In its second iteration as a participatory art festival, No Soul for Sale: A Festival of Independents celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Tate Modern in London. No Soul for Sale’s first iteration was in June 2009, at the X Initiative in the old Dia building, in Manhattan. The show itself is a collaborative effort by curators Cecilia Alemani, Massimiliano Gioni and artist Maurizio Cattelan.

The festival is a collection of 70 different artist spaces, galleries, artist collectives and various art organizations that have distinctly independent ways of performing art around the globe. The participating groups vary in size and location, from Istanbul (PiST) to Australia (Y3K). As it was in the first iteration of the festival, all of the work was staged together creating a large patchwork of groups, filling the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall with projects. Turbine Hall had taped outlines on the ground assigned to the individual spaces, so that viewers could read the names of the groups as they passed through. One of the participating groups, Kling & Bang (Iceland) had an installation called Tower of Now by Hekla Dögg Jónsdóttir and Sirra Sigrún Sigurðardóttir, consisting of hundreds of strands of heat-sensitive roller tape suspended from the top of Turbine Hall and weighted down by Icelandic coins.

Tower of Now by Kling & Bang and Hekla Dögg Jónsdóttir and Sirra Sigrún Sigurðardóttir

The organizations selected for this festival hold a couple things in common, the most important of which is that they are all using innovative social formats for moving information around. Some of the non-profit spaces like Rhizome are globally dedicated organizations. Rhizome’s particular interests are in spreading digital culture and providing formats for digital artists to present their work online. The project they produced was entitled “Mail Nothing to the Tate Modern” in collaboration with David Horvitz. The concept was that people were invited to take a predesigned mailing slip Rhizome provided and mail an empty package to the Tate Modern then give Rhizome the tracking number. The tracking numbers are posted online creating a portrait of international mail systems.

Mail Nothing to the Tate Modern by Rhizome and David Horvitz

The way groups self-represent in these types of settings, sheds a light on how they operate within the circles of aesthetic information distribution. Many of the participating entities sent in informative literature about themselves or projects they produced. Several projects were sponsored works by single artists produced by the participating groups in the show. There was a dedicated space in Turbine Hall for performance events and presentations, which a good portion of the groups utilized. Some of the groups curated a few works by separate artists, or asked a group of artists they usually work with to participate on a larger collaborative piece. However the participating groups worked it out, there is a reoccurring sense in No Soul for Sale, that the exhibited works of art themselves are seen more as a creative democratic process than a presentation of aesthetic goods, which many art fairs and festivals end up being.

It can, and has been said, that these newer interactive forms of artistic production are the future, especially in relation to how many non-profit or alternative art spaces are beginning to distribute art to the rest of the world. This may be a way of marginalizing what is so important about works like these. The works presented in No Soul for Sale are not the way art will look in the future; it is what art looks like right now, and in some cases a few years ago. It is vitally hard to keep up with what all of the different artists in all of the different venues around the world are doing. We have a chance of seeing many of these different ideas together when they are presented the way they are out at Turbine Hall.

For a list of other participating entities, or to find out more about this show, go to:
No Soul for Sale: A Festival of Independents
Tate Modern

Art Work: A National Conversation About Art, Labor and Economics is a social media project spearheaded by Temporary Services, a three-person art collective based out of Chicago, IL. The Art Work Web site hosts information on a free social service Temporary Services is providing (an independent newspaper) and various contact information, news, and information on how to be involved. All content is related to the basic notion of art and work, emphasizing the role artists play in the economy, as well as various strategies artists can use to continue making socially engaging works during our ‘Great Recession.’

Temporary Services wants to highlight the many ways artists are making work and building local artistic cultures across the country. To do this, they have put together a rich network of people and ideas to compose the content of the newspaper, with essays, art historical analyses of the relationships of art to unions, labor and money markets, and several op-ed pieces (“Personal Economies,”) where anonymous art workers describe the myriad ways they survive and are still able to produce work.

Contents also include an essay by Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Holland Cotter, a compiled history called “Selected Moments in the History of Economic Art” by Temporary Services, a complete transcription of conceptual artist Chris Burden’s 1979 radio broadcast on KPFK called “Send Me Your Money,” and the Manhattan-based 16 Beaver Group announcement on their global mega-merger between art and politics collectives into a mega-collective known as C.A.R.T.E.L. (16 Beaver did not specify what the letters in the acronym stand for).

Art Work: A National Conversation About Art, Labor and Economics, Temporary Services

The newspaper is free, and a pdf version is available for download at the project’s Web site, artandwork.us. Temporary Services will send free analog copies of the paper to anyone wanting to host a local event for the project.

In 2009, Temporary Services began distributing copies of Art Work to various colleagues across the globe to host local events. The events could be anything from a full-scale gallery exhibition to a small get-together for people to have a conversation about the business of working as an artist. Temporary Services formally showed Art Work at SPACES in Cleveland, Ohio from November of 2009 to January of 2010; SPACES worked as the distribution hub for the paper.

Art Work at SPACES, Cleveland, OH

Local events for Art Work have occurred in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and a few other countries. One of the premises of the printed newspaper is that it is in itself an exhibition. The paper can be taken apart and taped to a wall for a gallery-ready text piece, like Carnegie Mellon University’s Miller Gallery did for a blue motif in the exhibit.

Art Work at Carnegie Mellon University’s Miller Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA

The subject matter of the articles in the 40-page Art Work newspaper works as a catalyst for local interests inside of the national conversation. When the event was hosted in my hometown of Anchorage, we were most interested in the ideas associated with microgranting, which is an essay entitled “Micro Granting From the Bottom Up” by a group called InCUBATE, found on page 21 of the paper. Microgranting is one of the few ways in Alaska of supporting each other in making work that doesn’t fit into traditional formats.

Art workers would rather see interesting work being made instead of waiting for a gallery or other cultural authority to become interested, which is how the current moment of social media becomes relevant: it simply takes too long for established analog spaces like museums and galleries to be harbingers of our changing culture. If we want to see something different, we can put it online.

Art Work at Gallery 400, Chicago, IL

Several art workers have stated that Art Work as a social media enterprise was a psychological comfort to them. They felt connected to other art workers across the country who (like themselves) are always coming up with creative ways of keeping their non-profit’s doors open, or keeping their artistic practice alive. At the very least—all of the local conversations, which are happening because of this project, people who live near each other are being made more aware of others in their area who are willing to give some of their own valuable time to work together on making a better future for each other. On page 10 of the paper, in large type is printed, “Nothing changes when people do not engage in the long and difficult work of building a diverse, multi-cultural, working class movement from the ground up.”

“A country Road. A Tree. Evening. [wow.episode.01]” is the first installment of Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation’s new video project called White on White. It is six minutes long and is the fifth multiple published by Compound Editions in New York. White on White promises to be a protean experiment in the distribution of digital and video art.

Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation, “A country Road. A Tree. Evening.” Original music by Lumendog.

If you have ever seen an exhibition of digital or video art, you may have asked yourself how the artist is able to make a living. Digital video is completely ubiquitous today. So when a video artist produces a video, which obviously costs a bit to put together, is full of rich references and would probably not fair very well in a regular movie theater due to its overall experimental look, how do they sell their work?

The answer more often than not is editions. If an art collector wants to buy a video piece, they usually buy an edition of it, complete with monitor, DVD player and a copy of the film, it is then accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist and the gallery representing him or her. This mode of distribution has been used by artists since the mid-sixties when video artists were able to start regularly selling their work.

Eve Sussman’s new video project is a variation on this model for digital distribution. She is distributing her project as an installed video on the ARCHOS 5 Media Tablet. What makes this model unique is that in many ways it is embracing the ubiquitous nature of video by distributing it on a hand-held device. It is also turning the collector into a co-producer because once they have bought an edition of White on White, not only can they download the future installments as they are released, but they are building the pool from which the videos are funded.

The first installment was released as an edition of 100, the first 50 of which have already sold out. It looks as if Sussman and Compund Edition’s model has some wings. It is not that Sussman is the first artist to distribute her work on portable digital devices; other artists have put out similar editions. It is that she chose the ARCHOS 5 Media Tablet because of what it can do, and that there are more installments of White on White forthcoming that is noteworthy as a distribution model.

Sussman decided on using the ARCHOS 5 after quite a bit of looking. Of the many different distribution formats, very few have the high-fidelity audio/ video or Internet capability of the ARCHOS 5. At first glance her edition mimics the way albums are released as special edition iPods. What is different here is that Apple will market a product, the iPod in this instance, by using musicians and bands as an advertisement for the product. Sussman is using the media tablet because it can do what she wants it to do for her. It is simply the best distribution model for her project.

Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation, A selection of stills from “A country Road. A Tree. Evening.”

As a work of art, “A country Road. A Tree. Evening.” is a futurist fantasy, taking a serious note from the way old Soviet films visualized a utopian future. The video is set about six years in the future in a metropolis reminiscent of many generic fictional future cities. It is called A-City, and it provides a blank slate for Sussman to deliver a film noir storyline, incorporating styles from cinéma vérité and early horror movies, all with that unmistakable sense of video art appropriation.

The usage of things and ideas becomes one of the key elements in thinking about this work. The project is filled with referential material, and most of the imagery is familiar in that it is playing with tropes from other genres. For example, Sussman’s title, “A country Road. A Tree. Evening.” is the stage description from Samuel Beckett’s play, “Waiting for Godot.” Since about the last two years of the Bush administration, Beckett’s work has been seriously reconsidered in several different formats.

Another example is the title for the whole on-going project, White on White. Sussman and the Rufus Corporation are referencing the painting by Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Composition: White on White, which was a painting of a white square on a white background. Malevich was making his Suprematist compositions during the same time period in the early Soviet days when movies like Aelita: Queen of Mars were being made, the 1910s and 1920s.

Perhaps it is the revitalization of words like ‘socialism’ or Marxism’ as pejoratives since the last presidential election in 2008 that has made more people use those terms again, or at the very least take another look at that revolutionary Russian culture from a century ago. These references all feed into an overwhelming sense of retro-futurism in much of our cultural thinking now. Old visions of the future seem to come across as predictions we missed out on, even though some of our technological advances far surpassed the imagination. Think of how much our society currently resembles Walt Disney’s original vision of Epcot.

Distributing a video edition on the ARCHOS 5 Media Tablet is one of the ways that Sussman is re-examining our usage of technology for artistic distribution. It has added an interactive component that is deviating from the definition of art all together. If you purchased her edition, there is nothing stopping you from using the media tablet as if you had bought it for personal use—it still plays other videos or music, it still connects online. It is simply a matter of aesthetic predilection where one draws the line as a work of art.

For more of Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation’s work, you can view a trailer here.