I'm seeing something else that's detrimental for the independent-minded artist in the last couple of years. Alternative patterns of engagement (and not just art pop-stars) have thrived in the smaller arts organisation/centre, where there has been a socially engaged agenda - whether digital art, or other kinds. But I'm seeing that eroded through the latest cuts and not only because core funding has gone, but because the community groups and public sector orgs that - however instrumentally - benefited from the 'art' can no longer afford to employ its practitioners. With 'austerity', the more benign forms of support are withering, throwing people harder into the 'fame or die' binary choice.
What is perhaps heartening is that other forms of making - less critical in their content, but not necessarily in their structure of engagement - are appearing through the DIY movements. My solace as someone interested in maintaining alternative spaces, radical thought and creative practice, is that young people are not all turning to commercial models of exchange. The commercial art market is highly visible and rapacious, but, in other pockets, energies are going somewhere where no commercial models exist at all. Ann (Not an artist. Someone who hangs around with artists?) From: netbehaviour-boun...@netbehaviour.org [mailto:netbehaviour-boun...@netbehaviour.org] On Behalf Of Simon Biggs Sent: 07 February 2012 16:47 To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] worries about blacklists Art has always had a difficult relationship with power. Its potential for corruption is nothing new (whether in religion or ideologies of various kinds - including capitalism). However, it is has become much harder to avoid the crap. There was a time (in the 70's and 80's) when artist run centres and experimental creative practices could be undertaken beneath the radar of the art world mainstream (and out of sight of most of society). What has happened since then is the mainstreaming of this activity, especially in the UK where such artists have become household names and celebrities appearing on TV talk shows and such-like. The present generation of younger artists have taken this as a model for how the contemporary artist should engage the public and now aspire to being more like pop musicians. This is a pervasive pornification of art, as with the rest of our society, and its inescapability is that is especially depressing. best Simon On 7 Feb 2012, at 16:08, isabel brison wrote: I agree with your portrait of the artworld, but hasn't it always been a bit dodgy, ever since the days when art was almost exclusively religious propaganda? Not sure if the best way to deal with this is to drop the term "art" completely, or to just carry on doing it and perhaps ignore the artworld. After all, it's just an oversized commercial circuit. On 7 February 2012 15:18, Simon Biggs <si...@littlepig.org.uk> wrote: I can understand why some people don't want to call themselves artists, even when they are. Mike Kelly, a very successful artist, was quoted as saying that if he'd known art was going to become as corporatised as it has he would never have chosen to be an artist (this quote has been viral on Twitter since his recent death). I wonder what he would have chosen to be - or would he have made up something new? This is what we need... People consider what I do as art and assume I'm an artist. However, like Kelly and James, I became disillusioned with art and the art world a long time ago - not because I've been given a hard time (quite the contrary) but because I am disgusted at what seems to motivate many artists and the people who engage (and run) art professionally. It's become a laundry for dodgy money. Many artists, curators and cultural commentators are happy to join the circus. It is sad. Due to this I now think of what I do as the "practice once known as art". A programme I run, which is nominally in an art college (although for administrative reasons it is located in an architecture department) intentionally does not have the word art in its title (MSc by Research in Interdisciplinary Creative Practices). This allows us to work in ways that a course in our art department, with the expectation of producing artists to work in the art world, would struggle to consider, bound by a pre-determined framework of creative practice and engagement that is "art" as we now know it. Again, it's sad (hope my colleagues in art aren't reading this) to see students being primed as potential cannon-fodder for the art world. best Simon On 7 Feb 2012, at 14:29, isabel brison wrote: Hello, Just wondering why you choose not to call yourself an artist. Because the random stuff you post looks suspiciously like art to me... Isabel On 6 February 2012 15:04, James Morris <ja...@jwm-art.net> wrote: Hi, I recently noticed that facebook warns people about links to my website being malicious and surbl.org <http://surbl.org/> blacklists my domain name as associated with spam. >From what I can tell, some email clients allow filtering of messages based upon these blacklists such as multi.surbl.org <http://multi.surbl.org/> or ws.surbl.org <http://ws.surbl.org/> and it is within these lists where my domain is listed in. Spam filters which use these lists scan the message _body_ and if a reference to a blacklisted domain is found then the message is regarded as spam. I'm rather disappointed about this and it's lead me to wonder if maybe something I've posted here is to blame. I know I've been argumentative at times and been reactionary to things I dislike but I hope that the actual work I've posted (not so much recent work) over the years has made up for it. The artist career thing for me never took off and academically the degree was as far as I got. Programming has become my focus and due to that I find little time for anything else. With that in mind I'm left making posts on the occasional inspired impulse. Hence the mobile-shot audio-clips and photographs from while I'm at (factory)work. Or screenshots of software I'm trying to develop. Seems like I'm producing less and less art. But does it have to be art to post here? I tend to focus on the "creativity" in the title to help me justify my posts here. I have a memory (real or imagined) of when I first subscribed of asked Marc if it was ok and he said 'for now'. The thing is I don't want to unsubscribe just because I'm not an artist any more, but the impulses to post *random*stuff* are likely to be around for a while... Unless people speak up to disuade me and give good reasons for why and etc.... James. _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour -- http://isabelbrison.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour Simon Biggs si...@littlepig.org.uk http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ @SimonBiggsUK skype: simonbiggsuk s.bi...@ed.ac.uk Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ http://www.elmcip.net/ http://www.movingtargets.co.uk/ _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour -- http://isabelbrison.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour Simon Biggs si...@littlepig.org.uk http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ @SimonBiggsUK skype: simonbiggsuk s.bi...@ed.ac.uk Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ http://www.elmcip.net/ http://www.movingtargets.co.uk/
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