The student orchestra plays the local university's performing arts center on October 17. It plays there again on November 21. Those are the public performances on the fall calendar.

I will go. I go to everything. You gaze at it. That is the job.

The paper has asked me what bad art is. First I should say that as a collector I am shallow. I look at the surface. The surface is where they put the paint.

So there are two rules.

One. It does not look good.

It's just that simple.

In music nobody argues with this. A man says he won't listen to a record that doesn't sound good, and the room nods, and somebody puts on something else. Say the same sentence about a picture and somebody hands you the wall text.

By this rule the performing arts center is not bad art. It looks very good. It opened in October 2023 and I have been gazing at it since. A collector always asks the price. The architecture press lists it: cost, withheld. Is the surface juicy? The surface is very juicy.

Two. It signals, and then it doesn't show up.

I have no objection to signals. I have bought a great many of them. Status is most of the price of anything on a wall. But you hang it. When I gave pictures away, I asked that they stay on the wall.

A performing arts center says, at great expense, that the university believes in performance. Then you count the performances. In December 2024 the student paper reported that student groups still could not get in to perform there. That is a picture bought for the signal and kept in the closet.

It's just that simple.

KOALA RACHEL. It isn't that simple.

KOALA EDLIS. It is a little that simple.

KOALA RACHEL. Of course it's signaling, Stefan. Everything signals. I'm performing right now. So are you, with the gazing. Performance isn't the opposite of real. It's how anything new gets made. Take the signal out of art and there's nothing left to hang.

KOALA EDLIS. So it's good.

KOALA RACHEL. No. It's empty. My whole job is making a room where people want to sit down and spend time. Somebody built a room for exactly that and then didn't let anyone sit down.

KOALA EDLIS. It looks very good empty.

KOALA RACHEL. That's your problem. You'd buy it for the outside.

KOALA EDLIS. I told you. I'm shallow.

KOALA RACHEL. The art isn't the building. It's what happens in it. Nothing happens in it. It's just that simple.

KOALA EDLIS. Now you're saying it.

KOALA RACHEL. Only about this.

The orchestra plays October 17. I will be there, gazing, mostly at the ceiling.