The following excerpt is from an article in the most recent Issue (#30) of huck magazine and talks about my upcoming solo exhibition ‘Welcome To Detroit’ at Eastern Michigan University:

….

….

Hi XXXX,
Although the offer of a discounted hotel room is very tempting, I’m going to have to respectfully decline. I know this isn’t your policy personally, but could you pass the message up the ladder that this is a really disrespectful invitation that shows how little SXSW as an organization values artists. I’ve attached logos of your corporate sponsors below. I hope at future versions of SXSW you find a way funnel any of that money (or the money from your $1195 tickets) to the artists.

For more of my thoughts on this matter you can see my response to SXSW’s 2009 keynote invitation (it’s sad to see not much has changed since then):
http://www.blog.ni9e.com/why-i-wont-be-at-sxsw/

And this brilliant video I found on youtube (via Steve):

Thanks for your invitation, I know it comes from a sincere place. However, I respect my own work (and that of fellow artists) too much to consider an invitation like this.

All the best,
Evan

On 1/12/2012 11:09 PM, XXXXXX wrote:
> Hey Evan,
>
> Great, glad you’ll be stateside around that time. In the midwest I believe?
>
> As for a speakers fee, we do not offer one to anyone who comes to present. That’s been our policy from keynotes and featured speakers on down to general panel sessions since our inception.
>
> But all speakers do receive a comp’d Gold badge (about $1k value) which gets you into all Interactive and Film events as well as a discounted hotel room. You would also be presenting in a 2400 capacity room.
>
> Other speakers of note coming this year: Ray Kurzweil, XXXXXX, XXXXXX, XXXXXX, Tim O’Reilly, XXXXXX, Dennis Crowley amongst others…
>
> Hopefully this is a possibility for you.
>
> XXXXXX

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This is how I feel when registering domain names post GoDaddy SOPA meltdown.