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students surprise prize

5/27/2014

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An art prize where the jury includes the applicants

At the German HFBK (Fine Arts University of Hamburg) I found this project. The process of granting art awards, stipends and so forth is known to be quite intransparent. The "Surprise Prize" tackles this problem by putting together a jury of applicants (artists), a standard type jury (of the faculty) and "external experts" (the usual jury, exept they have to apply for this job, too). The process is complicated - it is described on several pages and features instructions for the application itself, presentations, time schedules, scoring systems, and experts acting in roles like advocate or critic. The whole thing takes several days to complete.

Before I read it all, I thought this to be an interesting, albeit questionable approach to challenge  the ways of institutional gatekeepers in fine arts - especially since mentor Michael Lingner is not only an artist himself, but, as a professor, also part of the institutional side. But when I came to the part where he describes that participants can bet money on the winning submissions, I realized that this whole thing is more of a grotesque hyperbole on an otherwise unresolvable dilemma of the evaluation of artistic quality.   Artistic Satire? Be it as it may, the whole process is real and will, as far as I can see, happen exactly like this. To cut it short, here are the (pretty obvious) pros and the maybe not so obvious cons in my view:

PRO

1. sheds some light on gatekeeper processes
2. ... the idea (even though it does come from a gatekeeper!)
3. reimbursement for participants
4. includes external "experts"
5. applicants may state the categories they wish their project to be judged upon
6. actual grant money can be won


CONTRA

1. The role of the artists. While I do see the problem, the answer cannot be to include artists in the jury process. First, there is no reason why artists should be more qualified to do what in principle cannot be done: to evaluate art in an objective way. Second, as an artist, my job ist to make art. I don't want to do jury work, as a matter of fact I don't want to do anything else, just because that's not what artists do.

2. And because of that, I am neither very much interested in becoming art by being part of some artistic performance. I imagine how great a potential for conflicts and awkward situations the team will face, and how bizarre the part I am expected to play is. How would this make me feel in the actual situation? Probably, at least like being used. In short, this may turn out to be some sort of artist's soap opera.

3. The role of the experts. When someone asked what makes an expert here, it was said: a graduate in an art related field. It is stunning, that this unsurprising inquiry, which at the same time points to the crucial question of how to judge the quality of art, could be answered in this blatantly naive way.

4. My project is the best, or else I would have made it differently.


http://www.hfbk.de/surprize
/


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Who is an Artist?

4/2/2014

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An interesting look at cultural capital and its relevance to artist identities:
"The question of who, exactly, is an artist — what that word means, who defines herself by it — has always been a tricky one. All sorts of surveys purport to the tell us the number of artists in the US, from the government census to independent initiatives, but the terms of the discussion have never been entirely clear. Are artists self-defined? Must they make money off their creative work (a certain amount)? What kinds of creative work count? Can you be a professional artist if you spend 30 hours a week doing something besides making art?

Each survey defines “artist” in its own way and then moves on with its results, but a new study in the journal Poetics takes up the root question itself: “Who is an artist? New data for an old question,” by sociologists Jennifer C. Lena and Danielle J. Lindemann. Lena and Lindemann look at data collected in the 2010 Strategic National Arts Alumni Project survey as a means of exploring the confusion over who or what constitutes an artist."
http://hyperallergic.com/115627/what-makes-an-artist-an-artist/

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creative  through  brain  damage?

3/23/2014

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And the answer is: Yes! The paper summed up here looks at the right and left brain hemispheres and their link to original ideas (whatever that may be).  So this is some food for the common artist's legend going back to the groundbreaking works of Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz (http://www.d498.de/oca/1104kris1.shtml) However, it is not suggested to violate your left forehead. No artistic success guaranteed! You guessed it.

Source:
www.united-academics.org/magazine/homefeat/higher-creativity-through-brain-damage





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