In it he gave an extremely strong argument why fifty companies should NOT control so much of the arts and media. That was 1983. Today it's down to eight. So what does it mean to have only eight companies controlling almost all the arts, their distribution, and almost all of the electronic media (and much of the print media as well) that reviews the art? In art, it means lousy art for $$$. Quality doesn't matter, money does. It's usually art that brings in a safe return on the investment. Unfortunately for those who know and love art, great art seldom is safe, or a sure bet. So great art is out, safe sanitized art is in ---Corporate Art. It's art that Stepford Wives love (see the movie). And what of the media? They promote Hollywood movies, push conflict stories (lots of black vs. white stories, or Arab-Israeli conflict stories, gore reports, scandal, etc. --- they used to call it yellow journalism), promote big business, and refuse to talk about anything else. So what you don't see them report on, is often greater than what they do talk about. This 'invisible news' includes: almost all international news, labor struggles, anti- big business protests, anti car or city sprawl issues, etc. It also includes these taboo subjects. Anything that questions their journalistic practices (the media refuses to be questioned period), anything that questions advertising (advertising has absolutely no benefit for children - ever) or any art that isn't owned by Corpo-rate Art. What that means is no talk about indie music outside of the control of "The Big 4", no talk about indie internet sites (the media puts all internet sites into two categories: the good ones --- that sell something; and the evil ones --- everything else.) And never a mention of zines --- you're reading one now --- they are those thousands and thousands of indie desktop published magaZINES that are being made by thousands of zinesters from just about every country in the world. What a mess! Now lets list the hall of 'lame' --- the eight companies that own it all: 1. AOL/Warners (the largest media company) 2. Disney (ABC) 3. Vivendi (French conglomerate) 4. Viacom (CBS) 5. GE (NBC & Nuclear Power) 6. News Corp. (Fox, an Australian Company) 7. Sony (art & electronics from Japan) 8. BMG (Bertelsmann, German conglomerate that is the world's largest publisher) That's it. Add a few newspaper chains and you have most of the newspapers too. With eight and only eight voices you don't get a variety of opinions. You get stock answers and lawyer morals (sue the competition out of existence). You get a handful of old men running everything ... into the ground. You get companies so large they don't have to answer to anyone --- even, and this is happening more and more, government regulators. And at its worst you begin to loose your freedom. What is the solution? I think first we need to know what's going on. We need to know how bad a mess it's becoming, we need to begin to question and protest the abuses of Corporate Art & Media, and we need to know how to stop it. Here's my solution. These eight can either own companies that make the art, or distrib-ute the art, or review the art. But they CANNOT be allowed to own all three. That would then give a chance for competition from indie filmmakers, musicians, writers, etc. Etc. Also we need to get ads out of the media. Media should be about journalistic integrity, not about doing well in sweeps weeks. I encourage you to learn more, to get involved, to reprint this article, and to join the protest. For more information on the Art Revolution please see my monthly zine Musea or visit our website at http://musea.digitalchainsaw.com. Long live the revolution in the arts!