The Bay Area is the official capital of Art Subscriptions: Meet Landfill
February 12th, 2011 by eleanor - artist resources bay area blog subscription art
Wapke Feenstra. Former Farmland, Sagarossa, Spain, 2008; pamphlet/poster, 5.88 x 4.16 in. closed, 11.66 x 16.75 in. open.
Welcome Landfill! A new project by Ted Purves and Elyse Mallouk, Landfill is interested in the funny little pieces of information or material byproducts that are produced by social practice artists. They are cataloging these pieces of history on their website and have also started an art subscription to allow more people to collect and learn about these projects (at a really reasonable price: $60/year for 4 issues). The subscription will consist of a Journal along with selected pieces of actual ephemera. Perhaps a good preview of what the Journal will be like is these two articles on Art Practical highlighting this project. Here’s a tidbit describing themselves:
Landfill is a project that archives, studies, and redistributes the material byproducts produced by ephemeral artworks. It creates a second venue for projects that largely existed in non-material form, and aims to build a non-linear history of socially engaged art practice. Landfill exists in three parts: an online Archive, a material Quarterly, and a written Journal. The Quarterly is distributed to subscribers four times a year. It contains the Journal and selected pieces of material ephemera.
As part of the Landfill Archive, supplemental materials become conduits for ideas that continue to circulate. The Archive is an aggregate capable of accounting for the broad range of projects that self-consciously consider their publics, without laying claim to a singular narrative. It is accessible all the time, for free.
They are looking for submissions. With this new addition, we now have 5 solid art subscriptions in the Bay Area! Check out the links on the sidebar to learn about them all. It’s pretty exciting to see how this model can adapt to suit all sorts of work and interests. It’s not clear if Landfill will use subscription dues solely to create the journal or if they will also be using some of the funds to compensate contributing artists who often rely on grants to accomplish this sort of work. My guess is for that price they will need most of the money just to accomplish the creation of the physical journal, shipping, and writing. However, as they grow, perhaps they will consider sponsoring projects to give back to the community of artists they will rely for donations.
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[...] couple of weeks ago I made the claim that the Bay Area is the Capital of Art Subscriptions. I still think that holds true. HOWEVER, the mid-west is a burgeoning center for them as [...]