STEIM Jamboree 25.02.2010 #2: Birdcage, Café Oto, Worm

Following Hans Koch and Yutaka Makino’s presentations (see #1 for a report), the remaining talks of the STEIM Jamboree session in conjunction with the Sonic Acts 2010 festival focused on the themes of experimental arts curating, support, and facilities, as well as the financial issues of organisation through the examples of Birdcage (nomadic), Café Oto (London) and Worm (Rotterdam).

Birdcage is a gallery that travels around and exists in no space. The initiative of Daniele Balit, it is by now almost a year old, with a birth point sometime in March 2009. To date, it has hosted three episodes – in Stockholm, Amsterdam and Beijing. To conclusively define the Birdcage has the connotation of a limit, because you close something as you define it; so Balit engaged in the opposite effort, presenting the Birdcage as something that could be fluid, taking shape through practice as a concept in evolution. It is difficult to identify with existing models: the Birdcage is not a gallery, a venue, a festival, nor an agency either although it has something in common with all the models above, as a kind of metastructure of them.

One of the most important formative concepts behind this was the “museum without walls” concept by the French writer André Malraux who wanted to break open the walls and find the connection between art, cultures and temporalities. Balit wanted to realise a sonic version of a wall-less gallery, because sound by definition difficult to limit to a space, and it can be easily adapted to situations, to transform the perception of a space or influence it. Until which point can you work with the idea of sound being space specific? A mobile sound gallery means that artists are invited to assign a new space for it, which could be a park, under a bridge in a public space, an astronomical observatory,   pool – the possibilities are open, yet sound explorations in outer space might be a little too much as of yet… The context: artists are invited through their selection of a space. Whilst thinking about the work an artist is also forced to think around it, the “where” of it. Thus the gallery is incorporated in the artwork, putting together artistic strategies and curatorial discourse. Such experimentation has happened before, especially in the 60s and 70s, but “enough theory” Balit says, and traces the history of Birdcage acts.

Carl Michael von Hausswolf’s 1485.0 kHz was shown in Stockholm, setting a radio at the eponymous fixed frequency, creating the condition of out of this world communication in the intimate space of a private living room. The radio action object subsisted in this Swedish living room for one month, turning on for every evening in conjunction with a dinner.

In Amsterdam, the Birdcage was involved in transforming an empty shop front in Zeedijk, in the “Chinatown” area. dj sniff or Takuro Mizuta Lippit, who is the current artistic director at STEIM, invited people who had roots in Asian culture to form a temporary microcommunity of musicians, confronting Asia and the Western world, in a way. The storefront was designed as a stage, as an architecture that distributes the performers at different levels while not being something that has a fixed notion but which can be redesigned in collaboration.

Birdcage events have no fixed logistics, and they have been produced each time by building a partnership, and finding a link between the local and non-local. This merging of curatorial and artistic function creates a sort of story for the gallery, and with each place being different the Birdcage is at the border of being an art project itself and functions experimentally.

In Beijing, Yan Jun’s “news for tomorrow” was set in a newspaper office by hiding cassette and mp3 players in different places around the office with headphones hanging out. During the working day of the journalists, the sounds that could be heard by pressing in the earbuds were prerecorded interviews, real-time office noise and feedback. The work wanted to take part of the daily life of the journalists. Next, the Birdcage will be engaging the astronomical observatory in Rome.

Café Oto is a London venue which opened in April 2008, in an abandoned warehouse in Hackney, after being run once a month in different locales in the city. In this case, having a physical space was a way of cementing impact, trying to get away from irregular, dispersed events which were mostly attractive to a highly specialised audience. Keiko and Hamish run Café Oto in d-i-y sort of way independently, on a shoestring budget but very responsively to new ideas. Theirs is an impassioned, survivalist talk, detailing the story of running a experimental arts venue in a difficult city. They aim to be tactical in the way their pull in audiences, mixing in terms of styles and generations, conflating local and larger names during one night even. One of the largest difficulties in sustaining growth of a small place is the ephemerality of the events, of the space having a life outside itself. The owners are trying to extend their residency programme, at the moment they can offer certain acts a space for three concerts in a row but even month-long residency and development project including local partnerships could be in development.

Café Oto survives through a network of volunteers, and being neighbourhood based, having a plug in Residence FM and “the sea of goodwill” from local musicians, artists and enthusiasts. Funding has been occasionally received for some specific events but the independent venue attraction had quick impact because Keiko and Hamish chanced upon a real thirst for a music venue of the sort they are offering. Funding possibilities are as yet unexplored due to, a great extend, an attempt to preserve a sense of independence.

The case of Worm, in Rotterdam, is fascinating because during its 10 years’ nomadic existence it is in a situation of luxury. It is a well-funded institution in a city that does not immediately boast in offering a range in the field of experimental arts. In a way, they “had to force themselves on the town”, in the form of little organisations for which Worm became an umbrella. There is film programming and production, music programming and production, and a media lab (which has recently developed a notorious Web 2.0 suicide device) which offer space for art academy activities (like the Piet Zwart) as well. The film lab facilities (shoot, edit, develop) are d-y-i, free to use, and the same goes for the sound studio which was pieced together in an ad hoc way from hand-me-down equipment. Worm has music programmes, a radio, and invite residencies and working opportunities in conjunction with preparing for live gigs, with archiving, livecasting and editing at the same time. The cinema shows mainly films which would not normally be available, in a 30-seater cinema space.

Throughout their haphazard presentation, with images at random and snickering from the viewers, the Worm representatives give a sense of the vitality of a place which trades on a fairly free programming. However, they seem very conscious of the fact that without subsidies Worm couldn’t have started or continue to develop in the way that it is today – which is very paradoxical, they say, because they venue doesn’t have the “optimal audience” in Rotterdam, a city in the Netherlands which is not very known for breadth in experimental arts. Perhaps this is only a perception though.

Then again, receiving funding brings on its own limitations. A big amount of money must be spent on handling that money, of which having an accountant is not the least. Of a staff of 15 people and a team of volunteers, 2 people are fully employed working only with money issues. Yet the institutionalisation of Worm has not been more than necessary, they say. The recent funding cuts in the Dutch cultural arena are a scare, as the situation could change easily and Worm, as all cultural organisations, have to have a fight for it, and have to have a justification to deliver. Most recently Worm had a stunt at Ebay, putting the organisation up for sale, with – apparently – no viable buyers yet.

As the panel closes, running through these different examples is the realisation that attracting audiences presents a locational challenge, and arts organisations, in order to stay viable, have to rely on having a strong enough experience for repeated audiences. It’s not a question of having a specific night for a specific program, but a constant circulation that is however mutable and varied.

The position of arts organisations in the Netherlands is special in the sense that it can (at least to some extent) allow for the possibility of experimental artists who can sustain themselves without a “day job”. Making a living from experimental arts is a problem. Yet it’s not just a question of money. Exercises in city marketing and the development of festivals can create huge but temporary concentrations which can make it difficult to sustain arts organisation throughout the year. The tendency to go for event focused programming takes away from sustainability. For arts organisations, it is rather the sustained integration of art events in throughout the year that is the focus for stronger experimental arts provision. So for those institutions that exist “at the banlieue of the system”, as Daniele Balit puts it, the visitors’ support of “the regular stuff” is what matters the most.