#ah343

[globalarthobal]

ArtRank™ ranks emerging artists using qualitatively-weighted metrics including web presence (verified social media counts, inbound links), studio capacity and output, market maker contracts and acquisitions, major collector and museum support, gallery representation and auction results.

Ew, what's that smell? That, my fellow students, tumblrs, and WWW, is the smell of straightforward art world commodification. No shame. ArtRank is a freshly born website just this year that with the use of algorithms hopes to predict the general market values, or sellability/purchasibility of current contemporary artists' work on the market. There are six blatantly displaced rows of ranksings: 

Buy Now < $10,000

Buy Now < $30,000

Buy Now < $100,00

Early Blue Chip

Sell Now (peaking)

Liquidate (down)

  dis Magazine emailed a number of curators, artists, and critiques who appeared on the list, with varying responses. Most were critical of the power of influence that such a list could generate within the worlds of art markets, and values of then placed upon potential sales.

  Korakrit Arunanondchai’s reply asked for cultural producers to be responsible for the power that they possess to generate values and change culture. “You help make collectors look at artists like stocks and you take away the potentiality of a valuable discourse that could arise from certain artists.”

  Rob Horning said that “it offers people without money a scoreboard for a sort of fantasy baseball of contemporary artists, and reinforces the idea that contemporary art is essentially about monetary competition rather than “expression.” He goes on to conjecture that ArtRank is actually an overt project to discuss these very concerns about the art market and the game of prestige is put on display and trying to be upheld as an honest venture. His comments become more critical about those who have money, and those who don’t, being the rich are actually the creative force behind the artists that the contemporary art world so admires. Instead this art is just a tax break for the extremely rich.

  ArtRank, whether it is an evaluation of value for aid in the purchasing knowledge of the wealthy, or if it is trying to actually point out everything that could be wrong with that, something about ArtRank stinks and it has to do with attempt to succinctly commodify the personhood of an artist as a brand and their value of production. Ultimately, as we've discussed this term, one should always be skeptical of the art markets and the connection of gross commodification of any and all possible "expressions".

[globalarthobal]

POWRPLNT

"POWRPLNT is a digital arts learning and sharing collabortatory where creators of all ages can access software, inspiration, and share their work."

POWRPLNT provides a green space indoor garden through the use of aquaponics to merge the urban, digital, and natural. It is a non-profit space for creative collaboration. POWRPLNT's workspace contains software packed computers that are used in a series of free classes for student from the ages of 13-18. Adults are welcome to use the space on a donation basis for their own projects. The space can also function as a gallery ad most importantly, an open and inviting place for peoples of all backgrounds to come learn and work together.

  Classes are presented by new media art professionals who might specialize a class on specific topics like: 

·       fashion design

·       video production

·       music production

·       digital photography and editing

·       web-based hackery

·       illustration and animation

The founders are currently looking for crowd sourcing on indiegogo here. Basic costs include computer, space rental, software, and utilities. They will function as a pop-up space until a permanent location can be found. 

  Their goals are to provide a safe and healthy place for students as an afterschool zone for exploration in the digital arts while providing technological education for all ages. Their proposed system recalls net cafes intermixed with a museum and a creative thinktank aimed at helping the future tech artists become successful tomorrow.

[globalarthobal]

Christian Marclay's Bollywood Goes To Gstaad, 2013, Video and video installation

Christian Marclay's Bollywood Goes To Gstaad, 2013, Video and video installation

  While working on another project involved in site-specific installations on glaciers in Gstaad, Switzerland, Marclay caught site of the filming of a Bollywood movie on the hills below his location. He was apparently so intrigued by their presence in Gstaad that he devoted a film-editing project to his investigation of the phenomena. The "cut to Switzerland" is an actual term and trope in Bollywood films where the young couple in love is usually suddenly singing on the hills together or dancing without much transition from the landscape of India in the films. The point is that they are transported to a fantasy setting as a dream sequence or celebration of love. This cut used to be a “cut to Kashmir”, but as conflicts increased in that area, the location changed to the safer snowy mountains of Gstaad.

  Marclay’s subsequent work is composed of a collaging of footage from a few decades of Bollywood films that contain these cuts to Switzerland that were specifically in Gstaad. Cutting from the similar settings on scenes, characters can be found on trains, in helicopters, on the hills, at the airport, each scene moves from one similar place, to a cut of the same place in a different film.

  Rachel Aima, the writer of the New Inquiry article on the piece criticizes the new work against Marclay’s previous, The Clock. She wrote that the “cruel” precision of the cuts in The Clock contrasts the movements through the scenes of BGTG, where the actors seem to mesh into one “brown” person as their movements are repeated by the next actor or actress. In this way, Marclay’s own gaze, as a reflection of the origin of the piece is revealed. What he saw was a collection of Indians sticking out in Switzerland, and the film that he made was a bunch of Indians out of place in the Gstaad landscape. Marclay does not seem to be aware of this gaze caused by a trivial process of supposed similarities. Ultimately the editing acts as a reductive blending of one culture, a culture not understood by Marclay, approached with a brief intrigue and exocticism.

  “ And yes,BGTG drips with exoticization, fetish, cultural appropriation, and all the power dynamics that are implicit in a white man repackaging another browner culture to be consumed by the global jet set and art world fancies that frequent the socially gated Gstaad.” –Rahcel Aima

Here is the story from the New Inquiry.

Here is the interview with Marclay on Elevation 1049.

[yesbutnobutmaybe]

"The battle over site-specificity as a model for socially engaged art has been waged primarily over competing definitions of 'place'—an increasingly unstable epistemological category in both theory and practice. Specifically, site-specific art has come under fire for advancing an out-dated methodology that relies on nostalgic, essentializing visions of place and emplacement."

p. 16, Lauzon, "Reluctant Nomads: Biennial Culture and Its Discontents" Understanding the current slippery-ness and fluidity in the mention of place is crucial to the discourse around the Biennial. Biennials are understood to be tied to either the places they happen in or the places from which the exhibiting artists come from or represent. Even ideas around shifting place can become subject to the methodology that Lauzon describes as relying on nostalgia and essentialism, which eschews in the romance of nomadism in biennial culture. This is the notion that evolved somewhere within the boom of biennial culture in the 80s and 90s that privileges an abstracted understanding of transnationalism, commending ideals within the international art world that support the importing and exporting of artists and culture. The problem that Lauzon identifies with this tendency is that it fails to align with the lived realities of nomadism as it is affected by globalization, as the typical biennial locales and audiences are often those who experience the nomadic lifestyle at the affluent end of the spectrum which is highly reflected in the stylings of larger biennials, which Lauzon feels is detached from the other reaches of the spectrum of nomadism.

[yesbutnobutmaybe]

Conclusions drawn from Brian Holmes' essay on DIY Geo-politics: Contemporary globalization activists seek a "resymbolization" of commodities and spatial relationships that highlight the realities of production and distribution of products and media and also argue the importance of operating outside the gallery-magazine-museum system. One of the primary tactics for this is the genre of 'net.art' that utilizes the non-hierarchical and rhizomatic elements of the world wide web as a facilitator for DYI production and distribution. Another tactic that also uses the Internet is the "map generator" in which cartography is re-ordered by anyone with access, focusing more on the social implications of routes and movements and the associated political implications that follow. Demonstrating the latter tactic, I've included the example of one of Bureau d'Études visual infographic maps. This one is the World Government 2013 that can be dowloaded as a pdf to view all text and information. By using the format of a map or flowchart as a model, World Government 2013 lays out in various sections the organizational and economic practices that have power throughout the world in 2013. If reading from top-left to bottom-right, the lines and arrows mark spheres of influence throughout world finance, food markets, governances of finance, and corporations.

[yesbutnobutmaybe]

 Whether you code, tinker, use FLOSS in your projects, want to explore open alternatives, or just want to change the world, all women are welcome – from expert to novice, or anywhere in between. 

Flossie is a network of women interested in using FLOSS (stands for free/libre/open-source software) in order to create digital art, social innovation and creative projects. The network organizes conferences and workshops, with all practitioners working on an independent and volunteer basis including coders, artists, open knowledge advocates, social innovators, activists and researchers. At the time I am writing this I am only aware of the network's establishments in the U.K. and France with a very small section in Canada. Along with their initiatives to provide resources and platforms for women who pursue an interest in coding and technological empowerment, the network has a visible Diversity and Anti-Harrassment Policy. Not only do I see this group participating in aspects of tactical media, but I also see the mission of this project as crucial to emerging global feminism as software proficiency and coding become increasingly integrated into everyday processes technological interactions.

[art-history-rocks]

Tumblr Post #35

Located in London, England and founded in 2007, the Delfina Foundation is an independent, non-political arts foundation which “facilitates artistic exchange through an interrelated program of residencies and public programs, such as talks and exhibitions.” The foundation supports curators, artists, and writers by developing their practice through the use of platforms of public engagement, professional development and “critical discourse around the role of art in society.” The foundation has supported the development of over five hundred artists from around the world. The foundation also supports curators, artists and writers and pushes them to “create career-defining research and commissions, and network with colleagues.” Along with this, they forge “international collaborations to build shared platforms to incubate, to present and to discuss common practices and themes. The foundation recently expanded which made them London’s largest provider of international residencies. Some of the foundations other objectives include strengthening “international collaboration and partnership through organisations, collectives and networks,” and to promote “contemporary visual culture, particularly under-represented practices and practitioners, and contributing to international critical discourse through our programmes.” Example of some art from a resident of the foundation named Larissa Sansour:

[yesbutnobutmaybe]

F.A.T. Lab or Free Art and Technology Lab is another great example of a group that uses "tactical media" in their practice. F.A.T. Lab is concerned with using internet humor to enrich the public domain and bring forth critical questioning around online politics and practices that also relate to everyday use of the internet. "The entire FAT network of artists, engineers, scientists, lawyers, musicians and Bornas are committed to supporting open values and the public domain through the use of emerging open licenses, support for open entrepreneurship and the admonishment of secrecy, copyright monopolies and patents" (via F.A.T. Labs). With "Release early, release often and with rap music," as their motto F.A.T. Labs' practice puts emphasis on intervening in art and culture institutions (example) devising open-ended "speed projects" (example). These speed projects often involve some sort of participation or even critically-devised trolling strategies with goals that include making others skeptical about certain common online practices, giving people free tools that give individuals control over their internet experience, and making apparent ways in which privacy is compromised online.

The video brings up multiple projects in which F.A.T.'s activities are not limited to the computer screen, but one of the more simple, subtle and accessible projects is the DeadDrops project started by "Real Research Fellow" Aram Bartholl. It brings up exciting territory which makes literal the concept of blurring the lines between online and offline, brings up discussions related to the safety of offline sharing, and also provides a workaround for people to file share in ways that bypass online government surveillance.