How to Make Yourself into a Commissioning Body in 5 Easy Steps
Algorithm, Workbook (54 pp., color, 5.5” x 8.5”) and Artist-led Workshop, 2016.
In collaboration with Emily Martinez as Anxious to Make.
Description
The book, How to Make Yourself into a Commissioning Body in 5 Easy Steps, is a paper algorithm for outsourcing artists’ common anxieties to the so-called “sharing” economy. It asks questions such as: Are you suffering from a creative block? Have you grown disillusioned with your current artistic practice? Do you feel a sense of alienation from the audience of your work? Do you feel that your art practice has failed to keep pace with the demands of the rapidly shifting economy? The book then provides “solutions” to these common anxieties, all of which entail outsourcing work to the sharing economy via a system of custom-built online generators, web apps, and commissions. Participants in an artist-led workshop of the same name are guided through this process by Anxious to Make.
Documentation
See more about the project’s development here >>
Invited Artist Workshops + Exhibitions
“nervous.online,” The Wrong Biennale (online). Nov 1 2017 - Jan 31, 2018.
“Side Gig: Anxious To Make,” B4BEL4B, Oakland, CA. Nov 19 - Dec 15 2016.
“YBCA Public Square: Investigations of Labor & Ecology,” Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA. April 16 2016.
“How to Make Yourself into a Commissioning Body in Five Easy Steps,” transmediale, HKW, Berlin, Germany. Feb 6 2016.
Press + Publications
Pervasive Labour Union, Special Issue #2, pp. 57-61 | Centro de Cultura Digital
Logic chart for the algorithm behind the work.
Inside spread from the workbook.
A workshop participant at transmediale (2016) takes out her credit cards to commission work on sharing economy sites.