“Awesome” was the word that came to mind when I received a mass e-mail from Ed Marszewski last week announcing that donations for the sixth annual Version festival would be–brace yourself–tax deductible! Marszewski, grand master of the antiestablishment art underground, is going institutional: his Public Media Institute, which produces both the Version fest in the spring (this year it’s from April 19 to May 6) and the Select Media festival in the fall, became a state-sanctioned nonprofit in December. Yep, “the weird go pro,” he says. “We need to build some infrastructure.”
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Marszewski’s actually been raising funds without the lure of a tax deduction ever since Version got kicked out of the Museum of Contemporary Art. A pressure cooker of art, technology, activism, and party time, the festival was launched at the museum in 2002, but things turned sour during the second installment. Marszewski says the Version crew was accused of inviting war protests, and police, “dressed up in ninja gear,” wound up shutting the whole thing down. “We weren’t invited back ‘for budget reasons,’” he says. “I think it had to do with the fact that a few artists went a little crazy, bothered a fund-raiser dinner three times, broke a door.”
Marszewski expects his expenses to rise to as much as $50,000 in ’07. “This year we want to make sure we have a budget to build more things, fly in more people from overseas, and also pay for security and cleanup staff,” his e-mail said.
