Dear All,
I think I should response to this email while I am the only one mention
about funding bodies, perhaps I should make it clear.

I join the South West Arts (one of the regional office of Arts Council of
England) 6 months ago, I still have a lots of question of why the quality of
the funding application is so poor. I am not sure it is about the promotion
of the arts council itself or there is generally a frustration building up
towards the funding body.  If you are an artist, and you want some funding
support, where are you go to? Obviously the arts council will be one of the
option.

SWA funded couple good projects and some of the people in the list will know
that.  But I still don't understand why the respond on the award is not so
ideal. Maybe some of you should tell me why, I am actually posted a question
here, and will hope to open up a discussion.  I think the voice of funder
always very small, and funding officers always feel they are in the
responsive position. Perhaps we should go out more often.

Regards,
Zoe









----- Original Message -----
From: "- G a r r e t t -" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, February 15, 2003 1:04 PM
Subject: Re: net.art situation


> Hi everyone, seem to have missed a few emails as my account put them
> in a bulk folder thinking they were spam, so i'll try and get to each
> of them here now....
>
>
> >I have to say that I=B9m offended by this whole thread on Rhizome and
this is
> >likely the first time I have posted to this listserve. I=B9m offended
because
> >I feel Rhizome and any online net art institutions/orgs like it are
> >essential to the community of artists and researchers that have developed
> >around it.=20
>
> hi Camille, first i'd like to say its great you joined the list and i
> hope you stay on to participate as i know your involved in a very
> good festival (far from being just a poor grad student) so you have a
> lot to add here!
>
> i can't stress this enough i did say in the first postings about
> this, that this was'nt about rhizome as such but that the recent
> changes in rhizome and one or two other occurances in the net.art
> 'world' caused me to initiate the discussion.  one of the people who
> responded picked up on the rhizome element and continued conversation
> about that.  its a big thing and is unavoidable at the moment but the
> discussion was on what we as net.artists can do to develop and
> further the situation of net.art, how we can make approaches to
> institutions so that we have more input on how our work is shown and
> archived, how to generate solutions to showing net.art in physical
> spaces, issues to do with funding, how we could develop new formats
> to share information accross communities and generally make net.art
> more visible.
>
> please anyone on the list who is following this discussion don't feel
> any animosity about this or feel alienated from the discussion, have
> your say!!, what i am hoping we will achieve is some open critical
> discussion where we might come up with some ideas and solutions!
>
>
> >So far, The mercantile solutions aren't doing the trick, although the
Thing
> >seems to be holding it together,  even though they have the yearly
crisis.
>
> what are the Thing doing these days? its been a while since i saw
> anything involving them, their net.presence seems to have diminished!
>
>
> >Sure, the Whitney has the Artport, but my point is talking about
integration
> >within the gallery, which is a bit antithetical to the genre, but I think
> >that it's necessary as a form of bridge.
>
> i was reading something somewhere (perhaps it was here, not sure)
> from a curator giving suggestions as how to tackle this fundamental
> problem.  they suggested two approches. the first being that you
> create something unique in terms of the way the work is presented /
> interfaced with in a public space such as a gallery.  this was
> interesting but i think would fail for a high majority of net.art
> projects because by adding this 'unique' location based experience,
> well the work is no longer really a piece of net.art but more a
> combination of net.art and installation to some degree.
>
> the second seemed when i read it sort of obvious and banal, but on
> reflection quite clever, they suggested net.art that was to be shown
> in a gallery or indeed any location should be created in some way
> that it was site specific, now this seems quite fixed and
> immediatlely you think the work has to be some sort of response to
> the physical space and so would influence both content and
> presentation, but seeing as a lot of net.art plays on elements to do
> with key themes such as location (or more absence here), identity
> (until now tied to the physical but here using the new concept of
> avatars), the body (elements of both the previous) and the network
> (the new location?) it gives much wider and flexible elbow room!!
> not perfection by any means but one of the best approaches i've heard
> so far.
>
>
> >Good point.  My mentor in grad school (whom, I feel, taught me so well
that
> >I left before finishing - I think it had something to do with snatching
that
> >pebble out of his hand) once said that the most honest art he had ever
seen
> >was made by a 2-year old.  I would argue that in the case of net art,
this
> >would be possible, but unlikely.  There is too much cultural baggage tied
up
> >with it; such as proficiency, access, etc.
>
> yes i agree it is unlikely, but the possibility is there and
> especially within net.art identity and age become meaningless as this
> is played upon / created to such a great extent within this medium
> (or bricolage of mediums!).
>
>
> >This is a great approach, but the question remains: Which institutions
are
> >willing to work with the artists, and which artists are willing to work
> >hand-in-hand with an institution? I'd love to give it a try.
>
> and here's the stumbling block!  certainly i'd love to have some
> access to an art institution here in England where i could start have
> some input but it does seem to be incredible hard to break into them.
> up till now i've worked voluntarily with one media community based
> festival for new media for a year here and put in quite a bit of work
> to keep their website ticking over and attempt to get them to widen
> their vision. only to find recently the festival taken away from us,
> handed over to another group who bought a new domain name for the
> festival (we owned the original), started a new website which for the
> moment has only a splash screen even though the event itself will be
> happening in less than 15 days, plans to not allow any of the former
> community (mailing list of over 100 at one stage) participate in
> ether the website (its all in flash, no database used, no structure
> so impossible to update easily) or the mailing list (they are now
> using none) and never communicated any information to us about what
> was happening even though we had worked for free and intented to
> continue doing so!  so what do you do in a situation like this where
> you can't even give your services away?
>
> the reason i posted here as opposed to say "_arc.hive_ ", "nettime",
> "spectre", "rhizome" whatever...  was because this list is
> specifically on curating and i know there are people in institutions
> on this list, who unfortunity for the most part have stayed silent
> for the moment, i second your "i'd love to give it a try" so why
> does'nt some institution take us up on the offer?
>
>
> >I am working in funding body.  It does funded new media work and there is
> >certain institutions receive funding, and a lot of interesting project
going
> >on. However, I do agree the structure not there, e.g. network, education,
> >promotion...   In the recent selection of Award for Artists (one of the
> >funding scheme) the quality of applications that we received in the new
> >media arts section is so bad (not being critical, but really is true) I
> >wonder why the sector keep shouting there is no funding while we only
> >receive poor application? I understand there is frustration there to deal
> >with the funder, but the situation should be changed, both the attitude
and
> >communication of both the funded and funding bodies.
>
> perhaps your not shouting loud enough?  what is the name of the
> funding body because from what you have said here it does'nt ring any
> bells with me?  i can't comment too much from the organisers side as
> i don't have direct experience of artists submissions so i don't know
> whether they are generally good or bad but i will say if the awards
> are open to me (nationality, location etc) then i would apply so...
> please tell us more!
>
>
> >I would, however, like
> >to throw out the idea that net art is a critical stance rather than an
art
> >form, much the same way as "conceptual art" now is. Can a painting be net
> >art? Sure, why not?
>
> mmmm interesting stance, i'm not a purist by any means and certainly
> don't hold with ideas that net.art is only ascii based etc but i need
> to think on this one, you've made me hesitate, so i think i'm in
> agreement with you!
>
>
> >So where is the net art discourse? Not with Lev Manovich, heaven forbid
>
> slap your hand for going against the tides of popularism!!!  :)
>
>
> >I've decided we may have came up with an answer. Not THE answer but
> >certainly >a response to this particular call.
> >
> >More over the weekend.
>
> waiting anxiously!
>
> a+
> gar
>
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