“Stuff For Rich People was a huge success” — The Experts

A recap of Jimmy Market by Jimmy Coyote with photographs by Nick Matsas

Kristina Pedersen

Published in

houseshow magazine

9 min readJun 21, 2016

Do. You. Ever. Wonder….about your destiny… TONIGHT!!!! When you speak, disappear:

Jimmy Coyote’s annual market, Stuff For Rich People, is a space of alt capitalism that rejects the traditional gallery and instead emulates the structure of a trade show business convention (because in Jimmy World every business is a person and every person is a business). Every “vendor” at the tradeshow was an artist selling & demonstrating a product, or commercial experience that inherently involved buying & selling. Each artist had a vendor booth featuring a range of products that jive with/speak to/ comment on the consumer format: condos on Newcomb Crater moon colony, a diagnostics test by Selden’s cult that prescribes you a video of a rock to watch, cyber-serenity meditation sessions, Ruby Yacht’s performative zine (Safari Al put a lot of shit in a blender and then read it), hyper-artisanal food samples (cage-free free-range celery topped with politicized groundnut reduction and sultana, sand, etc), “fashion,” survival kits hidden in rich people art, collectable weed baggies, collectable hair, language tapes for the newly rich on how to talk about rich people stuff like art.

Think of it less as a space where artists sell their work and more of a project in which we all participate in the name of art and $$$™. In addition to vendors, there was a silent auction with two prize baskets and a mystery prize: the Lifestyle™ basket (featuring such items as a ghost for your yacht, “Juicing For Life” cookbook, grow-your-own crystal kit, bedazzled stuff, a golf club for all the golfing, etc.), the Synergetic Strategies Business basket (featuring such items as a Make America Great Again cap, a rose inside a glass case from your prince boyfriend from a spell he was a under, the book “The Best Alternate Histories of the 21st Century” for you to burn, a mixtape with Sandstorm on it for keynote speeches, etc.), and last but not least, a mystery bag (three fluorescent light bulbs). The breakout workshop sessions were highly successful: a dynamic and glistening Jimmy Talk, a lecture on branding by Jack Kinsella as Shrek, Beta Plus Systems’ introduction to Integrative Ontological Practices (a cult), and an e-keynote “branding sermon” by Malcolm Geiger of Ascended Branding Insights™. The branded giveaway of the evening was custom hand sanitizer. There was also, of course, a brand new car (Nissan Cube).

The evening was at best a corporate whirlwind of Hawaiian/Caribbean vibes™, and at worst a journey, like, on a ship across a long bad ocean. Tropical (in a confused way) either way, as is usually the case at business trade shows. This motif needs unpacking.

It started out pretty weird and then ended pretty weird: the come-and-goers were in and out within the first hour, and from there on those of us that were there to stay really went through something together. Not like really anything but something. It just kept getting weirder and we let it happen with open arms…arm in arm (so I guess like we all had linked arms, a long line of us, and the two people at the ends were the arms that embraced the weirdness in the human-chain super-hug ((this is a metaphor))). Everyone’s work was amazing and smart and funny. Jack’s, Selden’s and Malcolm’s performances took it home. And, not that anyone noticed or cared, but Flo Rida’s “My House” played after the performances (because I played it) and I thought it was funny.

I was, and still am, over the moon about everyone’s work. It was all amazing!!! My boyfriend bought one of everything. It’s always exciting to see a super diverse group of makers & thinkers responding very strongly™ to the same prompt, particularly one that involves humor and language and addresses its own consumption.

It’s also #1 exciting they made some money. I’ve always been interested in corporate culture as this sort of unrelentingly daft, forced-fun, uncanny swing-and-miss-at-paradise system because how does a PowerPoint slide that is a word cloud of the words “thank you” in a hundred languages at an hour-long meeting run the complex economic & social structure that is capitalism and thus create the inequality gaps that it does? Most recently, I’ve been particularly interested in comparing corporate culture to the economic tidal wave that is alternative identity & art and its seamless fit with cultural capital via pop-up shops. Here is some stuff I wrote about it:

“An incredibly enterprising bunch, young new media artists mimic the corporate super-brands (who first mimicked the artists) and present their stuff in pop-up shops! Born of neoliberalism, turns out that the “alt” every institutional debutant has been calling for is an “alternative means of” rather than “alternative to” capitalism.

Neoliberalism promotes progress via individualism and entrepreneurial spirit, its end game being a world where every business is a person and every person is a business. So when work is being made to present in a world where there is pressure to sell, sell, sell (sell your brand, sell your identity, promote yourself, promote your work, stay relevant), the revolution is presented…for sale. It seems we are fighting capital with capital (the currency of which may not be wealth directly, but cultural currency of relevance that accumulates audiences that can lead to actual profits through indirect channels like those kids on tumblr–even the word ‘relevance’ as we know and love it was coined by them). Lisa Nakamura explains, “The neoliberal position maintains that social disadvantage is a result of an individual’s failure to ‘make themselves’ correctly and that inequality is due to poor personal choices” as opposed to systemic or institutional failings. So the struggle for relevance, in the humble opinion of neoliberalism, is then a struggle of life or death.

In an age and a space where identity performance, connectivity, and relevance are all important (again, life or death!!!), the pop-up shop move is no big surprise for artists trying to make internet art and afford Brooklyn. Pop-ups have been around for 15 years, peaking around 2010 — and without decline (an Eventbrite study found that there was still 82% growth in pop-up dining gigs since 2014). Pop-ups are temporary, only existing for a few hours or a few days. Even using the word pop-up invokes urgency and relevance, catering to the madness of a FOMO economy where all your social media marketing adds up to basically zero ROI but one good party at a club in East London that actually exists to secretly sell a Nissan will create a “lifelong” “relationship” (of probably just good vibes) with the brand. Even the big art institutions are affected by the experience economy, throwing real bangers of exhibits while getting shit on by the critics for it and experiencing declining visitors nonetheless.”
[“The Alternative Is For Sale,” Temporary Art Review, 2016].

So yeah I did one…and so did we. Together, today. Always. Us. More than just ours….Yours. Just $189 a month.

The show featured Selden Paterson, Ruby Yacht collective, @100Percent Liz for CyberSerenity, NYC collective hot schmucks, Jack Kinsella, Mike Renaud, Crystal Zapata, Alex White of White Mystery, Stacy Lee Gee, DIY Matt Gonzalez, Mary Lee Costanza, Giselle Gatsby of Glamour Girl Mag, Jimmy Coyote, and more. And More!

And also these made-up artists:

Sean Craffley
Digital Minimalism (16)
A single pixel, paper, inkjet, 2015
17 in x 62 in

Jameson Jacks
[Record]
Installation: Light dancing on the wall that is being reflected from your favorite record as it spins, 2011

Shrin Lik
These!
Pinatas in the shape of various advertising graphic elements (cardboard, glue, tissue paper), 2011

Fresta Bjesta
A Neoliberal Gesture Or Two
Interpretative dance to ambient noise captured in the corporate headquarter offices at Tropicana (post-acquisition by PepsiCo), 1999

Tagg Angel
My Likes Are The Sound of The Dust On Your Sister’s Favorite Blood Stain (or “A Fountain I Found In May And Then Destroyed By Accident”)
A New Media poem composed of a specific collection of “likes” on Facebook that can be seen under “Interests” on her artist page, 2015

Alex Livingston (@alexlives)
Social Landscapes
Panoramic Snapchats of constructed social environments (After Jeff Wall), 2014

Julia Sky
“Ellen Degeneres Show: This 22-Year Claims She Is an 82-Year-Old Grandma”
of the Trending Now series
Intermedia Performance: appearing on Facebook’s “Trending” headlines for various reasons, 2015

Sean Trackney
Being Famous
Performance: Artist directing [a celebrity]’s every action and speaking, 2015

Nina Quartino
iGaze: We are You (You are We)
Sculpture: Anthropomorphized mirror looking into a mirror, 2016