NOTE: below is the original posting of the SUBSTITUTION project I've been working on for several years. I published the results of 2006 here and didn't think much about doing a 2007 edition until now. One of the original artists who participated, Francis Bekemans from Gent/Gand Belgium, sent me his 2007 response spontaneously without me asking - thank you very much - that has since inspired me to lance a 2007 version. I encourage you all to participate, have fun and don't take it too seriously. You can leave your responses in the comment section at the bottom of this page. So, Instead of making art... what do you do?

I began a project several years ago entitled Substitution, which until now, was never completed. I asked several artists to complete the following sentence: “Instead of Making Art I ___” (Au lieu de faire de l'art je/j'ai ___ ) by filling in the blank. The idea was taken from a conceptual art project of the same name, by the artist Frederick Barthelme in the 1970's. He had at the time, sent the same question to artists and friends via letters and the beloved fax machine. By doing so, Barthelme cast his question in a bottle into a sea of responses. I've not seen many of the original answers he received in return and would hope that they're compiled somewhere in an anthology of conceptual art.

I’ve always had a great interest in this type of art, a soft spot for Dada & Surrealism, and word/text art in general. I liked the simplicity of Barthelme’s project and decided to do a "cover", so to speak, of his project by updating it by 21st century standards in using the communication technology of today – email. I emailed the artists participating the exact same question and encouraged them to use other technics such as digital images, animations, graphics etc. as a way of answering. The only rule (hardly) was that the responses remain virtual, no printed or hard copies were accepted.

I hope you'll discover a variety of responses that are surprising, that are often very candid, and often times are very funny but nonetheless worthy of further discussion and investigation into what artists do with their FREE time when not making art. If such a thing could be possible... I also encourage you to leave your own comments as to what you do or don't do, when not working as an artist. Enjoy!