Re: [-empyre-] Forward from ippolito re gift economy vs art market #1

["Melinda Rackham" <melinda@unsw.edu.au>]

a few things i want to add ..hope im not repeating what's been said on
rhizome-raw (been on digest  for ages -dont have enuff time. )

john k wrote:
> second, the only alternative that jon presents to the artist as far as
> making a buck is, get a day job. here's a quote from the rhizome list,
snip..

> third, how does jon expect good art to be produced in an artist's spare
> time, if they are holding down a day job? does this mean that net art
> should only consist of one-liners and the equivalent of a
> "non-commercial advertising?"

i find it highhly ironic that in a country (the US) that prides itself as
the champion of fredom of speech and democarcy on the planet, that this is a
pretty standard attitude towards the arts..
your practice is not supported by the culture and you do need to get a day
job to survive unless you are a compliant art star manufactured by, or very
very good at playing, the system (and playing the system then of course
becomes your whole practice) .
this ensures that artists can never devote thier full attention to thier
practice, that diversity and critcal practice  remain marginal  - which is
hardly different from regimes that are seen as fascist or dictatorial..
which only approve, allow and promote a certain kind of art practice. it
treats art as simply part of a commodity market ...in to its being just a
saleable and squabbles over the sale price. in this system the person with
the least resources, ie the artist , is the one that is exploited the most.
(one could compare it to workers  in third world countries geting paid $2 a
week pay to make thousands of $'s worth of commodities, whether they be
persian carpets, nike runners or computer chips)  . its an approcah to
culture based on fear and exclusion , not diversity and inclusion and its
designed to maintain itself.

in countries which give a lot of government and indsutry and private support
the arts and artsits - like netherlands, gernmany , finland -  artists are
also critical about who recieves this support, etc etc, but the difference
is that support for art is seen as a crucial part of every day life just
like access to health + education services. we humans need art and artsits
to be a heatlhy well informed tolerant and functioning society.

jon i wrote
>Can't Internet artists have their cake and eat it too--sell their work and
>still have it accessible online? The problem is, dealers who play by the
rules
>of property will want to offer collectors exclusive viewing rights.Even if
>artists try to sell those rights themselves--say, by offering artonline via
>subscription or pay per view schemes--they may find themselves in thesame
>predicament as their dot-com predecessors. Seventy percent of adultscan't
see
>themselves paying for *any* form of online content.6 Conditioned byNapster,
>free e-mail, and open source software, the general public has got itinto
>their heads that the Internet is for everyone. And they're right.

once upon a time seventy percent of adults couldnt see themselves using
electricty as it was too dangerous...

however we are as a culture really really really willing to pay for some
things online...like porn and gambling .. perhpas if we make net.art illegal
and get the surgeon general to decalre it addictive and dangerous as it
promotes fantasy and anti-corporte and capital  tendancies with its
cooperative nature,  there would be would a long line of people handing out
thier creidt card to get thier daily hit of it...

the reaons people started making net art..to connect on a network and route
around the censorship of the instutional and corporate world, means that
they (museums) will never want to treat it seriously - its still in
opposition to thier structure.
 net.art doesnt need them to be stamped as approved, to be shown, to be
affective. (unless of course you make design net .art..:) i get email from
people who come accross my work online and its very gratifying as they have
searched it out, spent time with it  and enjoyed it , not spent 3 seconds
clicking the mouse twice in a museum where there are a bunch of people
watching them and waiting their turn at it....

re copyrite  - artists do have power and choice here.. like  the artists who
took thier
work offline at the ZKM  net.condition opening a few years ago, so that the
special guest viewers at the opening just got 404 errors on thier sites..
to protest over thier appalling rate of payment as artits when everyone
else - including tech and progammers and curators where very well paid.
yesterday i got qa request from a show  asking me to send my online work to
them on rom..(they have no money , they are poor instution, thier internet
connections are bad..etc etc)  once upon a time i would have done it
because i wanted my work to be as availabe as possible in every country in
the world.., but im just not prepared to now , i wont provide content to an
organistation where everyone else gets paid without a licence fee or an
exhibition fee or nice publication etc...  this is  the only way i can think
of to alter how curators and instutions work - by keep stating what is not
acceptable, that artists dont work for free.

melinda