debt, student or otherwise is in crisis. 10k-20k in forgiveness is a start but by no means enough. i am roughly 94k in debt. for PAY 2 PLAY at Albatross i am having Michael Reinsch wear two lanyards. one with pictures taken of me by Elizabeth Lamb and the other one of those lanyards is my old NYU id lanyard. this lanyard is meant to hold the colored cards with text. several of the cards have text on them that was inspired by an investigative article written by the The Wall Street Journal and published on Dec 19, 2021, "NYU Is Top-Ranked--In Loans That Aumni and Parents Struggle to Repay." the article is a mix of findings and student testimonials where for example a former student has been selling their eggs to pay for food and rent while trying to find employment. some of NYU's suggestions to ease the burden of their school's high price tag included eating less meals, babysitting, or living with a elderly person. the rest of the cards speak to the way in which the capital A artworld allows for educational degree gatekeeping with a dash of cheap or unpaid labor extraction as a means to continue to enrich the wealthy class and institutions. these are all cyclical patterns and unless you break the wheel they will be continue.
-april vendtta, sept 7, 2022
PAY 2 PLAY, april vendetta (they/them), camera operator Elizabeth Lamb (she/her)
what is the value of an education?
the value of art?
the cost (in dollars) for tuition.
what is the real cost (toll)?
the cost (in dollars) for art supplies, shipping/handling fees, and entry fees.
what is the real cost (toll)?
how can you believe the art critics?
aren't they just naysayers after all?
how can you believe the market or the speculator?
how can you trust the school administrator?
how can our art and our education be more than a wealthy person's trading chip?
how do we know when we are doing something that we want to do?
is that even possible?
when is it important to do things we don't necessarily want to do?
how do i/we deal with the fear of becoming someone i/we do not want to be?
there is a system in place after all.
april vendetta (they/them) is an artist and archivist with over a decade of experience collaborating, coordinating, and researching community-based performance art practices. Elizabeth Lamb (she/her) is vendetta's photographic collaborator and life partner. Together in 2015 they founded Human Trash Dump, an online digital repository that publishes and maintains community art and activist works on the Internet Archive.