Deconstructing the Deck

“Insiders promote special interests, but intellectuals should be the ones to question patriotic nationalism, corporate thinking, and a sense of class, racial, or gender privileges.” Edward Said, Representations of the Intellectual: The Reith Lectures (1996) “I spend half my life trying to dumb down my ideas to fit nicely in a 15 slide deck.” (@MissShellySays, Twitter) The pitch deck is both medium and method— not to mention one of the most consequential forms of rhetoric our civilization has produced. Uber, AirBnB and even the Challenger began in powerpoint. If we imagine a world in which visuals not only have meaning, but material impact, then we can look at the pitch deck as both a critical reality and new territory for artistic and performance practice. This workshop will spotlight artists and industry practitioners looking to reinvent the medium. The Visit team-- Victoria and Patrick-- will do a brief presentation introducing concepts from the standpoint of industry practices. Our roster of artists and practitioners will then give in-practice performances and act as workshop consultants. We’ll deconstruct the politics of the pitch -- as a form of rhetoric, as an investment strategy, and as a novel performance medium -- then collectively strategize what a formal intervention to this already-existing industry convention could look like and mean. Everyone will leave with a better ability to present an idea with clarity and conviction, a technical understanding of what to expect when launching a project or start-up idea, and a means to address what, in a corporate context, is known as “formulating the mess": how do we locate an argument within a broad field of problematics? Some questions we will address: when presenting an idea, what happens when we re-shift the territory of investigation to reveal a different issue than the one we anticipated? How can one “front” corporate methodology as a means to “finance” the development of interesting projects? How do we leverage an entrepreneurial spirit in the name of an inventive failure? Finally, how do we expand conventional investment models in the name of not only an ethical redistribution of wealth, but the kind of growth that tends towards experimentation, rather than exploitation? We invite anyone working on an idea, presentation, or project; anyone who wants to up their grant game; and anyone invested in new modalities of performance practice, to come and work with us.