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| New Models of Production and Profit by Anna Wiener |
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A FEAST-funded performance of work for pay at McGolrick Park, Brooklyn, featuring Sara K. Edwards, Brock Shorno, and Adriana Young (August 2009).
Photo by Ashley May
If shuttered galleries, diminished funding for arts non-profits, and the swan-dive of Sotheby’s stock—and their coverage in the media—are any indication, the recession has irrevocably changed the art world as we know it. Many artists are no longer in a position to depend upon commercial arts institutions, and are now turning their attention toward their own communities for support. Along with a recent proliferation of artist-run, temporary, and alternative spaces, an increasing trend is for artists to seize curatorial reigns and create community-based models of funding, support, and collaboration.
One example of such a model is Kickstarter, a website that connects artists and other “project creators” with sources of funding for their creative work. Artists provide a project description and a budget for the project’s execution, as well as a fund-raising deadline ranging from a week to a couple of months. Other Kickstarter members—often strangers—pledge as much money as they wish to support the endeavor. “Dictionary Story,” a handmade artist book, recently received $8,484 from 170 individual “backers,” and author Robin Sloan has raised over $12,000 to publish a detective novella. Artists may offer small products or services as incentives for each level of donation. Sloan, for example, is giving every backer a copy of his book; photographers generally provide prints, and musicians might offer a CD or a shout-out in the liner notes. The only catch: if Kickstarter projects aren’t completely funded after the designated time allotment, the artist receives no money and all of the pledges are returned.
Operating on a more local scale is Sweet Tooth of the Tiger, which runs a “bake sale residency program” created by New York-based arts administrator and cultural producer Tracy Candido. Resident artists sell their home-baked goods for several hours at arts events, and pocket the profits to support their own creative projects. Bakers of all levels are welcome to apply for a residency. Photographer Shulie Seidler-Feller recently manned a table of home-made pies, cupcakes, and whoopie pies at a film screening held at DUMBO’s Smack Mellon. Proceeds went to a self-portrait project Seidler-Feller is working on, in which she poses as her female relatives from multiple generations, using their possessions as props.
The bake sale residency is more than a fund-raising mechanism; it is a “performance of resource allocation,” Candido says, intended to spur conversation about the artist’s right to—and struggle for—funding. The residency also raises the question of why artists must produce by-products in order to support their primary creative practice. Candido hopes the bake sale residency will challenge conceptions of the “cultural discount” that is often applied to artists, which considers “passion and exposure reward enough for their work.”
A table of treats from Sweet Tooth of the Tiger.
“I have a feeling that a lot of people are uncomfortable illuminating the monetary exchange or transactions between participants and artists,” Candido says. “Co-opting the commercial model is an important way of elevating or illuminating the conversation about funding.”
Some artists are finding that the recession is the perfect moment to influence floundering industries. Earlier this year, Andy Hunter and Scott Lindenbaum, fiction writers who met in Brooklyn College’s MFA program, cofounded Electric Literature, a new bimonthly anthology of short fiction—a move some might consider bold in light of the current economic climate and the uncertain state of print publishing. Yet Lindenbaum sees the recession as integral, even indispensable, to Electric Literature’s success. “I don’t think we could have established ourselves and gotten the press that we’ve gotten if it wasn’t for the recession,” Lindenbaum says.
The much-heralded “death of print media” opened up space for Electric Literature to introduce a new publishing model, wherein the publication is offered primarily in file formats for e-readers such as iPhone and Kindle. The anthology is available in the more traditional format of bound paper and ink, but operates on a print-on-demand basis. As such, printing costs pay for themselves, and Hunter and Lindenbaum are able to reallocate profits and pay contributing writers $1,000 for their work—an unusually substantial sum.
For some artists, the recession has served not only as a productive force, but also as a source of inspiration. Lydia Bell, a choreographer and dancer based in Ridgewood, Queens, received a grant from FEAST (Funding Emerging Art with Sustainable Tactics) for work for pay, an ongoing project in which Bell hires unemployed or underemployed artists as dancers and works with them to choreograph a piece demonstrating their marketable skills, which may range from grant-writing to crocheting to community organizing. Dancers are paid minimum wage for nine hours of rehearsal time, and each installation of work for pay culminates in a public performance. Adriana Young, who participated in work for pay to offset her underemployment, was pleasantly surprised when the project led directly to a grant-writing job, offered by an impressed audience member.
For A Dictionary Story, an artist book project, Sam Winston raised over $8,000 on Kickstarter.
Bell also hosts a recurring series of events at her home in Queens that she calls “show and tell” evenings, during which a handful of artists share their works in progress and receive critical feedback from an assembled audience. “Part of the impetus for having people over to my house was to see how people would deal with this space that I use every day, in this very domestic way, by inviting them to utilize it differently,” she explains, recalling a recent show-and-tell evening for which sound artist Daniel Neumann designed a piece specifically for her railroad apartment, using its architecture and the event attendees to guide his composition. “It’s a really exciting time, a time when you feel like the current is about to change,” says Bell, who personally hopes that the more capitalistic model framing dance and art will shift toward a greater emphasis on process rather than product.
Sisters Emma and Ani Katz have also sought to augment the profit-driven ethos of the art world by redefining the traditional gallery model. Earlier this year, the Katzs founded Recession Art, a New York-based organization whose goal is to usher in an “art stimulus plan” through events that showcase affordable work by emerging artists. Works shown at Recession Art shows are sold for no more than $500 apiece, which, as described on the group's website, is intended to make “showing, buying, and enjoying art more accessible for people who have been hit by the recession.” Over 1,200 people attended the organization’s event, No Money No Problems, held in early October at Invisible Dog Gallery in Brooklyn.
When asked whether Recession Art will continue into flusher times, Emma points out, “There are always going to be artists struggling to make a living through their art. That’s been the case forever, and will probably be the case as far as I can see. I think we can continue to serve that population and try to make it easier for emerging artists to get their work out there, and it doesn’t really matter whether it’s during the recession or not.” Emma acknowledges that launching Recession Art during an actual recession has been helpful for publicity and getting the project off the ground, but she nonetheless believes that artists “would still be interested no matter what the economy,” given that “even during the boom times, it’s really always kind of a struggle.”
Necessity is the mother of invention, and there’s no better time to test this truism than during a recession. As artists adjust to the new economic climate, they are beginning to design original, sustainable models of production, performance, and profit. As an added benefit, many of these models not only help artists continue their work but also democratize the arts by rendering them participatory and less exclusive.Whether these new models will stick when the economy recovers remains to be seen, of course, but for now they at least represent a refreshing turn for artists and the art world.
Anna Wiener is a Brooklyn-based writer and former Editorial Intern at NYFA Current. She is a 2009 graduate of Wesleyan University, where she studied sociology. Her work has appeared in Analecta, Flavorpill, and Prefix Magazine, and is forthcoming in the Winter issue of Next American City.
Banner image:
Detail from Fred Tomaselli’s Glassy (2006), mixed media, acrylic, and resin on wood panel, featured on the cover of the premiere issue of Electric Literature.
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