I think this is a big deal, initial bugs notwithstanding. Giving artists the power to crowd-fund money for projects outside of fee-fueled sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo has the potential to truly test the assumption that small, unfiltered contributions can have a massive impact on the arts.

I’m currently hacking away at my first experiment with the technology, which is a recursive funding model attempting to offer curators the ability to raise money in one place toward a musical release, with all profits being split between the artists and curator in order to facilitate further releases – creating somewhat of a ‘label of labels’ in the process. The idea of crowd-funding discerning and niche music seems like an inevitability, and so I’m trying to gather a few names of  note to get involved and see how it goes. I’m most curious about the assumption that ‘kickstarter’ clone technologies could in fact kickstart multiple instances of kickstarter like technologies. The printer printing printers scenario!

Anyway, until I have something to show for that, download and have a tinker with Ignition Deck.

In discussing the ArtUp concept with people in the tech community, one common argument rears it’s head; “didn’t Kickstarter already fix the arts”?

The answer is, frankly, no. Although Kickstarter and clone IndieGoGo are rare examples of innovative technologies created to produce tangible results for the creative community, we have a long way to go before we can relax just yet.

What is awesome about Kickstarter:

- Dialogue and exchange: Kickstarter requires that artists assess the value of their projects to prospective patrons, and in turn encourages a sense of autonomy and entrepreneurism that is desperately needed in the arts.

- Kickstarter funds projects, and well. Kickstarter has a 43% success rate for over 7,000 projects posted since their launch two years ago. This is a remarkable feat, although the glowing figures may have something to do with their own editorial policy mentioned below.

- Kickstarter as a meme has gotten the public excited about funding creative projects out of their own pocket, and for that we should be grateful. It’s a concept simple enough for mass adoption, and powerful enough to benefit niche projects with the right application.

Some reasons why Kickstarter has not saved the arts just yet. To their credit they do not claim to be addressing many of these problems, however they remain problems that Kickstarter does not effectively address:

- Kickstarter ONLY funds on a per project basis. It helps creatives create things, and not necessarily sustain themselves. This is an vital distinction. Most projects scope out material costs implicit to project completion, however do not incorporate an artist fee.

- Kickstarter seems to favor projects with the widest appeal. After a half hour browse through Kickstarter projects, they begin to start resembling each other. Lots of bright faces, novel mish-mashes and enthusiastic public facing projects, however very few projects that would appear to be of vital importance to the arts as a dynamic and growing field. This is not groundbreaking stuff. Quite whether this is as a result of the higher art community’s lethargy toward adopting the technology (I would not be surprised), or that Kickstarter’s editorial policy favors projects that are easiest to ‘get’ (and consequently have the best chance of continuing their impressive success rate) is impossible to tell, however it is fair to say that Kickstarter is not featuring projects on the bleeding edge of the creative spectrum – which are arguably the projects in the most dire need of support.

- many of the most essential artistic pursuits have no tangible ‘deliverable’, and that is ok.Much was written about how difficult Kickstarter success story Diaspora would find it to deliver on their ambition of building an open source alternative to Facebook (although they appear to be doing handsomely on that front) under the pressure of such publicity and public investment, however that was for a project with an easily visualized deliverable. It would be like Facebook, but open. Now think of how difficult it would be to fit a speculative artistic pursuit, albeit a research interest or creative experiment, to Kickstarter’s model of investment and deliverable. Yet such speculations are the lifeblood of the arts, and hold the potential to reframe generational agendas and perspectives. Is the Kickstarter model flexible enough to facilitate such experiments? On early impressions I do not believe so, which says less about Kickstarter and more about the need for alternate funding streams for contemporary artists outside of a simple ‘you pay me, I deliver X to all of you’ way of thinking.

So with these points in mind, how could we be using Kickstarter more effectively?

- by using it. Many people don’t. Perhaps the reason why Kickstarter is littered with less challenging creative pursuits is because those interested in ‘higher’ arts are slow to adopt these technologies. That may well be the case, and it would be interesting to see how well speculative projects would fare if they were to get past editorial.

- by encouraging media outlets to feature Kickstarter campaigns more prominently. For example, I would be interested to see more Kickstarter widgets attached to blog posts and articles. Perhaps as a result of very few renowned artists using the platform, it is rare that publicity surrounding a work of art offers the public a means to contribute to it’s creators. This is something I will be trying to experiment with for the first two ArtApp releases, as we have the technology available to capitalize on publicity by inviting a readership to contribute back to projects that pique their interests.

ARTISTS ARE STRUGGLING. ARTUP WANTS TO GET CREATIVE ABOUT FIXING THAT.

Only 7% of self identified artists are supported by their artistic work alone(Pew, 2004) and yet while there are an abundance of tools being produced to help the artistic community create, very few tools are in place to help artists become self sustaining, create new opportunities or repair existing ones.

Many of the tools that do exist operate on the core assumption that the media that artists produce, recorded songs, visual artefacts etc, are intrinsically valuable, and that people will pay sufficient money to own and experience them, and afford artists a living in the process.

I think that this assumption, while venerable, is yet to be proven, and I’m growing tired of waiting for it to pan out.

Some people will pay for records, and some people will collect artworks, however in my experience the vast majority of practicing artists do not see anywhere near the kind of income from these channels to sustain themselves financially, let alone plan for the future.

So what if, for the sake of speculation, we assumed the opposite. For musicians, for example, what if we assumed that as things stand, even a moderately well promoted musician will struggle to generate enough income from recorded media and live events to be financially secure. For visual artists, that without supplimenting their income with a day job, producing objects or images alone will not be sufficient to maintain a comfortable existence, even with sizeable academic training.

Then what?

Artup is being established to ask that question, and to develop innovative ideas and tools that put the artist first. The first step is the launch of The Need Feed, which invites the arts community to post real needs and generate discussion as to how those needs could be met technologically.

I believe that artists can eventually derive pleasure and security from providing services to their audiences and the public, and I believe it will take us all getting creative to figure out how those services are going to look. We are supposed to be good at that, right?

It has been long enough, let’s fix this.

www.artup.us

I am really excited to pick up Dorothea Von Hantelmann’s ‘How To Do Things With Art’ (JRP-Ringier) once it is fully released in the States in May.

From the press release:

The Societal Efficacy of Art

At the heart of “How to Do Things with Art” lies the question of art’s
relevance to society. How does art become politically or socially
significant? This book attempts to answer this question on a theoretical
level, and to indicate, through the analysis of works by James Coleman,
Daniel Buren, Jeff Koons, and Tino Sehgal, how artists can create and
shape social relevance; in other words, to provide what could be called
a pragmatic understanding of art’s societal impact. The title of the book
itself is a play on John Langshaw Austin’s seminal lecture series “How
to Do Things with Words,” in which he discussed the performative, or
reality-producing, capacity of language.

Read more here

It was a nice surprise to see a link today to a Pitchfork article by Marc Hogan on state funded musical projects in Scandinavia, Canada and, to a lesser degree, the UK.

It goes into some detail, rightfully pointing out that citizens of these countries are also willing to pay for such support, with tax revenue accounting for up to 50% of the GDP in Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

In some countries, public funding is a way to promote national culture in the face of American music’s commercial dominance; in places like Sweden and the UK, it’s also a means of protecting a prized national export.

This is particularly evident in Sweden, a country that has been frightfully successful in branding its distinctive culture in a way that boosts both its tourist industry as well as their global stock in the marketplace of ideas. Marcus Andersson of Geobrands Sweden speaks a little to this point here regarding his own efforts to brand the Baltic region.

Keeping in mind that Sweden, with a population of around 10 million (similar to Michigan) is a harmonious anomaly, I tend to agree with Ian David Moss of Createquity`s point that, at least for the United States

funding artistic systems instead of artistic producers

is perhaps a better way to ensure a fruitful distribution of money amongst artists than entrusting individual artist grants to federal offices (a quick look at the NEA`s grant history for music in the last decade suggests this would not bode well for the avant garde). Moss’ argument continues:

In the context of my writing on philanthropy, the idea of enabling a self-functioning and self-regulating artistic marketplace has one important implication: namely, that funders would not worry so much about the quality of the art that they’re funding. That sounds counterintuitive and scary to a lot of donors, but if you think about it it makes some sense. Funders are not necessarily in the best position to judge artistic quality, relative to other people who might be able to do the same. Unless they’re ready to commit to sending staff to performances every night, listening to every CD and watching every video that comes in through the door whether solicited or not, and generally pounding the pavement scouting new talent, they’re not going to be in that position. (This is why many already partially outsource this expertise by regranting funds to discipline-specific service organizations and/or convening rotating peer review panels to make the decisions.) Most importantly, arts funders wield a disproportionate amount of power due to the resources they hold, yet the aesthetic tastes of their staff, no matter how well-informed, are no less subjective than anyone else’s.

Bravo. Arts systems fluent in what it takes to perpetuate and not foreclose contemporary culture should be entrusted with such decisions.

One other point that Marc Hogan did not address, which deviates slightly from his line of inquiry however I feel is totally pertinent is the looming problem of brain drain in both the United States and Great Britain. Public funding for the arts not only empowers artists, it also creates a momentum and rapport that encourages local artists to stay local.

Artists are mobile creatures. Being somewhat the cultural nomad myself, my experiences within artistic communities is that many great minds seek autonomous spaces, affordable living and creative opportunities not solely out of some wanton desire for relocation but also in contrast to the alienation they have felt in their native communities.

It`s a story as old as time; “I was the weird kid in college, and I feel so much more at home here in Berlin/London/New York etc..”.

Often unsuccessful in their adopted homes, falling between the cracks in economically punishing cultural hubs saturated with talent, state investment in the arts provides incentives to both retain local talent and contribute to a more pluralistic cultural landscape, encouraging artists to embrace and augment their heritage rather than follow the entropic path of relocation and risk.

This strategy would also help alleviate the burden on such hubs, whose own distinct cultural developments are at risk of exhaustion from mass migration (see Berlin, ad nauseum).

A novel and quite brilliant residency opportunity on the Wooloo newsletter offered by Berlin’s Hotel Marienbad, offering a confidential detox residency for artists, curators and all those professionally related to the arts. Curated by Benjamin Blanke and Claudia Kapp.

From April 1st to 30th, 2010 a drug detox residency will be offered by Hotel Marienbad. Artists, curators, critics and all those professionally related to the arts are invited to apply.

The Hotel Marienbad suite offers a confidential retreat secluded from the public eye. Your drug detox will take place under therapeutic guidance and medical care.

Privacy and anonymity will be respected throughout the entire process. Medical and therapeutic care provided by Gemeinschaftskrankenhaus Havelhöhe, Berlin.

Please contact us until to March 28th, 2010 at contact@hotelmarienbad.com. All correspondence will remain confidential.

A project by Benjamin Blanke and Claudia Kapp.

The Adam Smith Institute, the UK Conservative think tank, released a paper recently entitled ‘Arts Funding: A New Approach’

Here is a brief summary from the Adam Smith site:

Government support for the arts is currently provided as a subsidy to producers. This system suffers from four major problems: it relies on an expensive bureaucracy; it distributes subsidies unequally between regions and income groups; it distorts producers’ incentives through corruption, politicisation and arbitrary criteria; and it reduces competition, innovation and efficiency. This paper proposes a new system for arts funding: consumer-side subsidies delivered as vouchers to all citizens, which would alleviate the four problems outlined above, and better fulfill the central objectives of art funding.

I noted a number of supporting posts online, namely Createequity’s assertion that perhaps the system would be more democratic, and Arts Admin’s suggestion that the emphasis on consumer driven funding might make arts organizations look outwards to their audience rather than inwards towards peer reviews. Point taken, that might not seem like the worst thing in the world, but is a dangerous precedent to set.

The key to this answer lies in what we consider the intrinsic value of the arts to be. The author of this paper, David Rawcliffe puts forward that “the definition of good art would be that which people wanted to see, or that which private patrons wanted to fund”.

Since when was that ever the definition of good art? Lyn Gardner goes some way in her Guardian article to discuss the perils of turning arts funding into a popularity contest, although I would to take this argument a step further.

The role of the arts is not just to reach a consensus on who we are, but more importantly to speculate about what we can be.

I quote Jacques Attali, from his book ‘Noise: The Political Economy of Music’, in an assessment of music that can easily be expanded to the experiential qualities of all art forms:

Music is prophecy. It’s styles and economic organization are ahead of society because it explores, much faster than material reality can, the entire range of possibilities in a given code. It makes audible the new world the will gradually become visible, that will impose itself and regulate the order of things; it is not only the image of things, but the transcending of the everyday, the herald of the future.

Art must be afforded autonomy from popular opinion in order to fulfill it’s unique capability to challenge and transgress, to put forth ideas that force us to alter our perception and not merely reinforce our collective or individual perspectives.

Today I blogged about last week’s Craigslist Foundation Oakland gathering, discussing the challenges faced by Oakland community organizations:

http://craigslistfoundation.wordpress.com/2010/03/23/craigslist-foundation-oakland-gathering/

Marcus Andersson on branding a region’s culture

Colin Mercer discussing cultural mapping and profiling