Archive för Art

American artist P Nosa, he draws art on a sewing machine, is planning a sewing tour in the US with the mission: ”…to navigate the country promoting people’s creativity, providing a tangible patch of their ideas, and to teach how to use alternative energy sources”.

To fulfill his idea, he has created a website where you can donate money. If he gets to the total amount of the cost (7500 USD) he is on his way, otherwise the tour is cancelled.

The funding idea of the project goes in line with the idea of crowdfunding, where people pitch in a sum of money, big or small, to an idea they like. If fully funded, the projects runs. It’s the thought of ”the crowd decides”. These types of alternative funding ideas are growing and in Sweden you find for example the site Funded By Me.

Support the sewing tour here. Read another post of P Nosa here.

Sarah Thelwall, a British researcher and consultant in creative and cultural industries, has written an interesting paper (July 2011) based on research on the value of small visual arts organizations in the arts ecology as well as society. Some of the outcomes include:

• The role and value of small visual arts organizations in society and within the arts ecology is often under-estimated by public authorities.

• The evaluation and measurement methods, ”the metrics”, of government and funders do not correspond to the value produced by these small organizations who build their operation on collaboration and flexibility.

• By investing in risk-taking and development of work, small arts organizations contribute to the development of larger art organizations.

• Small art organizations have very few tangible assets to capitalize income on compared to larger organizations, un often unacknowledged incomestream to be found in these small organizations is the intangible assets such as organizational expertise and experience, intellectual property, research skills, risk-taking etc.

• The report suggest a new investment model in order to measure the value of small visual arts organizations.

Download the report here: Common-Practice-London-Size-Matters.pdf. Sarah Thelwall also initiated the service MyCake as an easy way to manage your finances.

The three year old current culture exchange program between the state of Karnataka, India and the region of vastra Gotaland, Sweden has kept developing and does incorporate collaboration in many art and culture fields today.

Nätverkstan was part of the initiating process concerning this collaboration and is still an active actor in Bangalore.

KMV, the film, culture and media production centre based on sociala entrepreneurship in Bergsjön, a suburb in Gothenburg, has since a year back started to cooperate with Nätverkstan and Mediaverkstan.

During the Bangalore International Film Festival a joint seminar by KMV and Nätverkstan was held with Leif Eriksson from Nätverkstan as the key speaker. The seminar, held at the Department of Information in Bangalore, attracted a large audience consisting primarly of youngsters and young women, most of them active as film makers, or studying film and media production in Bangalore.

The seminar emphasized new ways of funding feature film in the ongoing digital paradigm shift  as well as a case study on ”Bloody Boys”,  the feature film produced by KMV. Topics in the seminar included issues concerning how the film was financed, how amateurs and residents in the suburb collaborated with top actors and crew from the professional part of the swedish film business. An intense discussion was initiated raising questions about filmproduction, social entrepreneurship and media production catalyzing social change.

Another aspect of the discussion also included new ways of nonlinear collaborative postproduction work in the digital flow-work. ”Bloody Boys” was also screened during the fim festival and was sold out on every screening and did receive intense media attention.

Text by Leif Ericsson, film producer and Nätverkstan

The seminar is a cooperation between Nätverkstan and KMV in Bangalore, India. Se more posts here on the exchange in Bangalore.

The verdict fell heavily yesterday on the two Swedish journalists, Johan Persson and Martin Schibbye, in prison in Addis Adeba, Ethiopia.

They were charged and convicted by Lideta Federal High Court for being terrorists, the most severe of the charges they were accused for. It’s no doubt that the conviction was political, and so the trial.

Johan Persson and Martin Schibbiye are not terrorists. They went to the Ogaden-province to document and inquire about the multinational oil companies work in the area and the consequences of this. It’s a completely closed area, and word is that people live in the most severe circumstances and in complete absence of human rights as well as international law.

The verdict is a clear statement to journalists to keep out, and of course a large threat to freedom of speech and the journalists task as critical observers and reporters. We have seen many examples of this, just recently artist Ai Weiwei’s as well as many other political writers and journalists imprisonment in China. On December 15 Nätverkstan arranged Imprisoned Day in Lagerhuset, an arrangement together with the PEN club, to put the light on imprisoned writers.

Read other posts on Ai Weiwei here, and Imprisoned Writers’ Day here. Also related reflections from an article in New York Times in April this year by Salman Rushdie here. Read todays daily Göteborgs-Posten (in Swedish).

Ira Glass, an American public radio personality who has among other things produced This American Life for tv and radio, has shared quite a lot of his experiences during his career. Here something on the creative process.

Yesterday, on November 15, Nätverkstan commemorated The Day of the Imprisoned Writer – this annual, international day intended to recognize and support writers who resist repression of the basic human right to freedom of expression and who stand up to attacks made against their right to impart information.

In Lagerhuset, Göteborg, the editor in chief for the magazine Filter, Mattias Göransson, explained the situation for the two imprisoned Swedish journalists Martin Schibbye and Johan Persson. After that we listened to a discussion between the Palestinian/Syrian poet Ghayath Almadhoun and the freelance journalist Mikael Löfgren on the topic literature and politics in Syria. The evening ended with a poetry reading of Almadhouns recently published poems translated into Swedish (Asylansökan, Ersatz förlag, 2010).

Ghayath Almadhoun, describes himself as he ”doesn’t exist”. Being of Palestinian and Gaza heritage but born in Syria, which he later left, he doesn’t have any certificate or paper acknowledging his national status. No papers and no passport. This of course is a dilemma from the Migration Office in Sweden, where he is applying for asylum, who wants to see his birthcertificate to be able to decide on his heritage and by that also if he is allowed to apply for asylum or not. ”I am not learning Swedish until they accept me”, he says with a smile. ”I accept this country, and this country has to accept me.”

The Yugoslav Museum of History in Belgrade, also known as Museum 25th of May, is now hosting the 52nd October Salon It’s Time We Get To Know Each Other.

The curators, Israeli artist Galit Eilat and Slovenian curator Alenka Gregoric, use as a starting point Milgram’s simulation experiment on obedience towards authorities and want to catalyse a discussion on obedience, social responsibility, conformism and dis-obedience. The artists chosen all refer to the topic of what we, human beings, are willing to do when we think we are not responsible.

25th of May is former Yugoslav dictator Tito’s birthday and the Museum was planned to be his Memorial Centre where he would collect all the things he collected in his life; records, paper, art work. He is buried just behind the Museum. One art piece by Nemanja Cvijanovic’s Paying my Electricity Bill is a heated replica of the grave of Tito and refers to parts of history that cannot be erased.

The independent cultural scene that I meet is spurring and generous. Interesting organizations like the cultural house and European Center for Culture and Debate Grad down by the river Sava, and Rex placed in an old synagogue, both aim to debate contemporary topics relevant in Serbian and European society. While Rex is a laboratory for research of new fields of culture, Grad provides design and art space, run projects, and have a small stage for debates and performances.

Rex also runs the Free Zone Film Festival, an international filmfestival running this week. In his film A letter to dad, Serbian film-maker Srdan Keca searches for answers of why his father choose to die. He writes a letter to his dead father as he looks back to try understand what happened. In his interviews with his uncle, the father’s old friend, his mother; going through photos and films from the past; a story of a life interrupted by war unfolds. It relates back to the exhibition. How could it happen?

Other initiatives is the Monday Club, arranged by the Swedish Embassy and Museum of Science and Technology within the project Creative Society. Each Monday during the fall a Swedish and Serbian manager, professor, leader meet to share experience and knowledge from running an organization, setting up an initiative, or research on stage at six o’clock. This form of seminar has become quite popular among artists, cultural entrepreneurs and managers, as well as among university professors.

Wherever you turn on this independent cultural scene in Belgrade, in these few snapshots, you meet people educated at the MA Cultural Policy and Management at University of Arts in Belgrade. Many witness how important the training programme has been to build a strong independent scene in Serbia. During the conference on Management of culture and media in the knowledge society challenges in cultural management and the role of internationalization are addressed. It would also be interesting to discuss the role of these educations in strengthening an independent cultural scene in society.

Download the intervention from Nätverkstan here:belgrade_conference2011.pdf.

The stage is like stepping into a living-room. In the center under the lamp a couch, an armchair, a small wooden table with an ashtray, a photograph, a lamp, a rug underneath.

The audience sit around this centered placed stage. The play is Edward Albee’s drama Who’s afraid of Viriginia Woolf and it’s almost like you are part of the play, as if you are inthe middle of Martha’s and George’s sorrow and cracking marriage.

On another stage we see the play Stones in His Pockets by Marie Jones, a story placed on Irland with an Irish filmmaker dreaming of coming to Hollywood. Two actors play all the roles in this comic yet with sad undertones with an amazing presence. The stage is empty, no properties, a black curtain behind where only the light shows that the room is changing. It’s fully booked.

Tallinna Linnateater, Tallinn City Theatre, has seven stages in a building originally from around 15th century. There is the stage in ”Heaven” (up in the attic) and ”Hell” (down in the basement). Each stage with a different character, different possibilities and challenges. Outside in the courtyard a stage is set up for summer theatre.

Tallinn has seven theatres in a city with around 400.000 people. Linnateater is fully booked with a yearly audience booking of well over 100%, Ruudu Raudsepp, Manager of Public Relations, tells us. Just in comparison, Göteborgsoperan (Opera in Göteborg) has a yearly booking of 85%, which has to be considered good. This means around 250.000 people visit Göteborgsoperan each year. Another example is Dramaten in Stockholm, one of the most prominent stages in Sweden, that showed figures in 2010 of yearly booking of 85% (a rise from 2009 showing 78%) which means 290.000 visitors.

These figures say nothing of quality; for example urgency of the matter in the plays chosen, or acting qualities. But still, the figures in Estonia are interesting. In a country of around 1,3 million people, it’s said that around 800.000 up to one million people see a play at one of the many theatres in Estonia during a year. This means that nearly everyone go to the theatre, young as well as old, at least once during a year. Any theatre director would look at these figures with envy.

Trans Europe Halles – meetings that matters

During four days, 27 – 30th October, around 100 people from different Independent Cultural Centres throughout Europe have met in Bordeaux for the 72nd Trans Europe Halles meeting. This network (founded in 1983) gather more than fifty multidisciplinary and socially engaged member centres. Most centres are located in buildings from industrial heritage and have taken important action in challenging the established cultural policy.

This meeting was held at TNT – Manufacture de Chaussures in Bordeaux, France. The theme of the meeting was Neighbourhood / Voisinage. The meeting was organised together with TEH Friend organisation ARTfactories/Autre(s) pARTs and supported by TEH:s three-year network project Engine Room Europe.

About TNT

TNT opened in 1997 in a former shoe factory, and supports artistic research in the performing arts. Originally devoted to the theatre, it opened to other disciplines such as dance, music, visual arts, poetry, etc. These relations can last from a month to two years, through residencies or long-term projects. TNT tries to develop new ways of working, in its programming as in its functioning, in the choice of the artists, as in the working modalities, in the relations with the public as in the economy of the projects.

About ARTfactories/Autre(s)pARTs

The organisation ARTfactories/Autre(s)pARTs is a common platform for reflection, research and action, transmission and solidarity for the development of art centres that organise their practices and experiments around the relationship between arts, territories and populations. ARTfactories/Autre(s)pARTs is based in Toulouse, France.

Kulturverkstan is not a member of TEH but took part of the meeting as a guest. Networking is always a good way to reflect upon what’s possible, get inspired, review your own work and talk with people with common interests. This network is also interesting to us as we always look for interesting internships for our students.

Some snapshots

The meeting was a mix of formal and informal meetings, information and interaction, meeting with artist, brain-gym and artistic work. Among other things we took part in two different workshops:

The workshop ”Cross-Boarder Exchange” set out to explore the relationship between people with common ideas, but different national contexts. In this workshop we discuss challenges and possibilities of these exchanges, starting with two examples from Kulturfabrik in Luxembourg and La Grainerie in Toulouse, France. They both shared their experiences from recent cross-boarder projects and the discussion that followed centred around issues such as regional identity, European funding and the benefits of proper evaluations. The over all outcome was the positive encouragement from the participants with experience in cross-boarder exchange. That even though communication can prove to be very challenging and a lot of the budget needs to be spent on travelling it is still a very rewarding experience that your organisation will benefit from in a number of ways. The workshop leader was Dušica Parezanović from the centre REX, in Belgrade,Serbia.

Another workshop introduced ”Holacracy, a new way of Governance”. The term ”Holacracy” refers to a practice of structuring, governing and running an organisation. One of the interesting aspects of this model was the concept of doing what’s ”workable”. To not spend to much time on finding what’s perfect before you try it out. Inspiration comes from software development and open source where you launch a Beta-version and get immediate feedback to make it better.

Travelling to a European meeting often give you the opportunity to also meet colleagues from your own country. We spent some time with the Swedish members Röda sten, Konstepidemin, Kulturmejeriet, Subtopia, Culturen and Not Quite. Carl-Oscar Sjögren, artistic director for the performing arts company Drift, took part of the TEH meeting to launch, and gain inspiration on, his new project; to open an international art centre in an old abandoned mine. The mine is called Ställberg and is situated in the Swedish forests of Västmanland in a mine district that was closed down some 30 years ago. Since the TEH network constitutes mainly of cultural centres in buildings that was once used for industrial purposes, Carl-Oscar had the chance to meet with a lot of people that had pioneered the same roads he is now about to discover.

In Autumn 2012 the TEH meeting will be held in Gothenburg, hosted by Röda sten and Konstepidemin. Nätverkstan/Kulturverkstan will most certainly take part in some way!

EVENTO2011

Parallel to the TEH meeting  the second edition of EVENTO in Bordeaux offered a series of interesting exhibitions and art projects. EVENTO2011 has invited Michelangelo Pistoletto and his foundation Cittadellarte as artistic director and brings many local and international artists together under the theme ”Art for an Urban Re-Evolution”. The aim is to encourage us to reinvent the city and how we live together.

We visited some of the interesting spots:

ONCE UPON A FUTURE (STEALTH.unlimited + arc en rêve centre d’architecture Bordeaux) is a fictional account of a possible utopia for Bordeaux in 2030, inspired by citizen’s initiatives. This fictional narrative takes the form of a large mural created by a number of graphic designers and graphic novel artists. We have learnt from history different consequences of imposed utopias, in this work the artist are trying to use the concept of utopia in a ”more pragmatic and less theoretical, more immanent and less transcendent: a hybrid of utopia, somewhere between desire and reality”. Walking along the mural, taking part of all these different ideas and desires my reflection is that the notion of utopia or future at least tells us a lot about the present.

”This is how we came to eat sugar”

Musée d’Aquitaine (Aquitaine is the south-western region of France, along the Atlantic Ocean and the Pyrenees mountain range on the border with Spain)

This museum with it contents Pistoletto uses as a portrait of the past that help us to prefigure the future: Slavery, immigration and other things that we have built our societies and economical growth upon. Six international artists – William Kentridge, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Marzia Migliora, Michael Blum, Shilpa Gupta and Wael Shawky – create a link between the museum collections and elements of refexion on contemporary society.

Our last stop was at a space-specific art project where an artist has worked together with people living there creating a garden, a stage and a café. Everyone in the neighbourhood has been invited to use it for their ideas.

By: Karin Dalborg & Malin Schiller, Kulturverkstan

Below:

1. TNT, and 2-3. Once upon a future

We have gathered, around ten students, teacher and artists from the Cultural Management Program, Art University and the field , to work on the art of living on art and, for some, the burning question of what will happen after studies are finished.

The invitation is from the MA Cultural Management in Tallinn at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre in the center of the city. In the small room great plans and ideas are drawn up, reflections and dreams are high as well as down to the practice of everyday work. So, what needs to be done? What active steps can I take? What is the surrounding discussion and context in society at the moment?

Tallinn is this year Cultural Capital and in Estonia the cultural industries gained momentum in 2003-2004. Figures say that creative industries are around three percent of Estonia GDP and that the added value from this field was larger than any other branch or industry (see Tallinn City Enterprise Board). Recently a large conference was held in Tallinn on Creative Entrepreneurship for a Competitive Economy with some major speakers in the field invited. Talking to people in the cultural field there seem to be a gap between the large plans of creative industries and the artists. Someone should perhaps take an interest in mitigating this gap.

On the second conference on the course Cultural Entrepreneurship Workshop (Knep) three guest lecturers with very different approach held seminars in the old barn, now a conference venue, restaurant and brewery of local beer.

Placed in the fields about two hours drive from Göteborg around twentyfive artists gathered this beautiful autumn day to listen to the perfect combo.

David Hansson and Thomas Hansy who form Gothenburg Combo and make a living on their acoustic guitars told their story from Music Academy to international touring.

Ulla-Lisa Thordén wrote the book Luspank och Idérik (Broke but full of ideas, my translation) and gave a talk on how to sell and communicate your art to others.

Claes Bohman, who, among many other things, have been part of the team starting Transit, the incubator that was connected to University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, was giving a speach on the process from idea to the audience or customer.

During this combination of lecturers and storytellers two thing were significant: The importance of quality, artistic quality, in the work; and working on different levels of understanding. David Hansson and Thomas Hansy want to reach both the ”amateur” audience as well as other professionals. To do that they need to work on different levels in their music.

Read more here.

It’s so quiet. During the whole performance soft music is only played occationally. All focus is on the two bodies on the floor and their movements. Painful movements, stretching every mussel to its utmost limit, posing the body in positions that confuses the mind. The stage is black, a white half-rolled out carpet or perhaps paper in one end hanging in the air, the other still rolled up. In between the two ends, the two bodies are placed as you arrive. One sitting up with the back to the stage, the other laying on the floor. Two round balls on a table, like eyes intensely watching the two dancers without once looking away.

Choreographer Jeanette Langert is known for her way of exploring movements and very rightly got this year’s Birgit Cullberg Award given by Konstnärsnämnden (The Arts Grant Committee) in a small ceremony right after the performance.

The Committee has published several reports on the economic conditions for artists in Sweden, working environment, type of organization, to what extend you can live on your art and so forth. Overall the cultural field consist of project work, short-term assignments and a working situation of many varied pursuits and multiple income sources. The dancers and choreographers are to a high degree freelancers with volatile and insecure working conditions. Awards like this are so important.

If you enjoy star-spotting, Göteborg is the place to be in at the moment. The exhibition hall at Svenska Mässan is filled to its rims with well-known authors, writers, journalists, publishing houses, book-stores and others involved the art of words.

The Nordic Book Fair just started, this year with the theme Three countries – one language, that is the german speaking literature is in focus.

Nätverkstan is there with an exhibition place for the over hundred small cultural journals that we work with. This is probably the most important event for these journals. Tonight at a glamorous party at Storan, the Cultural Journal of the Year will be nominated.

The theories of philosopher Jacques Rancière and his politics of aesthetics got a very practical meaning the other day when listening to literature researcher and dramaturge Jan Holmgaard.

He was invited to give a talk at the closing of a mentorprogram run by DIK Association and took his standing-point in Rancière. Very simplified described as two spheres in constant struggle with each other; the current understanding of reality, and the resistance towards this understanding. The gap in between these two is where creativity and modern art finds its role in trying to distort current understanding. A vital society should be one that allows for this gap of disagreement to exist.

Translated to practical work in an organization or, such as in this case, a mentorprogram, it poses some crucial questions. Does a mentorship program institutionalize hierarchy? And is that good or bad? Can anything be done to brake this hierarchy? How would you radicalize the idea of a program for mentorship? What are the blind spots we don’t see, that influence on our understanding of reality and are used as the basis for decisions?

A struggle for consenus, a mutual agreement among a group of people, is undemocratic and just confirms the current. Instead, the democratic line is to allow for dissensus and disagreement, Holmgaard points out. A difficult task, and so beautifully addressed by Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgård in his summertalk in Swedish radio in August just a few weeks after the horrifying attack by Anders Behring Breivik in Oslo.

We are all pieces in the puzzle of existing understanding and structure in society. This was a good reminder of how important art is to keep us vital.

Rain has been pouring down about once every hour today. Heavy rains. The weather forecast has been followed with extreme care at Nätverkstan, glued by the radio most of the day and running outside to try to follow the clouds’ movement.

But half an hour before screening the first of three shows of art- and experimental films on outdoor screening, the clouds disappeared and the sky was blue. Around sixty people had gathered in the restaurant at Lagerhuset, sitting outside to have a drink and see art film. And as the sun set out the coastline in the West and it finally got darker, curator Åsa Falewicz presented her project Where Dreams Cross and her film put together by a set of nine films produced by different artists.

Screening windows for art- and experimental film are changing. The white cube is not any longer the only place where experimental moving images can – or will – be shown. Where Dreams Cross wants to explore new exhibit places for art film and video with the aim to reach a wider audience.

Nätverkstan Borderland has started in line with these ideas. We want to explore more screening possibilities for art- and experimental film, and are starting both open outdoor film screening together with an online window. And today was the nerv-racking start of a series of three shows. Tonight Åsa Falewicz with Where Dreams Cross gave it all a flying start!

The project is a cooperation between Nätverkstan Medialab (Medieverkstäderna), School of Film Directing at University of Gothenburg, Pustervik and Where Dreams Cross. Medieverkstäderna has cultural strategic funding from Region Västra Götaland.

Tonights highlight. A warm summer-evening working with artists on the Art of living on Art in the small town of Uddebo.

Nätverkstan is running a European Social Fund project on art and entrepreneurship, Knep. The courses are run at four different places around the region of Västra Götaland, from large cities to small. Read also here.

I’m in a school building, originally designed to cater for children with lung complaints. The huge terrace, the number of windows and doors opening onto the adjoining park were supposed to provide them with lots of fresh air. But now it’s a residential theatre education called DasArts, in Amsterdam.

In this room with windows to the park we are 15 people. Most of them are master students here to give each other feedback on their artistic practice duringthree intense days. Some mentors and advisors are here to support the specific student project they follow. Three people are staff members of DasArts and they have in turn invited Karim Bennamar to hold this feedback session with the students.

Karim makes an introduction and clarifies feedback should be about learning. But the brain is lazy and and it goes to places it already knows. By restricting the feedback in a format, something new could come out. Then he goes through six different styles of feedback and for every student presentation the studentgets to choose what type of feedback he or she wants from the group.

For me as an outsider it was noticeable the group knew each other rather well and there was a level of intimacy that made it possible for a more honest and straight forward critique than I have experienced before. For example some students asked for the “gossip round” a type of feedback where the others talk about you and your artistic work as if you weren’t present. Still, throughout the day the atmosphere remained on a good level although there were moments of uncomfort. Altogether these feedback methods appeared very effective given that huge number of different thoughts in a short time.

In the mission statement of DasArts you can find the following quote from Heiner Goebbels: “A group of young artists can develop the power to stop doing something: not to show the obvious, to mistrust the flood of inner images, the so-called ingenious ideas. Anyway, theatre is not about the ‘flowering fantasy’ of the artist, it’s about the imagination of the audience.”

Text by: Malin Schiller, Coordinator at Kulturverkstan/Nätverkstan

www.reflectiontools.nl

www.plethora.nl

www.dasarts.nl

Two tables away from me in a smaller restaurant in New York the other week, I spot the well-known author Salman Rushdie talking intensely with a friend.

I see his backside, but still recognize his strong appearance. I remember seeing him November 2008 in a TV-sent seminar together with Italian author Roberto Saviano arranged by Svenska Akademin under the name ”The free word and the lawless violence” (original title: ”Det fria ordet och det laglösa våldet”). Two writers living under death threat because of their artistic work.

The day after the visit at the restaurant I read an article in New York Times (April 20 2011) written by Salman Rushdie.

Art can be dangerous. Very often artistic fame has been proven to be dangerous to artists themselves.

The imprisoning of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei and other activists and artists in China is the latest example, he writes. And when the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, of which Salman Rushdie is the chairman, invited Chinese writer Liao Yiwu to the festival opening on April 25, he was denied permission to travel to the USA.

The latest issue of the Economist (April 16th 2011) follows the same line of thinking with the headline: ”China’s crackdown”. The detention of artists and activists in a steady flow sent to prison and ”disappearing” is following the latest ”freeze” in China and at least three things casts hope of a more open China into doubt, an article notes.

The detention of Ai Weiwei; the duration of this crackdown is longer than the former; and the cruel method of the repression picking up people under ”arbitrary detention rules and then made to disappear”.

I was reminded of Salman Rushdie’s strong article in New York Times reading this.

The lives of the artist are more fragile than their creations, Salman Rushdie writes.

The poet Ovid was exiled by Augustus to a little hell-hole on the Black Sea called Tomis, but his poetry has outlasted the Roman Empire.

We can perhaps bet on art to win over tyrants. It is the world’s artists, particularly those courageous enough to stand up against authoritarianism, for whom we need to be concerned, and for whose safety we must fight.

He could be writing of himself.

If we ever forget why art is important, this is a reminder.

Read former post on Ai Weiwei here.

In the middle of the Theatre District, on the tenth floor on 35^th Street on Manhattan you find Fractured Atlas, a business service organization for artists. For a service organization, it is well hidden from visitors. For obvious reasons, it shows. Fractured Atlas is solely an online tool and service for artists; a virtual meeting place and service provider.

It started off in 1998 as a performing arts producer in downtown New York City and they worked with theatre companies, choreographers, musicians, and performance artists. In 2002, they reinvented themselves as a service organization with the aim of impacting a wider segment of the arts community.

They have around 16.000 members, artists around the US, with a majority of members in New York State and California. They help artists within all art forms with what they need most in the US: Health Insurance Program and Fiscal Sponsorship.

Alongside these two flagships, Fractured Atlas also provide technological solutions for networking and calendar of events; matchmaking of free studio spaces; cultural asset map that collects data of cultural activity in an area, and other useful information.

This non-profit organization is completely internet-based with the aim of having all useful information online in a system easy to learn for the members. You can take easy step-to-step courses in what to think of when freelancing or running an organization, or apply to the Health Insurance Program and use the other services on your own wherever you are situated.

It is virtual service centre, focusing on what they think artists need most in form of insurance and sponsorship, and do not work with entrepreneurship. Instead, others do this like for example the incubator in San Francisco; Intersection for the Arts (look in the end of this post for a link to the visit Nätverkstan did in 2007).

Adam Natale, Director of Partnerships and Business Development, says there is a need, though, to build more knowledge at art schools and universities of entrepreneurship.

The little state funding that has been available in the US is declining and there are many examples of what being too dependent on grants and sponsorship from foundations could mean. The latest example being the old theatre in Seattle, Intiman Theatre, having to lay off all staff and close down during the rest of 2011 to try to get finances right.

The tradition among artists, at least within the performing arts, is to become a non-profit organization. Many artists are thinking of them as a charity and ask for grants. Even though Fractured Atlas offer an umbrella fiscal solution for these organizations, a legal and financial system by which a legally recognized public charity can apply for grants and receive tax-deductible contributions, this is not enough.

The troubles for Intiman Theatre are not only due to declining grants from foundations, but also to ”management missteps” as you can read in an article in The Seattle Times (November 12, 2010). It is, though, Adam Natale says, an example of the vulnerability for many theatres in the US depending on grants as their main stream of income.

Read about the Nätverkstan visit to Intersection of the Arts here.