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Banks are too big to fail. Arts organisations aren't.
Arts Council plans for cuts of up to 30%: "The DCMS has... asked the biggest arts organisations to provide models of how they would implement cuts of 25-30% over four years, and what the effects would be. Arts Council England, which receives £445m to give out to 850 organisations around the country, has warned that it would have to stop funding for at least 200 organisations." Source: The Guardian, 20th July 2010.
cuts_test (2010)
cuts_test keeps watch on the effects of funding cuts. It does this using 'ping' (an automated computer check on whether a website is responding). If the art organisation is online, cuts_test will highlight their logo and report its result. If it fails, it will report this and replace the logo with a blank. cuts_test's companion piece is corps_checker also commissioned by Arnolfini (2008).
http://www.in-vacua.com/test.html
corps_checker (2008)
As a service to the artworld, in a time of considerable uncertainty, corps_checker anxiously takes the pulse of the business benefactor. corps_checker is a response to the credit crunch and the inflated promises of the creative economy. A script running on the arnolfini server tests the state of corporate sponsorship by 'pinging' the servers of companies listed on the UK Art & Business web site. Should the company fold as a result of the credit crunch, a negative result will be registered. The work exists as a sort of virtual corporate monitoring organisation watching potential business donors for signs of keeling over. Ultimately the work becomes a test of what lasts longest: capitalism or the software program. The source code is available under the GNU Public License version 3 or later.
http://in-vacua.com/checker.html
Wayne Clements is a visual artist and a writer living in London. His previous works include logo_wiki (2007) and un_wiki (2005).
New Scythians
Wayne Clements
"Double-dip - official, as current slump lasts longer than 1930s recession," says KPMG chief economist.
Source: www.kpmg.com (2012)
"New media artists are able to work internationally and, at least in part, outside of the traditional gallery system, facilitated by the great number of expositions of new media art. These festivals and events do not, as art colleges do not, have an express 'mission to sell'. Rather they rest on the basis of an inscrutable mix of cooperation, voluntarism, private beneficence, and public funding."
Source: Scrivener, S., & Clements, W., "Triangulating Artworlds: Gallery, New Media and Academy", in Art Practice in a Digital Culture (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010).
Socrates: … but what would you say of another man, who fights flying, instead of remaining?
Laches: How flying?
Socrates: Why, as the Scythians are said to fight, flying as well as pursuing…
Source: Plato, Laches.
The KPMG's chief economist Andrew Smith (quoted above), commenting on the Office for National Statistics' estimate of UK Gross Domestic Product in the first quarter of 2012, states: "output remains broadly unchanged from its level in the third quarter of 2010 and, four years on from its pre-recession peak is still some 4 percent down– making this slump longer than the 1930s Depression." Capitalism has not offset its long-term tendency for the rate of profit to decline – nor the protracted social and political crisis attendant upon it.
The four legs whereupon the flat surface on which formally sat new media art's public display (a mix of cooperation, voluntarism, private beneficence, and public funding) are attacked by the same loss of subsidy as the art colleges also mentioned above. The traditional gallery system may continue to sell pricey artwork to mining magnates and the like. Outside that system, is the best we can look forward to the digital equivalent of stewing-up grass in the rain?
Clearly we cannot rely upon the latter pair of our funding quartet. That might seem to leave only cooperation and voluntarism. But add, like the Scythians, to fight flying as well as pursuing, and new and more scrutable alchemies.
