Inauguration

Welcome to the West where capitalism rules. It's quite literal - even the most humanistic of services like health care, education, social assistance, and democratic process can find themselves pinned down, preempted, and prepackaged to produce profits. It is what makes our economy tick. And as we have all come to understand, if the economy stops ticking, so too does everything else.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. For, it is the system we have and it has enriched many a life, and perhaps more measurable, many a lifestyle.

The arts, however, find themselves in a trouble spot. Like any enterprise, they are expected to make money but are often not built for it. Instead of true creative expression, we're much more likely to be sold the prefab entertainment products that the capitalist machine has learned, after decades of focus grouping and ethnography studies, to crank out. And that's exactly what capitalism is about. It's exactly what capitalism is supposed to do.

But what about art?

Create & Commerce is not about bashing the media industrial complex. It is not about deriding Hollywood. It is not a bitchfest about the quality or quantity of creativity in the world of capitalist entertainment. It is about the reality of the situation - the sometimes harmony, sometimes violent conflict that exists in a capitalist world between creativity and commercialism. It is about that unique relationship.

Capitalism works...most of the time. But so does creativity. Create & Commerce is about how they work together.