TEDx

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 05:01:10 -0500

Chris Elam mentioned our collective effort in his TEDx performance/talk on audience engagement. Watch it here. Thanks for the complement, Chris. (I have to mention that he mentioned me and THEN he mentioned William Forsythe. Wow, am I flattered!)

I’m in awe of Chris’s work on the internet and am thankful and overjoyed to get to watch it grow. Onwards and Upwards!

p.s. i’m leaving in 5.5 hours to go home to KY for Xmas, then to MT to dance for Headwaters Dance, then to NYC to show a new work at Food For Thought, teach at classclassclass and dna, and dance for Walter Dundervill. So excited.

p.p.s. questioning why i always get the most work done in the middle of the night.

p.p.p.s. reminding myself to try and have a lifestyle where i can stay up working every now and then.

A New Kind of Rehearsal

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:06:58 -0500

Last Saturday, I met with a big group of awesome people at Boora Architects and we had a 2 hour session in which i taught the pattern for 3, 4, and, 5 from We Have Become Beautiful and went on to see if the guiding principles of attraction/repulsion could create other forms that are equally clear and compelling.

I was amazed by a few things in this session:
1) People were able to learn it quickly and thoroughly: The patterns determine themselves. they are hard to do in different contexts or with different numbers of people. BUT, with a push in the right direction and a little guidance, people figure out very advanced ideas. i’m convinced that if someone else had started this research from the same place that they would have created something very very similar to what we created. (this could be the illusion created by creating art “scientifically” however.)

1) There are still some opportunities for growth in a large group. AND these were actually researched already: We discovered that “linking”—or connecting and moving with the person who’s moving—works really well. This is the same as the group pirate ship from PPT’s prior research.

1) creating a massive art piece is going to require a few other tools. Arti, who came, referenced a space improvisation in which each person chooses 2 other individuals in the room and moves her/himself to be equidistant to both of them. This creates driven, focused movement with an endpoint. Ideas like this would work well, i think. Also, flocking worked well and was interesting.

1) though this is something that anyone can learn (at least anyone who’s interested), i DO believe that it needs real rehearsal. it’s not simple enough to teach the day of the show, at least not for the bulk of the performers. I don’t think i’d need an intensive rehearsal process, but i do think that i need a research time with a group to design what the work will be, and then i will need a few chances to play with the WHOLE group—400-500 people, i think—so that they are comfortable.

1) it doesn’t need to be complex. it just needs to be specific. giving people clear objectives is good. Using these objectives to create a long-form improv is interesting and will lend structure to the piece.

1) i want there to be a way for the audience to immerse themselves in the middle of this world. either by walking through people doing the pattern to get to their seats, or by being invited to join at the end. In fact, this may be the entire work. perhaps there is no outside perspective, only an inside perspective.

7) i want feedback! i’m going to email everyone that came and send them to this posting. i’d love to have your experience of doing the work! it will help me as we move forward!

WHBB goes public

Wed, 2 Dec 2009 06:44:28 -0500

I’ve been thinking a lot about We Have Become Beautiful, the work created from Project Paper Trail’s studio research, since the final showing last May. I’ve decided that the work is most interesting when people do it, or when watching the piece that they know and understand the structure the patterns.

One of the ideas i have is literally to have a lot of people do it. Like 400-500 people in a public place. I love this idea. Many many people get to experience the work first-hand AND in this scenario, it’s likely that most of the viewers know a performer and have also learned the structure of the piece. Also, the piece is about the overlap of social interaction and abstract form. What could demonstrate this better than a crowd?

So. I’ve invited many people to come together this Saturday to learn the patterns the dancers and i created in the studio last year. I’m going to try to figure out what will be fun for people, difficult for them, and how i can do this feasibly.

Finally, i have to mention that Portland, OR (where i now reside) is the perfect place for this. It’s spacious, outdoorsy, and beautiful. What’s more, its residents love the arts and love to participate. It’s the perfect combination for fun and exciting public mass-art performance.

Ben is an expert - Notes for my webinar

Thu, 5 Nov 2009 09:25:15 -0500

hello everyone, so i’m giving a webinar for Movement Media, which is part of Pentacle in the morning. (or, rather, in a few hours since i’m a late-night worker and a procrastinator.)
enjoy!

BEGIN;

PPT HOME – talk about what Project Paper Trail is.

My name. a definitition of what Project paper Trail is
A navigation guide
4 quick options: video and writing, fundraising, support, and learn more

Show the website:
About

What were my non-negotiables? – pay, regular rehearsals, and artistic freedom
Why? Because I believed that these three things would allow me to make the best art possible. (I believe that denying these things hampers art – ex/brian brooks, deganit shemy, Gerald casel, ect.).

www.wageforwork.com – manifesto, join.

Second question? What do these non-negotiable needs require?
Ask if fundraising is the best way to obtain your needs. – in Kind?

The time before the project is super important. You can make it whatever you want! Whatever it needs to be
REHEARSALS – a committed space rental/set schedule (barn, T/TH 9-1) Then, I chose dancers who could commit to the schedule. (though I learned that contingencies happen, and you should be ready)

Also, I vowed to give class for the beginning of every rehearsal, and to pay the dancers to take class. In this way we were ready physically and mentally to make work.

PAY – in order to pay the dancers and myself I would need money to pay them. Use savings or Fundraise? I decided that the act of fundraising needed to be integrated into the art. That the way one makes the art—where the money comes from and where it goes—is equally as important as the art itself. So I vowed to fundraise, and to fundraise in a way that benefited as many people as possible.

Fundraising options:
Grants – No
Events – maybe
Corporations – no
Individuals – yes.

Quickly – if you can ask one supporter to write a check/commission the work, go for it. What are your resources? We all have resources that we can take advantage of.

What are my resources?
I am a social person. I have done a good job of maintaining relationships with people from my life. I come from a supportive community of people who would love to help me.

Kentucky,– how do I reach this community?
AND
How can I respect their donation? I don’t feel comfortable asking this community to fund something that they’ll never be able to experience, or possibly even understand.
Ding! Perhaps I can use the internet to bring them the experience that they are funding.

Also, what can I do to value each person’s specific donation?

Thinking of susan marshall’s funding sructure for Cloudless: http://susanmarshallandcompany.org/pages/home.shtml

sponsor the creation of the work. But if they live far away, how can I show them what they’ve funded? Documentation, Documentation, Documentation. (chase granoff)

DONATE PAGE

Rehearsal blog

What can I do to feel like they should be justified in supporting my artistic process?

I can show them what they are funding – video and writing
I can show them that I’m treating my collaborators as equitably as I can.

Political motivations – give the dancers a voice, both to me and to the community

Protect their bodies and their well-being – class and contract.

If I fail, how can I still succeed?
Meaning, I need to find a way to value my failure.
In this, I decided that if I document what I’m doing and thinking, if I fail, perhaps the community will be able to learn from my mistakes and move forward.

Hence – fiscal blog
Contains resources like my
Contract – (final contract with amendments - may 4)
PLEASE USE MY CONTRACT!
And my appeal letter – Caffeine and Kentucky – Aug. 18th
USE MY APPEAL LETTER!

And furthermore, Fair Trade Dance post on the fiscal blog.

SUCCESS? FAILURE?
It really isn’t the money that matters, it’s the work. Document it. Save it. (tere o’connor)

RAISED MORE THAN $12,000.
Largely from Ky, and to be honest, much of that was from my family.

BUT I was able to ask for the money, something I couldn’t have done otherwise.

I chose to show the work at the end of the process, which was a deviation from the original plan and cost me a lot of money and time that could have been spent fundraising. BUT I was forced to codify my ideas, and now I have the DVD.

Things to think about/I wish I’d thought of/other issues:

How can people help, but NOT give money.

A flaw in PPT is that I had to do all the labor myself. If I’d designed it so that someone else could do some work for me, perhaps I would have had more time to fundraise?
Perhaps I also would have had to do quality control?

Simple simple simple – FEAST http://feastinbklyn.org/

Things i needed to do to start:
dealing with an umbrella organization. –DTW, the Field, Fractured Atlas

building the site – iWeb?

branding was important. Project Paper Trail is itself a product. I spent a lot of time on the design and the presentation of the ideas.
simple, transparent, honest. i knew what ideas i wanted to show and i matched my design with these ideas. i also got a lot of feedback before i published anything. from many interesting, interested, and insightful friends.

TIP: always take your time to prepare. Ask experts what they think. if you're going to be asking people for money, then talk to someone who has funded either your work or art in general and ask them why they do it. if they would be interested in funding your project, or not. if you're approaching a foundation/corporation, it's the same. someone there is paid to speak with you and they want to help.

consult consult consult! Talk to people about your project.
How do they respond? What do they think? Are they interested? Why? Why not?

Confidence

How did I gain this confidence? Why did I start this project and why did I believe in it?

next: the internet.
it is really just a way to reach a lot of people: it networks well. and to give them specific information and information in different media than paper media can: it informs. it also works 24/7; you can sleep and someone can access information as long as your website is working. in other words, this is a way to "friendraise" (man, i hate that word). but it's true. funding a project is a way to show that a community gives it value. the internet can supply that community, even if it is a niche community and it is spread around the entire world, or concentrated in a place where you do not reside. a worldwide effort. money is the reification of that value and support.

It also is a way for the community to interact with the process. a way to literally take a camera into the studio, and with that camera thousands of people.

Another advantage of the internet is that it is always available. People can be at home in their underwear at 3AM interacting with your website. –issues with event-based fundraising is that people have to go to the event. Harder to have a buzz, though. The internet is not mysterious.

But it is a tool.

still this doesn't solve he basic questions of fundraising:

fundraising is intimate and personal for all parties involved.
Your structure must fit you and your funders.

what are you funding?
what do you need in order to do this?
what is negotiable?
venue? people? materials?
prove to yourself that you need these things in order to do your work.

who are you asking to fund your work?
a foundation? your family? the artistic community? a corporation?
why would they want to fund your work?
(you can answer this question. if you can't answer this question you're not going to get money.

what can you offer in return? thanks?

Fundraising is turning cultural capital into actual capital. (www.wageforwork.com)
Think of yourself as a business.
What is it that you are selling?
Hope? Change? Energy? Beauty? Hip-ness? Creativity?
These things are real and important to people.

Entries worth reading:
Why Individual Donors? Why not Grants:

General fundraising SUGGESTIONS;

TAKE YOUR TIME (but don’t lose momentm) – Know why you’re doing things before you do them.

NEVER BE DEBBIE DOWNER.
It is a hard line to ride, acknowledging that you need money to do what you do. But don’t sound needy. You aren’t doing yoru project to make money. So don’t make your fundraising about that, either. It’s important to be clear and direct about how much money you need and why, but make it clear immediately that you’re

Show people how committed, sure, and positive you are. You want them to think, “this is great and I want to be a part of it.” You don’t want them to think, this person needs me to bail them out.

THINK BIG. Why not be the biggest or the best?
Sometimes big ideas

MAKE IT CLEAR THAT EVERY AMOUNT IS VALUED.
Some people may thing that giving $5 is demeaning to you, that if they can’t give what they feel is a substantial amount of money, that not giving would be more respectful than wasting your time with a piddly little donation. ESPECIALLY WITH INTERET FUNDRAISING, this is not the case. If anything, Internet fundraising is broad, not deep. Many of my rehearsals were funded by gifts of fewer than $25.

TIME BASED FUNDRAISING IS TRICKY
-as my project came to a close, there was very little incentive to give money for a process that had already happened. Thus, I was not able to fundraise as convincingly at the end of the process because I didn’t have something concrete in the future. If I had definted a future path for the project, perhaps I could have raised much more money and covered all of my costs.

Other ideas:

http://spot.us/
Kickstarter www.kickstarter.com
chris elam's artist engagement platform www.misnomer.org
Jaki Levy - http://www.arrowrootmedia.com/
ideablob www.ideablob.com
the present group - art subscription - http://www.thepresentgroup.com/
fremium model. –Holcombe waller’s developing a site that uses new music licensing modalities to create a hybrid community of free exchange and paid exchange - and that lets copyright law work for artists and foster creativity, the way it's supposed to
FEAST
ERPA and WAGE
http://www.galapagosartspace.com/microfinance.html
The cookie truck

An interesting discussion on arts and funding:
http://blogs.wnyc.org/culture/2009/04/07/performance-club-monday-morningish-scramble/

Fair Trade Dance, Fair-Trade Art

Thu, 5 Nov 2009 04:35:44 -0500

Want to be a Fair Trade Dance Organization?
Make your fee structure clear on your Website and when you perform, print this sentence in a prominent place in your program:

“As a Fair Trade Dance organization, your organization publishes its dancers’ fees: rehearsal = $x/hour, this performance = $x.”

You must print an hourly wage, even if you pay a stipend. I.e. “As a Fair Trade Dance organization, DanceyDance publishes its dancers’ fees: $500 rehearsal/performance stipend = $1.67/hour, this performance = $0”

Then, please send me an email to let me know that you’re a Fair Trade Dance Member.

If you’re not a Dance company, be a Fair Trade Art organization, and publish your “artist fees” instead of “dancers’ fees.”

If you are a presenting organization, it’s exactly the same.
Questions? email me: basriel@me.com

Fair Trade Dance was developed by myself and Carly Pansulla. Of all the ideas that have come from Project Paper Trail, i believe that this one has the greatest possibility to truly change the world. To see why, read this blog entry or watch this powerpoint that Carly made as part of her library science studies in Vancouver, BC.

Also please check out check out www.wageforwork.com.

Boora Architects is awesome

Tue, 3 Nov 2009 19:57:58 -0500

Today I gave a presentation on Project Paper Trail to Boora Architects, in Portland OR (where I’m living now.) Boora has hosted me as an artist in residence for the past few months, allowing me time to edit video footage from May’s final showing. I’m going to make that video into a DVD and send it (hopefully with lots of fun stuff, like maybe an interview with me about the work, like a director’s comentary) to presenters and funders and most importantly friends. Or maybe i’ll make it available for purchase.

Anyway, i spoke to a group of architects and people who work as tech staff, management staff, and marketing staff at Boora. We got up and did the pattern for 3, 4, and 5. I performed the Solo from We Have Become Beautiful. I showed footage from the DVD-to-be. I spoke about fair-trade dance and sustainability.

Comments: Architecture is the positive space, so I, the dancer am the negative space.
-what if the space changes, or the dancers imagine it to change. see: invisible cities by italo calvino. -people often see architecture as static, while i see it as dynamic. -science is internalizing the external, art is externalizing the internal. -WHBB should be experienced rather than viewed.

this is the one that’s the kicker. The work is process oriented. so the audience should actually participate. it teaches through doing more than through watching. This is the key to making it work in the future. Also, considering viewpoint is important. They wanted to see it from multiple angles, espcially from the top (the same way i’ve always desired), or—interestingly—through a crowd or in a hallway. What happens when the space really constricts the movement?

Finally, i’m writing these words from my office on the 7th floor in Boora’s building. what a gift. Thank you, Boora.

FINAL SHOWING ONSALE NOW!!!

Mon, 4 May 2009 23:40:02 -0400

THE EVENT IS ON! buy tickets here!
after some deliberation with Google checkout, i realized that i could to ticketing through Brown Paper Tickets, who publicize themselves as Fair-Trade. Since i’m marketing PPT as a Fair Trade Dance Organization, meaning that we publish pay rates (i’ll write more about this later), and since they have “paper” in the title, i had to go with them. it’s much more professional anyway. i’m a fan.

had a meeting with jen snow today about press. she’s going to put together a press release and i’m going to work on that now. it needs to go out soon.

Also, Chris Foster designed the invitation with me. thank you chris!

and finally, Juliana May and Mathew Hotta are spearheading donations.

i couldn’t get all this done alone. thank you guys!!!!