This expansion of professional space is a result of another theme that I take to be distinctly contemporary, and that is that artists, in all media, no longer feel obligated to wait around until the established institutions, that is, the certifying agencies, "discover" them. Instead, dancers establish their own showcases, poets their little magazines, visual artists found co-op galleries, in part to say that they will not wait around, they will not take exclusion from the mainstream sitting down. The rise of alternative institutions in every art is thus of a piece, and together they constitute the most radical, most promising development in our professional lives.