Intl. Federation of Failed Artists (and musicians)

IFFAM Call for Membership
According to exhaustive historical research, 94.86% of all living and dead artists are failures. We, the silent majority, have suffered too long in ignominious obscurity. It's time for the rejects, has-beens and wannabes to crawl out of the footnotes of history (and your mother's basement) to wear proudly the glorious crown of failure!


FAILURE IS BEAUTIFUL -  WE ARE THE WORLD!!
To start, fill out the questionnaire  below. It is a quick way for you to determine whether you are truly a Failed Artist (FA) and thus qualify to join our ranks, or not.

This may well be the most significant step in your miserable life up to this point.


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 delusional success junkies. I will endeavor to ignore any temptations offered to me by Hollywood studios, Broadway producers, publishers, MOMA, and the New York Philharmonic.

Signed                                    dated


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 fiascoes 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


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 discovered. 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.


Sister Organizations
IFFA is a worldwide movement of artists who are excluded or have excluded themselves from the marketplace of commercialized art in all its forms. The federation has chapters for various art forms that include the:

• Association of Failed Musicians and Composers (AFMC)
• Fine Arts Failures International (FAFI)
• League of Unpublished Authors (LUA)
• Performers Without Audience (PWA)
• Flop-and-Bust Filmmakers Cooperative (FBFC)

Activities & Publications

• Failed artist pride parade - New York City  (to coincide with the Armory show)
  
• “Failed Artist” bumper stickers, T-shirts, and ringtones distributed to art, dance, and music academies
  
• “Footnote Masters” - An encyclopedia of the great failed artists throughout history, with a focus on painters, sculptors, composers, and authors  who left no work behind, who did not gain posthumous fame, whose work in its entirety was junked after their deaths, or of whom we only know through occasional references in footnotes.
  

                                             Success is just failing to fail

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