TIM DÉRIVE 9, Masaki is our business guide !

Preface

In spring 2003 the painters Hideaki Masaki and Peter Kastner walked through the hip quarter of Brooklyn, Williamsburg. They saw some poor artists trying to sell their artworks on the street. And Masaki said: hey, that´s an idea, i´ll try it out. As the typical doubtful artist from Old Europe Peter just smiled ... . But when he got the news from Masaki, making a big business out of this selling art on street, also Old European artist Peter woke up and the idea of TIM DÉRIVE 9 MASAKI IS OUR BUSINESS GUIDE! was born: YES, the street is the right place for the TI-PROD cheap art products.

The 2003 manifestations,

chapter one: Amsterdam (van Wissen, Kastner)

The first part of this dérive took place in June 2003 in Amsterdam. Jan van Wissen and Peter Kastner tried to sell the TI-PROD cheap art products: small paintings by Peter Kastner and Random Components by Jan van Wissen. The performance was documented by Ine Ophof.

But at the end of the day they had to realize: Tourists have other interests than looking for art and the other business men are reacting agressive against the TI-PROD cheap art products as a kind of forbidden rivals.

To tell the truth: This business was a disaster, but NEXT BUSINESS BETTER. We have to change the strategy and we have to get Masaki´ s business plan.

Chapter two: Masaki´ s Business Plan

When Hideaki Masaki heard about the Amsterdam disaster and that some support for TIM DÉRIVE 9 is needed, he sent his business plan for future happenings: the color of success in art business is YELLOW!

Chapter three: La Biennale di Venezia (Moretto, Kastner)

And the business plan worked well: the next TIM DÉRIVE 9 action and business research took place at the Biennale di Venezia at 29th of June 2003. On this day the TI-PROD artists Peter Kastner and Paolo Moretto went by train (please remember: it´ s just the beginning of the big TI-PROD business) to Venezia and 60% of their sold paintings were especially made for the Biennale happening and were (partly) painted with YELLOW color.

Chapter four: Berlin, Altes Museum (Wäspi, Kastner)

On July 10th in 2003 the TI-PROD artists Alfred Wäspi and Peter Kastner went to Berlin to write the next chapter of the business research of TIM DÉRIVE 9. They build up the exhibition at one of the most heavy centers of Berlin art tourism, the Altes Museum. First they made a mistake by mounting the TIM DÉRIVE 9 * flag onto a public artwork. But after some smooth advices by the security service of the Altes Museum they could move the whole exhibition half a meter away from this public artwork (a question to the security service: why didn´t they had to remove their bags?) and then they were allowed to begin with their business performance. But unfortunately the Berlin art tourists didn´t react even on the YELLOW color. They were fully concentrated on the genius of Schinkel, and therefore they had no eye for contemporary cheap art.

So the TI-PROD artists AW and PK finished silently their performance after some hours without making any business. Now they have to reflect whether the color YELLOW is the only important aspect in art business or whether there are some more facts to know. Masaki, where is the new business plan?

Chapter five: New York (Masaki, Machida, Kastner)

1. The Big Business T-shirt

Hearing about the financial disaster of chapter four, Masaki decided to develop a new business product for TI-PROD. Together with Yuko Machida he designed the Big Business t-shirt. This is the new business plan: to sell a limited edition of 100 (1rst edition) of Cheap-Art-T-shirts, $ 10 each!

2. The Metropolitan event

On September 9th TI-PROD artists Masaki and Peter Kastner started the TIM Dérive 9 Masaki is our business guide close to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The area around the museum is a market place for simple airport art, this kind of junk art which you find everywhere where all these art-tourists are marching.
Unfortunately TI-PROD artists M and PK could make NO business there, but fortunately they got some helpful advices by the police. Now TI-PROD artists M and PK know: it´s allowed to sell art in New York (freedom of speech !!), but the art works have to be presented on a table (look kid, everybody is selling his/her shit on a table) and it´s not allowed to sell t-shirts without permission, because a t-shirt can´t be art. Police Officer Moran gave the TI-PROD artists M and PK a definition of art without asking any money for it: a work like a painting is an artwork, because the only pleasure you have with this, is, that you only can look at it. But you can´t use it for another purpose. And a t-shirt can also be weared. So it can´t be an artwork, even when there is the very official certificate from TI-PROD which declares the Big Business t-shirt as an artwork. The Police doesn´t care about this tricky argumentation, Police Officer Moran likes to live in comfortable 19th century.
At the end TI-PROD artists M and PK had to leave the place immidiately to get no ticket. They succeed in doing that, this is also a kind of business!!! But BIG?

3. The Celsea event

At September 12th TI-PROD artists M and PK went to Chelsea with much more optimism to make Big Business: it was the day of many openings in the gallery district of Chelsea and at these days many of the Contemporary*Art*Tourists (C*A*T) are hanging around there. The optisism was based on the fine experiences with C*A*Ts in Venezia. At Chelsea M and PK expected public like in Venezia, but the really huge public in New York was not relaxed enough to accept Cheap Art as one of the rare opportunities to buy some art works for a few bucks. Everything in Chelsea has to be expensive? TI-PROD agrees: it´s much better to pay $ 600.000 for a painting than $ 60. Because something must be wrong with this $ 60 painting. Or what about the $ 600.000 painting? HMMMM.
There were some nice reactions (OHHH dear, LOOK at that fine kind of humour. Lovely, these kids.), but only another artist, Mario from Honduras, bought 2 Big Business t-shirts. Artist support artists, a nice feeling of solidarity.
Heee, business guide, what will be the next stepp into the golden future?