She-who-shall-not-be-named is a bitch. Yes, I called her a bitch. Petty name calling this character may seem a bit harsh, ok maybe it’s extreme, but allow me to persuade you and perhaps you will agree with my tactics.
Let me begin by saying I do not personally know She-who-shall-not-be-named. I know quite a few people in Miami, but not a single She-who-shall-not-be-named. Whenever I attempt to inquire about this chick, no one seems to know who this bitch is. From under her rock, with the power of her bubbling cauldron, she single handedly managed to wreak havoc in the life of one of the most promising up-and-coming talents from the 305.
Jillian Mayer is a local visual and performing artist who has shown at 20/20 Projects, Art Center/South Florida, David Castillo Gallery, Savacou Gallery in New York City, 111 Minna in San Francisco, and internationally in Toyko, Munich, and Austria. She was also part of the Optic Nerve film festival at the MOCA North Miami this year. Her piece from the exhibition, a video project collaboration with the Borscht Film Festival titled “Scenic Jogging”, was also short-listed for the Guggenheim's YouTube Play: A Biennial of Creative Video. Jillian’s current project, “Mrs., Ms.” is an experimental musical which was commissioned by the Miami Light Project and premiered at the Arsht Center as part of the "Here and Now Festival.” She’s once again teaming up with the guys from the Borscht in order to transform “Mrs., Ms.” from a live-action play to video art, and Kickstarter.com is how they intend(ed) to get the ball rolling.
Jillian explained to me that Kickstarter is a funding platform website that focuses mainly on creative type projects, such as her own, and is designed to help artists, musicians, filmmakers and other passionate souls to raise money towards their endeavors. Its not as easy as Facebook or other social networking websites; in order to be a featured project on the site, you must form a proposal, submit it to Kickstarter, and they decide if you’re ambitious enough to complete your proposed project. Once posted on the site, its up to the community to donate money to your cause. Creators offer incentives to backers who pledge money towards their projects. In the case of Jillian, she offered backers original artwork for those who pledged as little as ten dollars and went as far as to offer to fly to any city in the U.S. and give a private aerial silk performance for a pledge of $4000. You must reach a funding goal before the time limit expires (1-90 days) which are both set by the project creators. Don’t reach the goal and no money is collected from those who pledged. If you do reach your goal, credit cards are charged through Amazon checkout, Kickstarter keeps about 7%, and the rest is yours (and the creators maintain full ownership of their project!).
Jillian was able to get her project posted on the site and made it into local news (being one of the very few projects from Miami ever to be featured). I never doubted that Jillian would reach her goal and in fact, she sky-rocketed passed it in less than a week thanks (or no thanks) to one ghoulishly elusive project backer; that bitch.
On July 29th, the yet-to-be-identified blocker of Jillian’s art-cock made a $4000 pledge. The bologna-faced b.s.-er even made contact via email (on several occasions) with Jillian dropping hints as to having some connection with Th!nkFilm, a privately held production and distribution company founded in September 2001. Low and behold, when the deadline was up and it came time to run all the pledgers credit cards, one transaction would not go through. She-who-shall-not-be-named, with a bogus account assigned to the apparently bogus name, had made a fraudulent pledge towards the “Mrs.,Ms.” project. Jillian and Lucas Leyva, collaborator and one of the founders of the Borscht Film Festival, even went to the extreme of contacting Th!nkFilm looking for her. Apologetically, management at Th!nkFilm informed the pair that no woman under the name has ever been employed by the company. Kickstarter, in an attempt to make amends for the headache and heartbreak of the “rare occurrence”, re-posted “Mrs.,Ms.” and went against its own policy, collecting the legitimate pledges for Jillian’s film, still leaving her approximately $2300 short of her $3000 goal.
In a perfect world, we wouldn’t even need Kickstarter.com. Kickstarter however, like the rest of the world, is not perfect. Jillian states, “There should definitely be some measures taken to protect Kickstarter’s project creators and the legitimate backers who truly believe in the projects they pledge money to. Kickstarter is great because it’s allowed me to open up “Mrs.,Ms.” to a global audience, but knowing the internet allows people to remain anonymous, a simple precaution like charging credit cards for one cent as soon as a pledge is made could help stop this from happening to anyone else.” Reminiscent of Ebay in the days before the Buyer Protection Policy, a little more help from the site would be nice.
If you want to hear more about Jillian Mayer and/or donate to her project “Mrs., Ms.”, you can find her Kickstarter profile here: Jillian Mayer — Kickstarter.
By Orlando Estrada
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