I had a long, great chat with Gideon Smilansky from Artist Run Alliance yesterday, during which we decided on the focus of the meeting we’re organizing in Berlin.
Gidi is a rare animal - an artist and a cultural professional, who connects startup entrepreneurship tools with cultural management methodologies, for whom making money, doing interesting work and being consequent with your own values and goals go hand in hand. He works as a teacher and a mentor (he just came back from Supermarket Art Fair in Stockholm, next week I’ll go see him at Soft Power platform organized by Schloss Solitude.
Gideon is a changemaker and he believes we can shift thing by action - which is why he decided to work on cooperative models for culture and overturning (he didn’t like this word, though) the art market by giving back the power over creation and work to the artists. His small, DIY art space in Tel Aviv has since evolved into an important contemporary art institution and a co-op, a model for other galleries in Israel who wanted to try this path.
Given his experience in the art scene and an interesting approach, I’d like to center the first discussion around a very concrete strategy building around artist-run spaces - what would be the key steps to building the space, the audience, developing the value, and staying motivated while growing as an artist?
This would overlap very well with what @Hugi will be discussing soon after in Blivande and @Noemi next week in Brussels. Can culture Culture become a virtual space with a manual for art spaces? @alex_levene, where is your focus atm?
We probably have better chances of getting something actionable from our events if we focus on something this specific and important, so yeah, go for it! But what would the manual be for? The work will then be to find the right people who wish to help build the strategy and deploy it somewhere, so that you dont get saddled with too much after the event is over.