Doing the d'Offay

For Andre, if she is reading

The recent debates about the necessities of redefinition of the art market - in terms of both production and consumption - and cultural industries in Cyprus have all more or less found their heads banging against the doors of money vaults. The moaning and the growling was all about incl. in budgets, in purchases, in possible purchases and in possibilities opening up purchases. What? Ideas? Developing found itself being narrated again across restaurant bills, and most significantly, signed dotted lines of rectangular pieces of paper we do not usually see anymore. Even the odd reporter who claims to be a cultural one rapidly pulled the focus ring from the modalities of dialogue and intentions to the wallet.

The wallet is in this case a mimetic one. Mimesis is easy in the land of the look-alikes since it does not after all command size. Only looks. Taking its cue from the Dakis, the wallet thought that the Dakis is some kind of Guggenheim or Louvre or even Middlesex University, thus to be found in every other fucking desert. So, undersized, the wallet begun doing the Dakis; the wallet started dong the undersized Dakis; an undersized Dakis jumped out of the wallet. Franchise I think it's called. And I have no problem with that. I know of at least one marriage that has happily avoided a head on collision when a certain other franchise venture facilitate itself as a culinary option. (And we all thank you for that too.) This franchise though, the Dakis one, missed the plot. He started off by firing the cook - never a good thing in a restaurant - and hiring just cleaners. Hm. What happened to the waiters you might ask. Waiters! Middle men, hey, like curators, theorists, writers, designers. Fucking suggestions and ideas people. Screw the waiters. After all I am cooking. Always. Give me anything and I 'll make you a pasta ala mana hese mese polyzwni pou de giname evzwnoi. (Apologies. Fefkou mou.)

The wallet is now a sort of hope, they say. The Dakis that never went away, who knows my dad and my dad knows the wallet, and probably yours too, who is committed - Adorno, allagi! - generate an excitement again, propel motivations to pracitce, who will bring in more people, more capital; stop, i'm full. Really? More? More people? Where? At his private residence, to shower with a champagne and goat's butter concoction while watching Tarahi thinking that this is the postmodern trahanas they were promised if they stayed long enough? Or at the stand up he is planning (fuck fuck fuck i gave the gender away!) where closure will be served at the opening?

And then you get the vampire. Ah the vampire. Bought, bought more, but invested, preserved, sold, kept and now exploited all just for a name. Not a Dakis. But a name. A brand if it suits you. When art historians look back on postwar art, one name that will come up time and again... How? They call them social responsibility gestures where I sometimes work. Part sale, part sail and a dash of renovation. See the chisel? The tea-mug? The key ring? See the t-shirt? The franchise even? And d' Offay mind you sells no sugar or papers for that matter. Never did. Yes, you might say, but the wallet can not do the d'Offay primarily because, well, he only just started and the vampire was out long, long before him. Let the wallet bite a bit too! Yes. And I am going to have two sons, get a divorce, remarry, divorce again and enter a global network. Your Freudian Marxism In! The trick of dong the d'Offay is not in the age. Not in the steps. It's in the foresight. Yes, in realising that the waltz is actually a syncopated dance with a lot of hot air in between and some jet fumes. And not only realising it but dancing it like a hot mama on coke wearing sneakers.

Anassa! Each his own. And again.
Exhale.

Does Dakis wear glasses? I don't think so, but even if he does why does the wallet, our Dakis, has to too? There is so many opticians around.