Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 15:23:15 GMT
From: anacmar-AT-mail.telepac.pt (Carlos Martins)
Subject: Re: exhibition -- money, funding


maybe i am beeing very naif about all that question but
why we have to ask funds to Bill Gates and others just to put
an exhibition on the Web as Lynn Bry referred?
Seems to me that one of the advantages of Internet is to make
things easier than the conventional. So why to make a very expensive
catalogue if the works and every texts and interventions can be shown there?

For me the Internet will be a most advanced and non-conventional space to do
any kind of things if you proceed of different manner i.e. doing things
without the need of milionaires or from our part without the need
of the conventional supports and notorious frames.

As Lynn warned us, there are many sites available implying no need
for corporate/commercial space. I added also Lateral Arts, Openart,
DiaCenter etc. that also be ideal for hosting a WWW exhibition.

How to guarantee that any of those corporations you are talking will not
censor any "indecent" material in political or erotic sense?
How to guarantee that based on this supports "we" don`t have to
discriminate some artists and some works and justify that
"exclusions" with the need to balance the money to expend ?

well, it was preferable for me to do a first surrealist exhibition
on the Web without those milionaire "supports" but certainly with
no less efficience and more free.
Like i said and more informed than me Lynn we no need much more than
the help of an ideal art site. The links with so many art sites or other
important general sites could be easily established.

Considering advertising we also don`t need large costs to do this.
We could do this on the Net through the news.groups and by-email
not excluding some money (collected by us) to put an advertising
on paper at art magazines or something. Some information could be
also addressed for the newspapers and published there without the need
of any money. Here in Portugal there are a few of publications that
keep weekly some pages dedicated to the Net and art exhibitions on the Net
(like "JA" in which i could talk with the person who subscribes the page,
Mr. Daniel Blaukfus, a photographer too).
Also there in your countries you could do the same ... no?

It seems to me very strange (maybe because the previous discussion
about fantastic ...) that we as surrealists and be present that
Internet is a different way to do different and alternative to the
traditional sides we have to circumscripte our discussions about an
exhibition on the Web to the question of getting funds to do it when
all we know that it is possible and relatively easy to do without
such kind of money supports. Of course we hadn`t any catalogue on paper
or perhaps we had one but more thin and poor.

I don`t agree what Michal said "...it looks we don`t have much choise
about getting some kind of outside funding" because the important
question is why we need so much funds to do a surrealist WEB exhibition?
Why we need now a catalogue on paper if we could print out whole the material
and eventually published as soon as we found the sponsors for that ?

To my way of seeing this (differently from some of yours) we could it
as follows:

1-Nominate one, two or three of us as responsabiles for all the aspects of the
  organization (see bellow);

2-to find a Web site larger than we could in order to get a space
for   the artists envolved (pictures, poetry, interventions, etc.);
3-find a period available, at least with two months;
4-contact all the other art-sites and establish with them so many links
  as possible to the site in which the exhibition takes place (for example
  my exhibition at openart in Paris is linked to Yahoo and other art sites
  and can also be accessed through a portuguese Yahoo`s style  site
  called "SAPO" (it means "the frog").
5-Make hundreds or thousands of contacts with art magazines and nespapers
  on paper telling about the exhibition and asking them for free publication.
6-Simultaneously at the exhibition on the Web but not as the main purpose
  we could arrange some sponsors or a publisher to issue a catalogue on
  paper in which was included at least one collor work by each artist, a short
  bio and some interventions in text. Arrived here well, surely we you are
  totally right, we had to find some sponsors (corporations or not, well
  we know better than i what to do about).

After all it seems we have to pay more attention to what Lynn said
about this matter and try to explore another ways. If mostly of you thinks of
different manner, well we have to do like that ...
First of all i think we have to decide now about what from all of us can
arrange all the things concerned organizational plan ... a small group of
us more experienced in organizational sense and also with some experience
or knowledge about how to make things run on computer language (scanning
pictures or photos of pictures based on the original, etc.). For the
computer arrangements on the Web i think very seriously that there are
many people on art sites that are doing this. We need only to scan our
own material and send to them with bio, interventions, etc. and they make
all the work, htmls, room space for each artist, etc. or accordingly any
previous recomendation room space by each subject or theme ...

Of course we can also get supports for scanning whole work but all we
need is to send the originals or the photos or slides of the originals
and sent it by snail- mail. For instance when i asked here for supporting
me to scan i got more than five answers helping me (people from Minho
University, Lisbon Amiga Center ...), so i had to choose one that ask me
nothing for paying.

Concerning what Lynn said regarding CD-ROMs well, i think
the same she has right. First we need to think what put on them
and even before to decide if it will be or not a surrealist reunion
(i have no doubts about that - would must be a surrealist reunion
to show and even proved that surrealism is still alive and active and
don`t lives only from the memories of the past - we have a strong
necessity to struggle against any kind of mumification of surrealism
of the first years. More than to have an aesthetical meeting between
all the reputated as ... we need to have a large reunion between many of those
(artists and poets) that consequently still assumed themselves as surrealists.
We are fed up with exhibitions so called "surrealists" that are controlled by
people that are very far from what surrealism is and discriminate all
the artists even the more active only because they are not so friendly with
them or struggle their policies (an example here is Mario Cesariny
that is the most active from all of us and never was represented at the
surrealist section of the Modern Art Center (CAME) of Calouste Gulbenkian
Foudation).

carlos

http://www.openart.com/artistes/martins/accueil.htm