“Swedish-Canadian Lars Cuzner is a trickster who you’re never sure is on the level. Using assumed identities and provocative language, his work has often sparked controversy, addressing uncomfortable topics such as racism, Nordic nationalism and the rise of right-wing populism all over Europe. As part of the festival’s ongoing Situation Reports, he roamed the streets as a self proclaimed “con-artist” interviewing politicians and the general public attempting to raise funds for his self help book that he describes as a ´really bad book.´” Forbes.com

Lars Cuzner’s “Good From Far” is about artistic research and literary production. This three-year endeavor aimed to explore the boundaries of publishing, authorship, and the commodification of ideas in the contemporary literary landscape.

The primary objective was to secure a book deal with a publisher without presenting any written content.

This is an excerpt from a terrible book, Good From Far, by me, Lars Cuzner.

It was never meant to be a good book and I lied to get it published. Actually, that’s not entirely true, I told people that I was lying, but I wasn’t. If you can’t get people to believe you, tell them you’re lying. So I told everyone that I’m a con artist. They didn’t believe me because I’m a conceptual artist. It’s a simple enough trick, which is a good thing, because in the confidence game, simplicity is your best friend.

The art scene, or the so called international contemporary art scene, to be exact, has internalised and accepted a set of social behaviours that in other areas of life would be considered scams. What this means is that in the arts, you can apply manipulation techniques that are used in straight up illegal cons without it being considered criminal. To understand this we need to look at the complex relationship the art profession has to insecurity.

Exactly no one is surprised to hear that cons are prevalent in the art world and I will explain why that is, but this book is not an exposé of art world high finance. It’s not about forgeries or money laundering. That’s a real thing though, art money is a massive con and one of our societies most accepted unregulated economies. But that is for another story. This is a self help book that explains the psychology of the confidence and insecurity game. The art scene just happens to be the perfect place to illustrate this particular kind of game. 

 I’m going to teach you in this book is how to use your insecurity to your advantage. First you need to understand that most people with influence in the art field confuse cultural power with power. The professional art world focuses on describing struggles and conflicts that will never effect the art world, and those who represent it will most likely believe that they are agents of real change in society. To con someone you need to make them first con themselves, and that is much easier with people who are already self-delusional about something that is so obviously not true. 

Back to the opening statement of this introduction. This is actually a poorly written book and I don’t want anyone to correct it. I’m not just saying that to be coy, I’m trying to prove that I pulled off my con. Call it professional pride. I got the publishing deal before I had written anything. I am not an author and I have never published anything. I got this book deal because I’m an artist and I said that I was a con artist. The only promise I made was that the book would be bad. Since I’m an artist people just assumed that I wasn’t telling the truth. I’m using the art world to get a self help book published. To make money, obviously. That should sounds counter-intuitive. Art is necessarily selective and self help isn’t considered much of an art form. To pull this off I had to do a con.

First of all, know this. The easiest people to con are people who are highly educated and consider themselves intelligent. The reason for this is simple, they believe themselves to be above being duped. The perfect mark. The art profession attracts this type of person in droves since it yields irrational levels of social status. And because it’s a very small and competitive field, both in number of jobs and audience, it is overrepresented with easy victims of easy scams. 

Disclaimer: Throughout this book you might find yourself thinking -“That’s not only true for the art world. That’s true in any profession” – and you would be correct in thinking so, but there are some specific differences that set the art profession apart, so let’s start there.

In theory, the art game is a pretty easy scam, the problem is that everyone who is playing it is insecure. The confidence game thrives on insecurity, but when everyone in the game is disguising their own insecurity, they are more sensitive to micro expressions of over-playing your confidence. The art game is about fluid confidence while struggling. I know, it’s confusing, and it has to be played over several years. In the art world you have to fake being a little bit fucked up, or fake being poor. It’s about being interesting. Easy living makes for boring people and everyone knows it.

The scam is to pretend that you are insecure but successful. This is confusing for people who are actually insecure. Competition is fierce and it doesn’t take much to get a bad reputation. You are constantly being read. Intelligence agents do this, they call it butt sniffing, like dogs do. They are professional bullshitters so they sniff out bullshit on the first meeting with anyone. You know that old joke? “Deja moo – The feeling that you’ve heard this bullshit before”. My kids always loved this joke and used to say it to me whenever I started telling them how this new project was the one to get us out of this crappy apartment. 

When you’re getting started, you don’t really know why your efforts aren’t paying off. You don’t know what you’re doing wrong, and when it does work you don’t know why it worked. You’re just winging it. Because that’s what you do in the beginning. Nobody is showing you what to do, and they don’t teach you this in school, (because, frankly, the truth isn’t very flattering). In this confidence game you have to learn to use your insecurity as a weapon. I tell this to young aspiring artists and I tell them what works – not what they think works – but what actually works. If they listen to me they enjoy it more and get better results, they survive the game longer. Naturally, most young people are not receptive to this kind of advice and bless them for that.