From: Victoria Wolfe (email suppressed)
Date: Wed Aug 23 2006 - 12:53:39 PDT
Hi Philip
Thank you for your extensive research!!! Too bad you weren't involved
in putting
up my show, I would no doubt have had a much better experience. Truly,
refreshing to read an intelligent reply. Much much appreciated.
As for addressing Justin directly, I don't want to get sucked back into
that
vortex. He knows all about this. I wrote to him directly about it
when the
pooh hit the fan. Maybe now, years later, he'd look at it all
differently.
Possibly Susan will forward my grievance to him, and the webshots
of the show that I emailed to her off-line for their records. If they
want
to post them, they will. I am in a very different place. But my
experience
with that group has been a sore spot for me for a long time, mostly
because of the tremendous effort I put into the project and the nasty
damage control I had to do afterwards.
I do not expect any monetary gain from posting my grievances here.
I don't know what their accounting processes are at the Tank, and I am
so
far from all that and in such a different life, that I am not really
concerned.
Anyone dealing with justin, mike, susan or whomever else at the Tank
will
know to cover their behinds a bit better than I did. The experience
was
extremely unpleasant. Perhaps things have changed! I sure hope so.
I am immersed in other projects and have no time for further postings or
concerns on this topic.
Thanks again, Philip, for your diligent and comprehensive reply. Very
cool
indeed, and fair-minded...and I hope my contribution is interpreted
similarly.
I hope all who read this simply nod their heads, understanding how
painful
that sort of bad experience can be.
Okay, now I have to get back to work.... I'm immersed in a rewrite, and
it is
slow-going. Best to all.
BTW I see Susan as an entirely innocent bystander.
Victoria
On Wednesday, August 23, 2006, at 12:26 PM, Philip Hood wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Aug 2006, Victoria Wolfe wrote:
>
>> Their claim of fidelity to artists and financial
>> credibility just weren't true. ...
>
> hi victoria,
>
> you are essentially accusing the tank of fraud here,
> something that can do substantial damage to their
> reputation. the organization's representative
> on this list (Susan Agliata), in my personal esteem,
> did seem to have a bit of a reactionary (e.g. "this
> is the end of this discussion, GOODBYE!") response,
> but I think it was done more out of inexperience and
> not through calculated malice ... I really do
> think that there should be a higher degree of
> due-diligence through substantiation of the
> claims you make ...
>
> since the tank is a 501(c)3 organization, and they
> are involved with on-line interstate wired money
> transaction/solicitations and a host of
> other things going, a handful of people's careers could
> and maybe quite possibly should be altered. Generally,
> with organizations that have gone corrupt, if they
> are legally accused of something, they use the money
> they've gotten from the public to defend themselves,
> further degrading the net outflow of money and services
> to what is considered their "base constituency," so to
> speak.
>
> I have quite personally found that there has
> always been a bit of "sausage making" thats gone on
> in just about every organization (every interpersonal
> relationship for that matter) & so I don't expect
> the tank to be free of that. That means to me,
> once you open the casing, things are not going to
> be as pretty as you'd like. The case could be
> made here that there is a personal falling out, a
> mis-understanding, rather than a systematic
> mishandling of affairs, or just an honest slipping
> through the cracks of things.
>
> Victoria, I get the feeling that the Tank may
> indeed have been trying to be an honest broker
> overall and something has fallen through the
> cracks. It seems that the many of
> the main people are shifting rapidly, people are
> pretty young there, they've been moving quite
> a bit & I can imagine how things might have
> gotten lost in the shuffle.
> Personally, I'd just write to Justin Krebs
> and let him know your greviances & let him know
> that maybe the organization needs to really listen
> to what you are saying, in terms of doing some soul
> searching. His email is:
>
> email suppressed
>
> At the same time, I'd tell him to seriously consider
> dropping the submission fee on films because its
> limiting & probably doesn't really bring them
> anything, makes them seem overly exclusive, an
> opens them up to collective retribution from the
> community at large.
>
> Aside from all of this, my interest was piqued by
> what you said & I did some free net
> searching and some calling around for information
> on the Tank, and what I could find is this, and
> I'll share w/ you my quick notes:
>
> http://www.improvresourcecenter.com/mb/showthread.php?t=22653
>
> (Justin) Krebs and childhood friend Amy Herzog got the idea
> for The Tank when the former tenant at the site, a small theater
> company,
> left in April. As it happens, Krebs' father runs
> Eric Krebs Theatrical Management, which manages the adjacent
> John Houseman and Douglas Fairbanks theaters. "My dad's been
> on the block for 20 years," Krebs says.
>
> here's a short article about Eric Kreb's, Justin's Father
>
> http://www.injersey.com/day/story/0,2379,438916,00.html
>
> Here's the Tank's 2003 990 Form:
>
> http://dynamodata.fdncenter.org/990s/990search/
> 990.php?ein=010798319&yr=200406&rt=990&t9=A
>
> You can also see that the Tank got a Manhattan
> Community Arts Fund from the Lower Manhattan
> Cultural Council in what looks like 2005:
>
> http://www.lmcc.net/grants/boroughwide/manncommartfund/
> pastrecipients.html
>
> The Tank Ltd.
> To support Bent Festival, an event dedicated to circuit bending, the
> art of modifying existing electronics to create new sounds and unique
> musical instruments.
>
> After moving from their space in mid-manhattan, they've
> teamed up w/ the Collective: Unconscious:
>
> http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_142/artgroup.html
>
> Collective: Unconscious
> has also recieved grants from lmcc.
>
> Justin Krebs is also involved w/:
>
> http://www.drinkingliberally.org/
>
> Justin Krebs and Matthew O'Neill began Drinking Liberally in New York
> City in May, 2003. Previously, the two had collaborated on Speak Up
> New York! - a 2002 state-wide youth civic engagement tour that turned
> into a program for New York state's PBS affiliates.
>
> The New Democratic Majority has held fundraisers
> for The Tank:
>
> http://www.newdemmajority.org/cms/?q=node/view/9067
>
> & etc etc etc ... that means that there's probably a
> long paper trail on the Tank, should you be
> interested in tracking down just what is going
> on (which I think would be a worthy goal), should
> you have some serious issues w/ the organization
> that you think are fundamental to its make-up and
> not just some personal misunderstanding ...
>
> all this just my $.02.
>
> -ml
> pth
>
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
>
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.