IFFA Questionaire
* Have you never had the recognition you think you deserve?
* Are you misunderstood by the philistines around you?
* Do you resist success because you are not a sellout like everyone else?
* Are your successes more than half your life in the past?
* Are you an uncreative, untalented, hopeless wannabe?
* Are you 65 or over still hoping to be discovered?
* Does your mother think you are Picasso?
* Does your spouse or boyfriend buy your groceries?
* Are you taking creativity workshops?
* Do you own one or more books that tell you how to:
- Get published
- Get an agent
- Get a record deal
- Get a fan base on Facebook
- Get a gallery
- Get a movie deal?
* When asked: “what’s new in your life”, do you reel off your upcoming gigs?
* Are you a celebrity in Cactus Flat, South Dakota?
* Are you telling people about the great novel/opera/film script/installation you have been working on for the past 10 years?
* Are you a genius waiting to be dead?
* Did you add “internationally renowned” to your bio after playing in your great aunt’s living room in Budapest?
* Do you teach art, music, or dance to little kids?
If you have answered yes to one or more of the questions above. you are one of us, and are eligible to join IFFA.
If you answered yes to ALL of them you are an “Elite Failure”. Congratulations!
If you have answered NO to all of them you are either Yo-Yo Ma or you’re lying.
Testimony
I _______________ the undersigned testify that I have not lived up to my dream of gaining fame and riches through my art or music or writing or dancing or what have you, that my work is either unjustly neglected or rightfully ignored because it’s crap, or because I have never even tried to publish it, or because I don’t have any work, or because no one remembers my past glories (sob, sniffle).
I further testify that this is the last time I will feel sorry for myself and henceforth I will be proud to uphold the age old tradition of failure and declare myself to one and all as a Failed Artist (FA).
As a member of IFFA I promise to support my brothers and sisters in failure wherever they may be and deeply scorn the few freaks who “make it” and the multitude of delusionals success junkies. I will endeavor to ignore any temptations offered to me by Hollywood studios, Broadway producers, publishers, MOMA, and the New York Philharmonic.
FAILURE IS BEAUTIFUL ------ WE ARE THE WORLD!!
Signed dated
Call for submissions
Send us your rejection letters, your crumpled drafts, your torn canvases, your half-baked symphonies, your mold encrusted photographs and movie scripts. Let us shine the light on the failed promises of your dreams. Here in the vast archives of failed artists you will gain the obscurity you deserve and bury once and for all any vain hope of ever being recognized. You will walk tall, free from the burden of having to prove yourself, proud in having found the real YOU - a Failed Artist, a proud link in the unbroken chain of flops and losers that reaches all the way back to the cave dweller who smudged the bison on the wall and never painted again.
Uploads are free and not juried.
Terms of membership
Welcome to IFFA. Congratulations on finally coming to grips with who you truly are as an artist. As a member of IFFA you will have the continuous moral support of a worldwide fraternity and sisterhood of fellow losers. You will have a platform to voice your opinions and exhibit your fiascos to a sympathetic audience. You will proudly wear the IFFA symbol of unfulfilled potential, and never again have to invent fictitious awards and non-existing book deals.
Membership however entails one important obligation - to resolutely renounce the craving for recognition and resist the temptation to make it in any shape or form.
Remember: your continued membership is contingent on continued failure.
Should you at any time succumb to the lure of a one-man-show, a premiere, a part in a play or a movie, or a book deal, your membership will be suspended for 6 months and your work placed on a “wall of shame”. However, once your career attempt fails (as it surely will) your IFFA membership may be reinstated. Be aware though that after 3 such suspensions you will be declared a “failed Failed Artist” and banned forever from IFFA.
Agree Decline
