Help Jourdain Afford Graduate Study at SAIC!
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TL;DR:
A trans female artist is seeking to raise money for living expenses and costs attendant to gaining admission into the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Below you will find an outline of the situation, a break down of the dollar goal, and (for the really curious!) an artist’s statement.
OUTLINING THE SITUATION
My name is Jourdain and I am an art historian, poet, and performance artist who has been accepted into the School of the Art of Institute of Chicago’s MFA in Writing program. This is a considerable achievement and the result of many years of hard work. I am humbled to be admitted and confident that I can capitalize upon my momentum at the most influential school of art and design in the United States.
As goes without saying, however, the arts are a difficult place to thrive, particularly as a student—let alone a poet! SAIC is a renowned institution with impressive, industry-shaping resources; I consider myself extremely fortunate to have gained access to them. But like many things worth doing—and doing well—this opportunity comes with a significant hurdle. It likely won’t surprise any of you to learn that this hurdle is primarily financial.
I am a trans woman moving to an urban center, and my health care, safe residence, and travel costs are likely different from other students in my cohort. In seeking to close the gap—to start out on the strongest foot possible—I am asking for the assistance of family, friends, supporters, like-minded artists, and the LGBTQ+ community (and our allies) as a whole. I have crunched the numbers and am prepared to take on a significant amount of debt in order to pursue my dream and make use of the networking, materials, and instruction afforded by SAIC. But even after securing loans and some minor institutional funding, I find myself at a deficit: and so I am currently seeking to raise money for living expenses, so that I might tackle my two years in Chicago with less concern for my immediate safety net.
I don’t often discuss my work in the context of being trans, but recognize that it is a crucial dimension of how I have navigated my identity as an artist. Historically, trans writers have been relegated to the realms of activism, criticism, and self-sustaining theory and the manifesto. I believe that my work—which is situated in conversation with the arts as a whole and with practice as a kind of sacred space for constructing the self—dialogues with a kind of agency that our community is desperately in need of seeing realized within the arts. I don’t identify as trans before I identify as an artist, but the two are inextricably bound: no matter how much I might try to disentangle them, being trans shapes my relationship with the world around me and my access to resources in the arts. While all artists struggle—an untenable status quo in its own right—trans artists are among the least represented in the world of high art. It is important that we gain access to these spaces, to lift voices outside of the reductive echo chamber of “being trans” and promulgate, before all else, our discrete realities as individuals and as artists—not as a monolith or a rack to hang the presuppositions of an art world that honors gender diversity as a prop or a provocation before it honors it as a source of power, transcendence, and vision. I believe that I can build a wiser world through my art—I have suffered for it, and the time has come to simply sweat for it. The artist should be afforded this opportunity to thrive, but the trans artist MUST be afforded this opportunity in order to survive within the arts at all. The work of trans artists is urgent, relevant, and necessary, but can’t be achieved without equal access to resources.
It is humbling to ask for help—it really is. But I believe in my community and trust that my community believes in me. And this community is a powerful font of empathy and mutual aid. While I have supported similar fundraising in the past—and have spent much of my career in the arts building up a diverse community of artists through the theatre, the workshop, and a theory of radical inclusivity in arts education and the museum space—I have reached the point where I, myself, must ask to be the recipient of that generosity.
After so much time developing in the dark, it is important to allow others the opportunity to nourish my soil—no one gets through this life alone. Art is the product of community—and so am I. Thank you, to the ends of the earth, for your generosity and for your continued support of my mission and—perhaps—my mandate.
BREAKING DOWN THE DOLLAR GOAL
In the interest of transparency: I have calculated the amount of money I am fundraising by assuming a budget deficit of around one thousand dollars a month. I intend to take out about 80k in loans and assume a part-time job to meet the rest of my (considerable) expenses. Tuition at SAIC is 54k per year. I have received about 14k per year in tuition assistance, putting this number at 40k per year in out-of-pocket tuition. I’m estimating all-in living expenses at about 30k a year. So I am seeking to raise about 12k per year to fill in the gaps between sources of funding, primarily to pay for living expenses—rent, food, transportation, health care—as much of my loan money, if not all of it, will have to be dedicated to tuition. If anyone has any questions, I’m happy to do a Q&A!
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
I discovered poetry in the 4th grade, but I was a poet before I wrote poetry. This is the essential thought-process that animates what I do—a foregone conclusion I assume throughout much of my work: poetry is more than poetry and so, by extension, a poet must be more than someone who writes poetry. Patti Smith closes her charmingly otherworldly meditation on the craft of writing, Devotion, with this wonderfully succinct observation: “Why do we write? A chorus erupts. Because we cannot simply live.” I believe that poetry exists to complicate beauty. I believe that art exists to complicate truth. For me, creation is a protest—not a pageant. And so I am more than a person who writes poetry: I write because I “cannot simply live,” but—even more than this—I write because I cannot simply be.
To be a poet is to exist in sight. The word is incredibly loaded—even more than the similarly-loaded “artist,” the word “poet” is fraught with baggage and history. So what is a poet? I believe that a poet is one who sees because she is looking. And because she is looking, she is able to think the thing she sees. And because she can think the thing she sees, she can speak the thing she sees. And eventually, she can speak a thing into existence. And through this—above all else—she can speak a thing into sight. Importantly: she can speak herself into sight.
A poet is one who speaks herself into sight.
My identity as a writer of poetry—as a poet, then, in this most obvious sense—is intimately tied up with my other identities: I am a transgender woman whose dimensions revolve around the axes of many intersecting vines. We might call these vines things like “religion” and “race” and “gender,” but when we reduce them to these singular colors, we lose something of the grand “mess” of identity. It seems simpler to argue, instead, that my voice, as a poet, is informed by existing at the very margins of marginalization. I would hate to discount my identities as key influences—because they certainly are—but it is important for me to clarify, from the start, that who or what I am is less relevant to my work than how or why I write. Again: I write because I cannot simply be. I write to speak myself into existence—into sight.
Interdisciplinarity is key to my practice; my backgrounds in theatre and art history necessarily inflect my work. Art historical training has taught me to engage in fuller conversation with many of my immediate models, allowing me to stitch lines in space and time between literary influences (Lautréamont, Bowles, Melmoth the Wanderer, Stein, Seidel, the Qur'an), theoretical influences (self-reflexivity, sublimity, the fluid grammar of punk), performative influences (gospel, occult ritual, rock and roll, the Spaghetti Western), and visual influences (Synthetic Cubism, Duchamp, Islamic ornament, Neo-Expressionism, Matisse). My background in directing theatre has impacted my writing along similar lines, training my eye toward revision as the single most important dimension of my writing process while influencing my interest in disrupting and disorienting the fundamental tension between poetry-as-performance and poetry-as-page. Theatre has also trained me for collaboration, which is crucial to my process of revision. In brief: interdisciplinary concerns are the lifeblood of my work—performance and academia support the soul of my poetry. In essence, then, I've utilized what I've learned from art theory and the craft of seeing to approach my writing through more experimental, less sacrosanct, lenses. I've become a better writer by expanding my definitions: as artist, as woman, as student, as performer, as audience. I've clarified myself in order to clarify the work, and have found that—in a circular sense—the work manages to further clarify me.
I am not interested in a poetry of literature. I am not interested in a poetry of art. I am not interested in a poetry of self-discovery as promulgated by poets who feel the work exists in the isolate or can ever be divorced from the influence of pure experience. I am not interested in the phenomenological horseshit that just came out of my own mouth. To write an artist's statement is to self-immolate; to write a poem is to transcend. These are distinct processes. Many writers destroy the self in order to provide their work with an audience. I am not interested in this. My poetry seems to develop under the assumption that it manifests its own relevance by constructing the poet who writes it. I am not interested in poetry-as-process and I am not interested in poetry-as-product. What I am interested in—I have realized it as I have wandered through this tortured paragraph—is a poetry that exists as an extension of the poet's body: another liver, another lung, another pelvis. Most importantly of all, to return to an earlier theme: another set of eyes.
The poet speaks herself into sight. I write because I cannot simply be. In the alchemy that exists in the liminal space between those two poles, you will find my poetry—you will find me.
TL;DR:
A trans female artist is seeking to raise money for living expenses and costs attendant to gaining admission into the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Below you will find an outline of the situation, a break down of the dollar goal, and (for the really curious!) an artist’s statement.
OUTLINING THE SITUATION
My name is Jourdain and I am an art historian, poet, and performance artist who has been accepted into the School of the Art of Institute of Chicago’s MFA in Writing program. This is a considerable achievement and the result of many years of hard work. I am humbled to be admitted and confident that I can capitalize upon my momentum at the most influential school of art and design in the United States.
As goes without saying, however, the arts are a difficult place to thrive, particularly as a student—let alone a poet! SAIC is a renowned institution with impressive, industry-shaping resources; I consider myself extremely fortunate to have gained access to them. But like many things worth doing—and doing well—this opportunity comes with a significant hurdle. It likely won’t surprise any of you to learn that this hurdle is primarily financial.
I am a trans woman moving to an urban center, and my health care, safe residence, and travel costs are likely different from other students in my cohort. In seeking to close the gap—to start out on the strongest foot possible—I am asking for the assistance of family, friends, supporters, like-minded artists, and the LGBTQ+ community (and our allies) as a whole. I have crunched the numbers and am prepared to take on a significant amount of debt in order to pursue my dream and make use of the networking, materials, and instruction afforded by SAIC. But even after securing loans and some minor institutional funding, I find myself at a deficit: and so I am currently seeking to raise money for living expenses, so that I might tackle my two years in Chicago with less concern for my immediate safety net.
I don’t often discuss my work in the context of being trans, but recognize that it is a crucial dimension of how I have navigated my identity as an artist. Historically, trans writers have been relegated to the realms of activism, criticism, and self-sustaining theory and the manifesto. I believe that my work—which is situated in conversation with the arts as a whole and with practice as a kind of sacred space for constructing the self—dialogues with a kind of agency that our community is desperately in need of seeing realized within the arts. I don’t identify as trans before I identify as an artist, but the two are inextricably bound: no matter how much I might try to disentangle them, being trans shapes my relationship with the world around me and my access to resources in the arts. While all artists struggle—an untenable status quo in its own right—trans artists are among the least represented in the world of high art. It is important that we gain access to these spaces, to lift voices outside of the reductive echo chamber of “being trans” and promulgate, before all else, our discrete realities as individuals and as artists—not as a monolith or a rack to hang the presuppositions of an art world that honors gender diversity as a prop or a provocation before it honors it as a source of power, transcendence, and vision. I believe that I can build a wiser world through my art—I have suffered for it, and the time has come to simply sweat for it. The artist should be afforded this opportunity to thrive, but the trans artist MUST be afforded this opportunity in order to survive within the arts at all. The work of trans artists is urgent, relevant, and necessary, but can’t be achieved without equal access to resources.
It is humbling to ask for help—it really is. But I believe in my community and trust that my community believes in me. And this community is a powerful font of empathy and mutual aid. While I have supported similar fundraising in the past—and have spent much of my career in the arts building up a diverse community of artists through the theatre, the workshop, and a theory of radical inclusivity in arts education and the museum space—I have reached the point where I, myself, must ask to be the recipient of that generosity.
After so much time developing in the dark, it is important to allow others the opportunity to nourish my soil—no one gets through this life alone. Art is the product of community—and so am I. Thank you, to the ends of the earth, for your generosity and for your continued support of my mission and—perhaps—my mandate.
BREAKING DOWN THE DOLLAR GOAL
In the interest of transparency: I have calculated the amount of money I am fundraising by assuming a budget deficit of around one thousand dollars a month. I intend to take out about 80k in loans and assume a part-time job to meet the rest of my (considerable) expenses. Tuition at SAIC is 54k per year. I have received about 14k per year in tuition assistance, putting this number at 40k per year in out-of-pocket tuition. I’m estimating all-in living expenses at about 30k a year. So I am seeking to raise about 12k per year to fill in the gaps between sources of funding, primarily to pay for living expenses—rent, food, transportation, health care—as much of my loan money, if not all of it, will have to be dedicated to tuition. If anyone has any questions, I’m happy to do a Q&A!
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
I discovered poetry in the 4th grade, but I was a poet before I wrote poetry. This is the essential thought-process that animates what I do—a foregone conclusion I assume throughout much of my work: poetry is more than poetry and so, by extension, a poet must be more than someone who writes poetry. Patti Smith closes her charmingly otherworldly meditation on the craft of writing, Devotion, with this wonderfully succinct observation: “Why do we write? A chorus erupts. Because we cannot simply live.” I believe that poetry exists to complicate beauty. I believe that art exists to complicate truth. For me, creation is a protest—not a pageant. And so I am more than a person who writes poetry: I write because I “cannot simply live,” but—even more than this—I write because I cannot simply be.
To be a poet is to exist in sight. The word is incredibly loaded—even more than the similarly-loaded “artist,” the word “poet” is fraught with baggage and history. So what is a poet? I believe that a poet is one who sees because she is looking. And because she is looking, she is able to think the thing she sees. And because she can think the thing she sees, she can speak the thing she sees. And eventually, she can speak a thing into existence. And through this—above all else—she can speak a thing into sight. Importantly: she can speak herself into sight.
A poet is one who speaks herself into sight.
My identity as a writer of poetry—as a poet, then, in this most obvious sense—is intimately tied up with my other identities: I am a transgender woman whose dimensions revolve around the axes of many intersecting vines. We might call these vines things like “religion” and “race” and “gender,” but when we reduce them to these singular colors, we lose something of the grand “mess” of identity. It seems simpler to argue, instead, that my voice, as a poet, is informed by existing at the very margins of marginalization. I would hate to discount my identities as key influences—because they certainly are—but it is important for me to clarify, from the start, that who or what I am is less relevant to my work than how or why I write. Again: I write because I cannot simply be. I write to speak myself into existence—into sight.
Interdisciplinarity is key to my practice; my backgrounds in theatre and art history necessarily inflect my work. Art historical training has taught me to engage in fuller conversation with many of my immediate models, allowing me to stitch lines in space and time between literary influences (Lautréamont, Bowles, Melmoth the Wanderer, Stein, Seidel, the Qur'an), theoretical influences (self-reflexivity, sublimity, the fluid grammar of punk), performative influences (gospel, occult ritual, rock and roll, the Spaghetti Western), and visual influences (Synthetic Cubism, Duchamp, Islamic ornament, Neo-Expressionism, Matisse). My background in directing theatre has impacted my writing along similar lines, training my eye toward revision as the single most important dimension of my writing process while influencing my interest in disrupting and disorienting the fundamental tension between poetry-as-performance and poetry-as-page. Theatre has also trained me for collaboration, which is crucial to my process of revision. In brief: interdisciplinary concerns are the lifeblood of my work—performance and academia support the soul of my poetry. In essence, then, I've utilized what I've learned from art theory and the craft of seeing to approach my writing through more experimental, less sacrosanct, lenses. I've become a better writer by expanding my definitions: as artist, as woman, as student, as performer, as audience. I've clarified myself in order to clarify the work, and have found that—in a circular sense—the work manages to further clarify me.
I am not interested in a poetry of literature. I am not interested in a poetry of art. I am not interested in a poetry of self-discovery as promulgated by poets who feel the work exists in the isolate or can ever be divorced from the influence of pure experience. I am not interested in the phenomenological horseshit that just came out of my own mouth. To write an artist's statement is to self-immolate; to write a poem is to transcend. These are distinct processes. Many writers destroy the self in order to provide their work with an audience. I am not interested in this. My poetry seems to develop under the assumption that it manifests its own relevance by constructing the poet who writes it. I am not interested in poetry-as-process and I am not interested in poetry-as-product. What I am interested in—I have realized it as I have wandered through this tortured paragraph—is a poetry that exists as an extension of the poet's body: another liver, another lung, another pelvis. Most importantly of all, to return to an earlier theme: another set of eyes.
The poet speaks herself into sight. I write because I cannot simply be. In the alchemy that exists in the liminal space between those two poles, you will find my poetry—you will find me.
Organizer
Jourdain Barton
Organizer
Monterey, CA