Tylenol killed your empathy to soothe a headache, and now you are progressive in the arts

I believe in change; that’s why I’m changing my shoes. Doc Martens hurt my feet, so I’m moving onto Merrels. At first, I told myself the pain felt kinda nice. But if I’m honest, I like just a little sting. I’m wearing Salomons right now, but ultimately, I want Tabi Boots, the little cow shoes that single out the big toe through an internal leather divider. They centralise power in the big toe to disenfranchise the other toes, encouraging them to collectivise. Once I have them, I will look like The Beatles did when they ate grass on a farm (it happened because I say so). After all, I’m sitting before an admiring crowd with the cool, blank stare of a rural cow while I ponder how delicious calves are. They are like succulent babies but more socially acceptable. Oh no, here comes the sound of my stomach craving status, power, and recognition under the guise of social transformation. Grrrrrrr.

All this talk of shoes makes me sound like I’m just an arts worker, but I’m so much more than that. I’m also a renegade artist, discerning tea drinker, caring curator, Premium Co-star Member, and adorable writer recognised for convincing talented people to work for me. I never write polemics or critiques because everyone makes it about themselves—or someone they hate—and this endless projection and identification makes me spiral with shame. I only work in mediums where I can work with other people, preferably large teams of people, whom I use as stepping stones—like the editor of this text, who turned my erratic babble into something publishable, even though I got really demanding about my “vision”. I fucking love collaboration. I am also proactive at your council, which allows me to play the schoolyard bully now and then. I fucking love a Board. Administration, stationery, and politics are my favourite mediums, but an Excel spreadsheet of my contacts is my weapon. Their achievements become my stairway as I intentionally creep into their worlds to loot their careers, like Satan in Eden. I turn bigger and more powerful at the expense of all my spreadsheet cells, I mean, friends. Those who stay behind, those who feel betrayed, and those who know my truth become increasingly hateful and bitter. But a complex mix of institutional platforming, impression management, new shoes and media appraisal—filtered by the circulation of righteous discourses that bureaucratised relationships—has allowed me to burn bridges all the way to the top. Everyone is more concerned with their KPIs than the art, so they neglect to check the vibe. The vibe is bad.

The strange thing is that the more success I accumulate, the sadder I become because deep down, I know that I have hurt everyone who once supported me. I am the teacher’s pet, and the classroom is the art world, where I function as a symbol of progress that will ensure the stability of those who are genuinely in power. I’m talking about patrons, institutional Boards of Directors and right-wing media—forget about curators, directors, and ARIs. That’s why I want to set myself on fire after I exfoliate my skin with shit, cleanse it with petrol, and record it in slow motion for a studio visit. My careerism is just a feeble attempt at soothing the emptiness that devours my insides, but every bite in this scarce industry only makes me hungrier. Those who have gazed at my ugliness can step away, but I must live with myself; that is the greatest punishment.

Pfft, yeah, right. I’m the answer to all the problems of the twenty-first century, and you are all fucking cancelled!

I am the one who tells the world how to do better, what to do better and when to do better. It is my right to scream at this village of smurfs: do better before it’s too late, and I point a gun at your head to make you understand that I should have been in Primave—“Ah…yes, cultural safety is so important,” I answer rapidly when the panel’s Chair interrupts my racing thoughts to ask me a stupid question in a public forum. “My career is doing so well this year, and I was just thinking about how we must celebrate our incredible community and its efforts to transform this white sector.” I’m sitting on a panel with various industry professionals from so-called culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds, a term only used in Australia, and usually for funding purposes to conceal less palatable terms such as non-white, PoC or, as I like to put on my CV, “Latinx”. It is sexy and disguises that I’m a cis-man. Give me the money. Me and some other CALDs are discussing the theme of Transformative Politics: The Conviviality of The Big and The Little Spoon in a Radical Cuddle. “I don’t experience self-doubt,” I carry on, “I just go through life believing that I’m great and everything I do will be fine.” My voice is soft because it makes people feel safe and vulnerable to transformation. “White people, diaspora, Instagram stories, can you feel my power?” I ask rhetorically to an audience that looks up to me with extreme appreciation. Then I roar, and everyone laughs, but I am not joking. I am communicating. I am linguistically diverse.

I learnt my language from predators at the zoo. I locked eyes with a cute lion as I watched them eat raw flesh like a cat on a Whiskas packet but bigger and gorier—you wouldn’t know. “Care is so important,” I say aloud to the panel before returning to my memories as I revisit My Creation Story, which will become a bestseller. That day at the zoo, the lion hypnotised me with their irresistibly chunky physique, coloured red with blood. I heard the furious depths of their voice resonating like the echoes of a river, the bile of the gods destroying an ancient city, flooding it to ruins with catastrophic revenge. The world blurred and slowed down as the lion whispered to me, “Kill everyone.”

I asked them, “Who are you?”

They replied, “Our name is Museum Network, for we are many.”

The same night, I opened a Tumblr and shared my first Buzzfeed listicle. I haven’t looked back ever since. Oh, this is also when I learned active listening.

God, I’m so good that I should get paid for consulting and strategising on structural change. I already get paid for consulting and strategising on structural change, like when I wrote a Grocery Shopping List and Cultural Safety Protocols for a lucky institution. But I got an Airtasker to write it for a fraction of the price of my commission. Meanwhile, I went on a downward spiral listening to Enrique Iglesias’ Hero (2001) while grooming the head of a funding body by instrumentalising my professional network to make myself seem more appealing. I should be the authority on structural change. I should be the Law. The Master. The Beginning and The End. I should be Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and The Arts. Like that horror movie on SBS On Demand about an ancient Babylonian deity that eats children but still gets worshipped in the twenty-first century. It’s problematic, but I want to host a demon in my flesh to achieve glory and recognition. In the scheme of things, eating people at their early stages of development—once or twice a decade—is not such a big deal. It would help the environment and make the world a better place. I should be allowed to kill.

We are sitting on this panel as part of a program called Parallel, a great networking opportunity. But we are also expected to work, which is below me at this career stage. I’m just sitting here wondering why the fuck I’m not in the Sydney Biennale. Or running the Sydney Biennale. The program is about the influence of the Professional Managerial Class on art production, looking at how art administrators can expand their practices to usurp—I mean, support—artists and writers, especially non-whites, I mean CALDS, to accumulate opportunities. Someone said these art administrators are weakening artists and artworks by subjecting them to the language of faux intimacy modulated by corporate protocols. The program expresses distaste for an increasing trend to fund the labour of managers and administrators rather than creatives, who remain neglected in budgets. This bullshit polemic makes me rage, as arts-workers are more important than artists. Everybody knows that!

There’s also some weird shit about being parallel to museums, like a new museum to the old museum, which made me think of David Bowie’s Station to Station song, and how cool I would look with a permanently dilated pupil: Like, the embodiment of a parallel star, since I don’t get to eat children like an ancient deity because it’s illegal or whatever (good luck with your crops, that’s all I’m saying). So, when I read Parallel’s call for proposals, I was like, hello, I’m the most important person on your contact list. Unfortunately, everyone was too intimidated to offer me a spot outright or invite me to apply. So, I asked my lesser-known friend for a coffee and asked them prompting questions, the answers to which became my proposal. I couldn’t be bothered to write it myself, so I left it ‘till the last minute, which forced my partner to write it for me as I feigned learned helplessness. Okay, my lesser-known friend is my partner, but they are not a CALD, so it is technically ethical if not an act of social justice.