Tough but Fair!

> From: "Francis Hwang" <[email protected]>

> Ivan Pope wrote:
>
<snip>
>
> Tough, but fair. A lot has happened at Rhizome in the past 12 months.
> We did a major site redesign, we came out with our first set of
> commissions, membership went way up…
>
> … Today, Rhizome.org has more
> than 22,000 members: Does it do everything that it could to unleash the
> critical and artistic energy of its individual members? No. We've
> accomplished a lot, but there's still lots of room for improvement.
>
I don't mean to criticise individuals or even Rhizome itself. I know
everyone works hard, but it seems that sometimes what is possible gets lost
in what is being done.
Looking around at various online communities and specifically at tools that
have been made available to develop such communities, it is clear that
Rhizome is hugely lacking. Of course, that could be by design, who am I to
tell Rhizome what to do? Only, my desire is to find or found a community of
artists where the ongoing process of being an artist, of living within what
is now a global network, comes to the fore.
We live in messy times, so it seems not so important to keep everything nice
and clean and tidy, but to allow the community to develop and to go where it
wants to go. The ability to link comments to works, to allow not just the
posting of thoughts as they occur, but the ability to track those postings,
to develop them. The ability to collaborate, to learn, to teach. To muse, to
rage, to spin out new areas of work. To encourage new members, kids,
curators, press, artists into our zone. To facilitate crossover, evolution.
To make space for hard headed critical theory alongside drunken make it up
as you go along. To use the network to grow the network.
In 1991 I was funded briefly to run a project called UK ArtNet. This
predated the Internet and was bulletin board based. It was never going to
work the way I wanted, but it allowed me to sketch out the basis for a
community online. I have been looking for, waiting for this ever since. One
thing that dismays me is the lack of a community of artists online, of
whatever stripe.
I ask Rhizome not to redesign, but to go find some fundamental tools that
will allow the community to build itself. Leave the commissioning to others.
Set the agenda. Carve out the space where all this stuff starts to make
sense. Utilise the energy and desire of the global community to make it
work. Not centralise an empire from a NY east side des res :).

Cheers,
Ivan

–
Ivan Pope
[email protected]

http://www.ivanpope.com
http://www.tochki-inc.com

"Faster, faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death"
Hunter S. Thompson