Friday, April 4, 2008

That was two weeks ago: Bert Rodriguez

Two weeks ago today, Future Unincorporated took a company field trip to the Park Avenue Armory show while part of the Whitney Biennial was still installed. Now that installation is in the past, as is the performance/installation by Bert Rodriguez.
As some of our longtime clients might remember, we are a selfless non-profit corporation and we offer free-range organic consultations. We act like we care because we do. We are not afraid of meaning. We meet people with the hope that we can use all of our services to help them regain functionality, so that ultimately everyone has a fair chance to become a sincere non-profit.
When we returned from the business trip to Finland, we learned that Bert Rodriguez was doing similar work, though he was calling it 'Art Therapy'. The frightening thing was that he was doing it from an 'office' as part of the Whitney Biennial, which seems painfully similar to our work in an 'office' giving consultations (no therapy here). Luckily that is all in the past now.

One morning over coffee, one of our employees was surprised to hear Bert's voice broadcast from WNYC while he offered 'art therapy' to NY listeners. We all agreed, 'good for him!' As any good business mind knows, competition opens up the market. Increased awareness of the importance of one on one idea installation can only broaden the market's awareness of the idea of one on one self service sold as art.

Back to the field trip... Our staff caught Bert during an interview, so we waited patiently outside his installation for a conversation. Since we are a mobile office, we can consult anyone at any time. All we need is space and time. Bert was very receptive to our wishes for a teleconsultation in the future. He seemed like a caring and patient guy, and we wonder if he will return our emails and phone calls. We hope we can have a conversation or collaboration with him. It seems like if we don't we will have to include him in our business plan on a page labelled 'obstacles to success'. Who knows what will happen after that.


Bert Rodriguez
Originally uploaded by libbyrosof