Atomino Festival Manifesto v3.1

Atomino – a Festival showing experimental Art

About the usual problem encountered when trying to escape the system

It is not possible to escape this capitalistic system in any way. Period. This is for us an axiom. We as Atomino are not trying to escape, as said, it is not possible.

Though, it is possible to try to start a change and not only to think about a change but to act, and furthermore to realize the change.

When we started our project we wanted to keep two principles no matter what:

1. Entrance should be free for all events.
2. All the artists should be equally compensated, and if paid, equally paid.

With this two principles we attack directly the Art Market. In the Art Market there are also (at least) two principles:

1. Art is treated as any other form of consumption.
2. A competitive environment is needed, that divides artists and favour individuality.

We could say that with these principles based in scarcity, the Art Market imposes an upper class of very few successful and wealthy artists. The mid class corresponds to the few artists that are not rich but can make a living somehow through their art. And the low class is the majority. The ones who do not cover their basic expenses with their art. These loosers are systematically exploited and do not get a living from their art. Even the mid class is exploited if we observe that most of them have to work really hard to maintain their status. But they are told to keep a hope trying to work harder to get closer to the elite.

This is the most successful myth generated by this neoliberalistic system: to create the belief that everyone can make it.

In this scenario, you usually confront the reality as a looser artist in either of these ways:

• Accepting the reality, trying to work harder and making compromises in order to make it.
• Accepting the reality, trying to get some incomes from side activities that have commercial value and more or less related to your art.
• Accepting the reality and having a job and treating your art as a hobby.

Atomino cannot change the society. But it can act defining the clear principles stated before creating a special microenvironment where you as an artist need to lower your expectations if you are used to be treated well by the current system. This allows you to have great expectations if you are used to be treated not so good (or exploited) usually by the current system.

So, the renowned artists participating in Atomino (or the artists that are used to be payed a fee) are helping the emerging artists renouncing to this fee in Atomino. In this way, all artists can at least have the basic spendings as travel, accomodation and food covered.

The beauty of Atomino is that the renowned and the not so renowned artists will have the possibility to see each other performing under the same conditions. All can reflect about these differences that usually happen in real life and the consequences of working in this microenvironment called Atomino.

We will not hide that we have received a lot of criticism from artists in all establishment status. The arguments mainly are concentrated on the devaluation of art and the exploitation of artists by working without money.

As stated before, we cannot ignore that under the current conditions this low class of artists are working without remuneration and most of them will keep doing it until their last days. We cannot ignore also that a large number of the wealthy and mid class artists are not really artists but money-making machines with an extraordinary efficient team specialized in the businesses that rules behind the scenes. We cannot ignore that the priority for a business is always to make more money. We cannot ignore that a large number of these renowned artists are forced to make awful concessions in order to keep their status. Not only their status, but the status of all the businesses behind them.

So in our opinion if someone is exploiting and devaluating art, this is the art market. And this is something that whether we like it or not, we cannot affect. The exploitation and devaluation is already there. What we try to achieve is a status of fairly equal conditions for all the artists performing in Atomino.

Our first principle about the free admission has more to do with the visitors. They are not obliged to pay an entry, so hopefully we will eliminate the pernicious consumption factor. This is extremely dangerous because visitors are used to give value to art through the money, as any other form of consumption. But what happens when the visitor does not pay? Will the visitors think that the festival or presented art has no value at all? How they can give value to the art and how can they help the artists to develop and how does the visitor support the artist? To answer all these questions it becomes necessary to reflect about the interaction between the artists and the visitors in this particular environment.

We could have set up a 20 eur entry for example. With a bit of publicity, would have not been a problem to exceed the 1.000 visitors. That would have been more 20.000 euro extra. Let’s say that we give 10.000 euro to pay artist fees and that we as organizers keep more than 10.000 euro. Another succesful festival that makes big money for a few artists and promoters. The sad thing about it, is that if we would have chosen that option, we would have received much less criticism from everyone.

But we do not want a succesful festival in the terms of the Art Market. We want a successful festival in our terms.

The realm of the interdisciplinary, the hybridization of society, cultures and thinking, the forming of communities and collaborations amongst the arts and humanities – this always has been and always will be the only realm where genuine cultural revolution and transformation is possible. Philosophers, artists and cultural theorists, poets and musicians, should stick together, without defining themselves against each other.

New methods need to be developed where funding for art can be generated.

By the way, we also received positive feedback:

Sure it will be a great pleasure to be more than just a “consumer” ;) at the ‘Atomino’
Franzi F.

What is the definition of experimental art?

In which ways is art experimental or not experimental?

We chose the word experimental on purpose. It gives you directly associations and provokes questions. Experimental art can be made in every century of mankind.

Experimental art can be invention, contemporary, weird, improvisation, mash up, etc.

One important caracteristic is, that experimental art is mostly non-commercial. That means that process of making art is not mainly money-oriented. Artists doesn’t have to fullfill an objective to feed with their work an art market or to please a certain kind of audience. Artists can work free on something that they have a need to.

On the other hand, not all non-commercial art is experimental. When we speak about experimental, we mean progressive forms of art and art concepts. They can be contemporary, but they are not obliged to.

Therefore “Experimental” is an interesting box because it is not dependent on time. A lot of people called William Blake, van Gogh, John Cage or Beuys experimental.

Experimental art is often misunderstood in its century, people who are confronted with this kind of art often doesn’t know what is has to do with them. One reason is, that experimental art takes the forms of now to point in the future. They provide a look into the future. In this way, the artist can be understood as a prophet who can feel vibes and waves of what happens now in the society and where we move towards. The artist as inventor of things which seem useless to us show us something which is beyond our time we live in. It transports personal views of a collective unconciousness.

This sounds very serious, but experimental art doesnt have to be so serious at all. Often it maintains a game character, on the first look a very simple message or “foolish” acts.

Art with experimental character lives in the present and integrate influences naturally. It doesnt want to be monolithic, its fluid and not easy to fix. It allows interactions with other artists and citizens.

New models of art distribution

Digital distribution of digital media

Some argue that art, and moreover experimental works, are usually possible because of the individual effort of the artist. It is true that this society we live in has been constructed around an ethos of individual ownership but we believe that this ethos should be replaced and doesn’t fit well anymore in the new/upcoming models of artist distribution.

Note that we say replaced and not removed, we look actively for this something that fills the gap since our critical to the establishment cannot be other that constructive, that is: helping to build an alternative. This alternative will never be a pure one, since the basic rules in our social system cannot be changed, or if so, it is a responsibility that only politicians can face.

The old attitude towards the artwork made in the past a certain unsurpassable distance between the artist and the citizen, a distance that since the digital revolution has been shortened every milestone.

Imagine a world where all Art enjoy the same distribution conditions. In such scenario, the influence of the great labels and producer business would be minimized, probably up to a point where most of them would not find profitable anymore to invest in the majority of their art produced.

Imagine these business being replaced progressively by groups of involved artists/curators the don’t find in money the first priority in order to make decisions. Furthermore, lets imagine how a gift economy would work in application to Art.

Let’s face it: with the entry of the digital media, there is no more scarcity in the Art Market and if so, it is an artificial trick by the established players in the so-called Art Market. Does it mean that Gift Economy is more appropriate in this abundance scenario we live in?

A fundamental question:

Is it possible to establish a reciprocal altruism between artists, citizens and curators? And if so, are all the actors involved ready?

In order to achieve a maybe not so utopical reciprocal altruism in Art, most important in our opinion is trying to work in a no-business scenario. That means that noone will try “to make it”, “to get to the top” or “to shine”. That means a serious, profound and expressly renounce to stand out from the rest regarding economic interest, more specifically renouncing to maximize the benefits of the inversion made in art projects.

Prediction

Our bet is that most art business should be replaced by non-profit foundations and crowdfounding associations. These last organizations will be more in number and will operate with a fraction of the budget that the old companies needed to survive in the old Art Market.

More in number means more diferent directions, more alternatives, more specialized trends, as opposite as the old mass media that promulgated monolithic/conformist thinking, which was the only one to be assumed by the Market rules. The same that granted money all the value of the richness production.

Quote:

“essentially a gift economy, poetry is the perfect space to practice utopian politics. Freed from profit-making constraints or cumbersome fabrication considerations, information can literally ‘be free’”
Ubuweb wants to be free by Kenneth Goldsmith
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/goldsmith/ubuweb.html

Nowadays any digital art (or any form of art that can be digitized) is a great platform to practice utopian politics, everything susceptible to be converted to 0s and 1s makes it a piece of information that costs virtually cero but which value is much more difficult first to estimate and second to face and accept.

In order to make progressions in this estimation we need to confront the work, the artist and the citizen, and as said before under some fair homogeneus distribution conditions, otherwise we will be continuously confronted with privileged positions and altars that configure marketing as part of the creative process.

Examples of alternative distributions

We are not alone, there are out there numerous examples of creative ways to distribute art.

Ubuweb for instance offers for free digital versions of hard-to-find material.

Another example is the crowdfunding, where anyone can participate in the production of a movie giving small quantities of money, this movement was initiated in Spain by the movie El Cosmonauta. Gruppo Farfa in Italy is practicing crowdfunding also.

We would like to mention independent producers like spanish Luis Miñarro, that make possible the distribution of high quality films that most of the times had a minimal production cost.

Ruidemos is a label based in Granada, Spain that offers their whole sound catalog for free. Their editorial line is open and eclectic: bruitisme, electronic, experimentalism, fantasy, melodies, acustical sounds y and mash up.