Jerry Saltz: Every artist makes rules — I’ll only use rulers, or I won’t use the camera. One of your rules, unconsciously or consciously, was “I’m not going to be an actor, a star, in these videos”?

James Franco: Yes, early on. Because I had this feeling like, Oh, I should keep these worlds separate. The same thing when I wrote my book. I thought, Oh, I don’t dare write about the movie industry or anything like that. James Franco, artist, is different from James Franco, actor. Then I realized there’s no way, so I’ll try to harness that and use that content as material.

Can the Art World Take James Franco Seriously? – Vulture

art as games, artists as creators of rule-based processes and systems