I gave one of my first media art related international talks at ISEA94 in Helsinki on neocolonial metaphors related with the emerging Internet. Since then, have visited all except two of them, and each time raised my own travel funding. The one I chaired in 2004 locally does not count of course. :)
There are certain aspects of the idea behind this event which I still find relevant, yet unfortunately, as the Inter Society is largely non-funded, there are very few tools or power to guarantee integrity of each event. And as I expressed in my previous note, Inter Society board has partly great people but also some who are willing to do things like Dubai. Also, even though organizers of an ISEA agree to a set of guidelines, quite many ignore some of them and go on with what they are used to, subjective "star" curating instead of more transparent and open processes.
What ISEAs have been good at most times is providing an environment for meeting practitioners and academics from the region where it is organized - for those who can make it to that location. If done according to the guidelines, then also you get many more emerging artists / practitioners showing or presenting their work if you compare it with locally produced annual festivals, let alone contemporary art spectacles. If done according to it's guidelines, the selection should be made by a diverse committee. In 2004 I worked with 42 members and there were over 1300 proposals. The only part which we curated ourselves, was electronic music, ie. the club programme and keynotes, yet we discussed these with a number of people. In other words, the conference programme was 1:1 with the shortlist by the committee minus who could not travel, and the art programme likewise except for projects that were not financially possible. Most curator types find this approach incomprehensible.
While enabling a rich translocal event for those in the region where it is organized, the downside of the travelling nature of ISEAs is that it is extremely difficult to raise enough funding to pay expenses for as many practitioners as you would hope to. The academic part of the event, and to be fair, call it research and theory track as many of us are not on an academic regular salary who engage with conferences and workshops, is more sustainable than the exhibitions due to low production cost. Back in 2004 we had 3 years to generate travel bursaries via Hivos, Unesco, ASEF, Mondrian and also national arts councils. 1392 people from 54 countries registered to participate in the core components of the symposium (sea/Tallinn/Helsinki), 320 artists had their work presented in the exhibitions and performances, 210 academics, artist and theorists presented papers, 68 journalists attended the event, 50.000 exhibition and workshop visitors. With IFFACA and Art Council Finland we held a small expert meeting that emphasised the need for a transnational media cultural policy and funding structures. The whole event took 3,5 years to produce, and m-cult as the main organizer was left with quite a deficit. In fact, had we agreed to name it Nokia ISEA, we'd most likely gotten a sponsor deal that would have covered it. But there are certain things you can and cannot do that involve integrity. There were also so many things one would have liked to do better, but if you and your fab colleagues already work 14-20 hour days and sometimes skip a night in a week, there is a limit, and you do the best you can. I learned a lot from the whole experience.
Now seeing things like ISEA Dubai emerge I feel betrayed almost, because certain legacies and ethics you work with and attach to what you think ISEA should or could be, can be so easily also dismissed. I already felt very uneasy when ISEA2006 was used as a Trojan horse to launch Zero One event. Like Stephen said, if HONF does not get an ISEA nomination, it can make something greater, but if it does, it can make a unique event in the history of ISEAs. It will not be in any way easier to raise funding. say, for someone coming from Latin America to travel to Indonesia than it has been to raise money for someone to come from Indonesia to this last ISEA in US. Or who knows... just it is not about elitism as such, if an event like ISEA cannot pay your, or everyone's ticket.
With a lot of couch surfing, focus on workshops, lighter more carry-tech-on you approach, local resources, works made on site, workshops developed with local communities etc. there is a way to put money that there is to other things than usual (hotels, shipping, rentals). This kinda sounds like what HONF if anyone could achieve. What is often lacking is social design; how to keep people together, how to have unexpected encounters and not usual suspects and methods on board.
It is easy to be critical about festivals. How would you make one better? Which choice, which action, which funding will result into a radically different scenario, if you have x amount of people involved and a limited budget? If you have crowds, how do you build intimacy, and maintain criticality? It's quite interesting that even though years pass, some things like "event technologies" evolve much slower than hard and soft wares we use.
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Re: [Bricolabs] ISEA ?
