[spectre] Re: the media art center of 21C

[rene beekman]

From: Elizabeth Guyon
> We are currently trying to deal with the french public administration
> tendancy to ask for "economic models" for media arts each time funding
> is in the ballot. ("We" means a group of artists and institutional
> managers producing media arts or whatever it's called in Marseille and
> around, specially in the Friche Belle de Mai art center)
> We are not opposed to the concept of "economic model" in itself (it can
> always be subverted) though it doesn't mean anything just saying so and
> we are afraid the public administration just has no idea about it
> either. So we really feel that this (marketing ?) concept has to be
> discussed and defined regarding our activities.
> We are having discussions right now about how and wether to answer to
> this new criteria to ensure our means of artistic production
> (creation/production as well as being able to show it).
> But somehow I wonder if it's not a question of how we talk about media
> arts to the funders, how we communicate on media arts, more than what
> we really do that matters ?

elizabeth, you did understand the point that i was trying to make and 
in a strange yet wonderful way your email seems to have summed up all 
positions on that issue at once.
let me elaborate on what i mean: we've all been confronted by 
bureaucrats who ask what our funding model is and indeed, most of the 
time they don't really know what they are asking for. none the less, 
the issue is relevant and it is something i believe we should bring up 
on our own and consider on our own - without having the question forced 
down our throats so to speak by bureaucrats or commercial companies 
like ntt - if we are to take ourselves seriously as professionals.

you then go on to make one of the most curious combinations of two 
seemingly opposite statements; you start by saying that you "are not 
opposed to the concept of "economic model" in itself" which you 
immediately follow by "(it can always be subverted)".
i might  misunderstand what you are trying to say, but it seems to me 
like a way of saying "we'll do the lip-service as long as we get our 
money" and "we'll tell them anything they want to hear and once we have 
the money we won't deliver on our promises and just call that artistic 
subversion"... unfortunately your statement regarding your discussions 
on "how and wether to answer to this new criteria to ensure our means 
of artistic production" only seems to confirm this impression because 
it seems to me that this is not a question that could conceivably go 
unanswered.
if this impression is true, then that is exactly what bothered me in 
the discussion so far and why i raised the issue in the first place. 
because to provide the lip-service, without any further substance 
behind it and without the will to reconsider our own positions 
including business and funding models indeed "doesn't mean anything 
just saying so".
(re)defining anything for the 21 century without discussing market and 
funding models would make this entire discussion a mindless game of 
shoving words back forth without any meaning.


From: Simon Biggs
> I will try to clarify my comments.
[snipsnip]

simon, thanks for your wonderfully concise and clear summary of 
academic research in the us vs. uk. i would like to comment on your 
final paragraph:
> Whatever, the choice the artist makes to ensure their being able to 
> work
> will be a loaded one. Politics is always there. What you find least
> distasteful usually says a lot about your political position.

to put it slightly simplistic, the dominant political position in the 
art world seems to range from anarchism when our bank accounts can 
support that, to socialism when it is time for the next funding 
application round, but it seems always to be __in __response __to our 
financial situation.
there seems to be a kind of allergy in the art world to developing a 
market-model that could sustain our work or what we would like to do.
as a short note: i consider handing in funding applications at the 
responsible government desk annually or on a per project basis a market 
or business model as well even though i do know that many here might 
not think of it in those terms. also, here i'm not in way trying to 
compare one model to another.

but let's take a look at the open-source software world that many 
artists and media art centres have embraced enthusiastically in recent 
years. yesterday i witnessed yet another discussion between artists and 
other humanists about how the "gift culture of the open-source 
community could be applied to art and research". throughout that 
discussion i was at a loss of how those two worlds could possibly come 
together. the problem is of course something that has been known for 
years and it has everything to do with the politics simon mentioned.
to a certain and as far as i can tell quite a large part of the 
open-source developers, the "gift culture of the open-source community" 
is just another way to leverage their commercial businesses. being one 
of the core developers of an open-source network security project puts 
you in one hell of position commercially as a network security 
analyst/consultant/you_name_it and any book you would write on the 
topic would be guaranteed to sell good enough for at least several 
publishers to be interested - in fact enough so for a publisher like 
o'reilly to have reversed the model years ago.
this to a great extend explains the kind of variety we see in 
open-source software projects.
in contrast, many media art centres involved in open-source development 
do so - besides for ideological reasons - as a way of being eligible 
for government funding. i don't know of a single example of an 
artist-initiated open-source software project that has been successful 
in attracting money in any other way than more government funding or 
incidental sponsorship from a commercial company.

yes, the choice of "business model" or "funding model" does have 
everything to do with politics. i cannot help but find it somewhat 
amusing that 15 years after most of the regimes in this part of the 
world (still in prague) broke down, the art-world still seems to cling 
to a purely socialist model.
and even faced with disappearing funding, artists seem reluctant at 
best to discuss business or funding models, let alone consider 
alternative models without immediately asserting that "institutions are 
bad" and these "marketing models" should be "subverted".

i am convinced that it is our inability to define and shape business 
models for our work together with an unwillingness to look at the world 
in any other way than from a point of view which dictates that "we need 
to be supported" that puts us at the mercy of the whims of politicians 
and the occasional company that does venture to become a patron (even 
if it does so temporarily).
if we are to successfully shape any outline of a media art centre of 
the 21st century, we need to first acknowledge that such a definition 
cannot be made without busines or market models being part of the 
equation and we need to realize that what others would refer to as 
"government hand-outs" are not a guaranteed form of income and that any 
successful model cannot rely on a single source of income, no matter 
how deep those pockets seem at the moment.



ok, back to work now

rene