#ah343

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.

"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. 

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.

 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. 

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:

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.