Potluck chat: Renée Ridgway: Beaver, Wampum, Hoes

Hi everyone,
This week we’ll be talking with Renée Ridgway again, who will catch us up on her recent projects, including: “Beaver, Wampum, Hoes” (she’s on this continent for her walking tour ‘Wampum Trail’ at Conflux Festival this weekend that specifically looks at the Native American history of lower Manhattan which has been largely overlooked by the Dutch/N.Y. 400 year celebrations); preparing “Negotiating Equity” (curation as artistic practice); and a forum in Guwahati, India for “n.e.w.s” (online platform for participatory development of artistic and curatorial projects).

More about Renée
http://reneeridgway.net/

More about Beaver, Wampum, Hoes
Beaver, Wampum, Hoes is an online, multimedia platform that focuses on 400 years of Dutch colonization in NY. It uses the 17th c. trade triangle (Beaver, Wampum, Hoes) as the thread that weaves anecdotes with facts in an attempt to ask broader questions about the affects of colonization and the largest imminent questions (land) concerning taking account of this history. In the 21st century beavers are back in town, Native American casinos provide an alternative yet controversial signature of financial support, hoes a homonym comprised of European goods as well as human commodity. Beaver, Wampum, Hoes measures accountability through a heterogeneous, collective exchange system.

http://beaverwampumhoes.net/
http://confluxfestival.org/2009/events/conflux-city/

More about Negotiating Equity
Negotiating Equity at DAI (Dutch Art Institute Master Programme/ArtEZ Institute of the Arts) aims to offer a participatory platform to address the ethics and practice of curatorship as a mode of art production, asserting that these terms of engagement imply rethinking the economic and social conditions of art. Negotiating Equity draws upon theories of fairness in questioning divergent value systems and testing artistic models amongst students, curators, artists, art critics and writers from around the world. The nature and format of this project favors cooperative endeavor, while considering the implications of self-curation. Specificially, this project will address collaborative curation and the position of the artist as curator- investigating experimental and conceptual art practices under physical as well as virtual conditions.

http://negotiatingequity.net

More about n.e.w.s.
n.e.w.s was launched last year at ISEA 2008 in Singapore. n.e.w.s. is a platform for participatory development of artistic and curatorial projects in contemporary art and new media framed by curatorial contributions from around the globe.  Bringing together voices and images from North, East, West and South, n.e.w.s. reflects geographic diversity and facilitates a framework for collaboration, content and visions of change from outside the normal parameters of established art world networks.

n.e.w.s. offers space for a potential series of global dialogues, transactions and collaborations concerning art and its discourse. n.e.w.s. is non-commercial and uses the visibility of distributed networks to create value around immaterial resources in a knowledge-driven economy. Using a bottom-up, grass roots methodology in a Web 2.0 economy, what distinguishes n.e.w.s. from other online communities is its collaborative curatorial model and partially remunerated content, without being an academic, governmental or large cultural institution with structural subsidy. A system of trust and unexpected contingencies measure this intangible input. This strategy encourages a return not strictly based on attention economy (reputation) principles.

http://northeastwestsouth.net

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See you all Then!

Join us every Tuesday night – in person, or on Skype, skypename: ‘basekamp’
If you come to the potluck in person, be sure to bring a dish :)
(basekamp space: 723 Chestnut St, 2nd floor, Philadelphia usa)