Arts Corey Pearlstein Responds
… to this story, the ConWorks move, his role as artistic director, etc.:
We want to do the closeout here, figure out what to sell, what to store, do right by our tenants, and throw a really good wake. Not a wake for ConWorks, but a wake for this venue. Then we’ll step back and ask all the questions—what are all the human resources, the physical, technical, creative stuff that is requisite for the thing we want to do. Do we, for example, need a visual arts curator for doing the kind of thing we were trying to do? Maybe ConWorks should be a postdisciplinary space instead of this multi-pronged thing. Could ConWorks live conceptually online, say?
It sounds like anything could happen—a change in mission, closing up shop, finding another venue, staying homeless. Pearlstein said that announcing that ConWorks is moving and uncertain has been a relief: “And I hope people don’t take away a sense of discouragement or an idea of what you can’t do with art in Seattle—we were just changing the tires on a moving car from the day I got here.”
“And if you write anything about this conversation,” he said, “send out a profound fucking thank you to Seattle—there has been so much energy and goodwill and people have just been amazing.”
More from Corey and the folks in and around ConWorks in the next issue…
They should have the guts to just close it and not pretend that it has any future. Everybody knows that the thing is dead let it die with dignity.