1:1 Scale Model for a New Art Economy

Hi everyone!

This Tuesday Elysa Lozano from Autonomous Organization wants to talk with all of you about the 1:1 Scale Model for a New Art Economy, a two-part initiative: The first part is a series of summits with people who work in different roles in visual arts to ask them what their ideal art economy would look like. The second is to make a 1:1 scale model from the evolving diagram that emerges from these meetings.

As a starting point for our chat, Elysa will present a diagram to suggest how such an economy could be organized – each of the sections of this model brings up questions about how situations could be produced. For this chat, she would like to brainstorm with everyone about group decision-making processes that work, the contradictions between seed funding and self-sustainable funding, how to connect directly with collectors and donors, and the issue of exclusionary practices based on affiliation within the visual arts:

By combining the diverse initiatives that have already been developed by cultural practitioners with a redistribution of funding sources available to the arts, it is possible to knit together a strategy for an entirely self-sufficient project space and live-in co-op. For example, funding from donors, collectors, local arts councils, and private grantmakers would be routed directly to artist co-ops, rather than, for example, finding its way eventually to students through scholarships or artists via museums or becoming concentrated on one particular person.

The artists and cultural producers would make decisions about which works are put into which systems of exchange. Essentially, the artists and cultural producers would retain the right to decide which works have cultural relevance and would set the value for such works in relation to resources, time, and goods.

Autonomous Organization wants to help produce a plurality of access points and organizational structures that are mutable by participants: self-organization, takeovers, tools, models and research.

The evolving diagram is meant to be a hubristic suggestion of potentiality. To retain this essence of a model, Autonomous Organization’s intention is to help realize it as a 1:1 scale model in real time.

If you want to contribute, Join the chat this Tuesday – on Skype (skypename: ‘basekamp’) – or in person if you happen to be in Philadelphia.

See you all then!
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