Manifesto of Boz Company
The Boz is a full of enchanters universe. It comes from a singular experience of what divine is, reinforced by a stream of works of art (videos, paintings, performances, installations, etc.). Interacting with one another, these works are also connected to a core book titled THE BOOK OF THE BOZ. Three main characters are crisscrrossing the book end to end : Jack Balance (a clown), Me (another clown); and his Scribe (a third clown). The latter will be held up to public obloquy by his readers.
On the eve of the third millenium, the Boz was going to face the world of men. For that matter, he convened a press conference to tell them about its worries. Fundamentalists were rearing their heads. The climate was going crazy. There were no more ideals. As for morals, they were coming apart at the seams.
In a nutshell, it was a total mess.
Somethig strange, rather awkward was to come out this situation : the creation of THE BOZ COMPANY. This company was about to innovate and create a financial aesthetics, more suitable to artists’ struggle .
What was it all about ?
What could the Boz Company actually be ?
At first glance, a private limited profit-making company.
At second glance, nothing else than a work of art.
The Boz Company will indeed be devised as a fully featured work of art.
Accounting papers, stationery, clients, suppliers, furniture, and even - last but not least - the inland revenue auditor will be picked up, photographed, distorted, painted and installed as the artist pleases, in the purpose of apprehending their quintessence. As for the Board of Directors, it will be made of 8 people, each of them representing a Boz character. Humour being an essential component in the process, we shall go as far as to drafting company statutes which original copy will be sold at a high price in Christies’s.
For money stays the sinews of war. Without it, there is no relief. As the Boz Company isn’t an exception to the rule, it will have to earn some.
To this end, we shall invent shows, we shall improvise happenings, we shall organise auctions, we shall promote exhibitions and we even shall issue shares of a new kind - duly numbered and as beautiful as possible.
100 € shares bearing Jack Balance‘s effigy (with bonnet and fake moustache.
500 € shares bearing Me’s effigy (with mirrors on)
1 000 € shares bearing scribe’s effigy (with his magic computer)
New shareholders will get double entry objects :
- a share in the classic sense of the term as property right;
- a work of art share he will be able to hang on a picture rail… or not.
The value of one relative to the other will be an indication of the good (or bad) functioning of the Ltd.
Finally, the Boz Company will aim at restoring a new SOCIAL LINK between the art field main components : the artist, the collector, the gallery manager, the auctioneer, the critic, the museum curator, etc. It can be seen as a cooperative company aimed at remedying the growing atomisation of the concerned field.
Two issues will hence be privileged.
THE ARTISTS’ ENTRY
The Boz Company will take care of hiring creators sensitive to this principle. They will not be prevented from becoming shareholders but even recommended to do so.
THE COLLECTORS’ ENTRY
The Boz Company will make sure to treat them with the respect they deserve. They will not prevented from becoming artists; they will even recommended to do so.
The rest will follow.
It will be the matter of an hour or a century, depending on each one’s appetite for it. For we shouldn’t forget that in the old Mongolian civilisation, our ancestors, the Boz meant nothing else than… a dish of raviolis.
Signed Julien Friedler
October 4th, 2006 at 10:28 am
[…] To fully understand the issues of it, let’s see its Manifesto. […]
October 4th, 2006 at 11:38 am
[…] We’ll think here of our visual work and its referents : Primitivism, in the “return to origin” meaning, initiated as early as 1907 by “les demoiselles d’Avignon”; and Pop Art, meant as its opposite, the un-dealization of art, for the benefit of icons leaning to triviality, of present, jet set successes and money worhiping. A tendency the Boz company will run to its edge, in initiating a company meant from the very beginning as a work of art (clic manifesto) for the form. For the content, however it’s rather different. Far from ephemera, the Boz company will indeed convey creations questionning Transcendence, in a topical way, derivated from Pop Art in the proven intent to subvert it. A paradoxal move evoking a figuere dear to antique mythology : the Trojan Horse. […]