About Arbitrary Art Grants

2003 Arbitrary Art Grant
for Digital Graffiti

2002 Arbitrary Art Grant
for Creative Writing

2001 Arbitrary Art Grant for Film

2000 Arbitrary Art Grant for Music

2002 Arbitrary Art Grant for Film
Awarded on June 2, 2001

The Arbitrary Art Grant is our way of making Seattle a more interesting place to live. For the second annual Arbitrary Art Grant, we decided that filmmaking was as good a medium as any to deserve a cash grant. We just completed post-production on our first feature independent film, Rewind, (written and directed by Jeff Scott) and the Seattle International Film Festival was just around the corner. As tedious, laborous, expensive and expansive creating a film can be, we had no interest in offering a grant to professional filmmakers only; we wanted to create a performance that attracted people who wanted to make a film, who made films their own way, for people who would act like they were filmmakers, just for a chance at some quick cash. I remember talking to a couple of filmmakers in Los Angeles who, nearly close to completion, had to cut cardboard triangles to imitate the Doritos they couldn’t afford to purchase. Filmmaking is so damned funny. So this was for all the dreamers and our promotion read as such:

$500.00 to one random person in the act of making, or pretending to make a film on the southeast corner of Denny Street and Westlake Avenue. June 2nd, 2001 between 1:00 – 2:00 p.m.

We had all sorts of professional and non-professional filmmakers, freaks and posers charading around this big corner parking lot next to the Vital 5 gallery. Guys doing stop-frame animation on 16 mm.; people dressed in Bunny costumes humping trees; military action heroes pulling maneuvers in parking spots #27 through #35; child actors and people posing as kidnappers — the police didn’t know what to think. There were a few fake movie cameras built from cardboard and duct tape, but most of the players were recording and making something real. As with every Arbitrary Art Grant, we always find a new way to distribute the money randomly, this time with Pris from Blade Runner running around the crowd with an egg timer in a backpack. When the ringer went off, she was instructed to hand the envelope full of cash to the nearest person holding a camera (real or fake). Nicole Grant, the lucky stranger, was quoted in the paper after the event that she was “spending half the money on drugs and half of film.” She has since become a very close friend and participant in Vital 5 (see Manslaughter).