Matching Box: Dating Systems for Artists and Institutions

Dear Friends,

This is the place for the chat beginning today 7.30pm CET but you can already now send your ideas, opinions and questions. I'm Riiko Sakkinen and leading this session today. I'm a Finnish artist based now in Spain and I did my Pepinieres residency in 2002 at Camden Arts Centre, London.

Today, the principal theme is the new Pepinieres Matchmaking website that will be revolutionary in changing the power structures between the candidates for residencies and the hosting residency organizations - and, in addition, maybe even proposing a completely new horizontal way of communicating between artists and curators. We are designing the website now and highly appreciate any opinions, ideas and proposals from artists and other art world actors.

The artists don't have to write anymore applications and they don’t have to invent a project they don’t really want to develop. With this new system, an artist proposes a project and following some criteria, the “matching box” proposes to this artist a list of organizations which seem to be the more convenient places to develop his/her project.The aim is to abolish the applications: the system select for you the best projects relating to some specific criteria. Also, this works the other way round. A n institution that looks for a certain type of a project gets a list of artists from the "matching box".

Does this sound clear?
Do you agree that this could be revolutionary?
How could we make it even better?

I created a small poll how the artists should be chose for the residencies. Maybe I excluded many possible ways but fell free to tell your opinions and suggest different procedures.

thank you Riiko to lead this session.

Hope you will invite a lot of artists to exchange on that very interesting subject: the matching box, a revolutinary tool to develop his own mobility program.

see you soon

patrice

Buenas tardes, it's now 7.30pm in Madrid, Paris and Berlin. We have six people online. I'm looking forward hearing your ideas of the residency matchmaking!

Noun
Matchmaking (plural matchmakings)

1. an attempt to make two people romantically interested in each other, especially an attempt to set up a date between people or to arrange a marriage

2. (business) a service aiming to bring together sellers and buyers or potential partners

3. (art world) a service aiming to bring together artists and residency hosts or curators

I think all artists have developed mediocre projects trying to fit them in the (residency) application guide lines. Our idea is that this shouldn't happen anymore. The artist should always offer the best what they have. There's a perfect curator and a residency host for every (good) artist. and there's a perfect artist for every (decent) institution. Now we can help them to find each other!

You've tried in the exhibition openings, parties, dinners and artfairs... and what you found were just one-night stands. You want something serious and longer lasting, right? Try our matching box! available very soon!

this idea of match-making is interesting... but then perhaps to play devil's advocate, could those artists whose practice is context- and site- responsive get lost in the match=making? What about those who have no project and are just wanting a different place, different perspective and different way to think about their work (Which only usually happens when one is "away") - I suppose it is the best idea proposed, but are there ways to confirm that if an artist's idea changes, or it progresses in a different way, the insititution won't just ask them to leave or pressure them into making some project that seemed like a good fit at a time - I guess the question is where does the protection of the artist come in?

good topic! and happy to be a part of it!

Hi Anthony, Thanks for participating! I think that's an important point - there are many artist that begin the project from the site and the context. I think that it's not necessary to show always developed project proposals in the match making device but more the attitude and ideas (and of course the works) the artists and the curators have. For example, a curator could search profiles of site-specific artists.

how about this for an idea: (the more I think about it, the more I like it) The idea would be that a group of people or a person who know the institution/place to review the artist's work (not an application - a selection of artist's past work, perhaps a small statement about their practice) and then to come up with a short-list for each institution/place and then the insitutions can pick who they want? something more democratic perhaps? maybe I am just hungry...dinner time here in Glasgow and just back from the gym...any ideas for food?

Anthony, I imagine that different tactics are possible. Pepinieres has several activities and programs. Each project could have a specially designed tactics and procedure. The important thing is to have the artists' and hosts' material all the available online. And that everybody understand that this is something real with real opportunities - not like many art related social websites that i think that have generally failed.

True. all seems quite exciting. I suppose also something like this must develop organically... I'd also suggest that the format for the online part should take into consideration the variety of artist's practices and the insitutions mandates/interests... as with all social networking sites, there is a possibility that good people can come accross badly and aweful curators can come accross brilliantly and so on... the reality of it might need to come within an interview or skype or situation like this where a person's voice and identity can come accross, and not just some good (or bad) deisgn/documentation. I

Hi!

The first comment of Anthony is interesting (also the skype one)! How to make sure that residencies will not pressure the resident artist if he is not making the same work as proposed?! Maybe one of the solution could be to tag the residency (and the artist as well) with key words that defines their thematic/goal/concepts/subject they are interested with. This could reduce the chance to take the wrong choice for both artist and institution....

Romeo, thank you for joining us today! It seems a bit empty here... Yes, I think tags are some of the basic tools we have.

I'm reading now on Wikipedia about different match making systems.

The Shidduch (Hebrew: שידוך‎, pl. shidduchim שידוכים) is a system of matchmaking in which Jewish singles are introduced to one another in Orthodox Jewish communities for the purpose of marriage

"Computer dating" systems of later 20th century, especially popular in the 1960s and 1970s, before the rise of sophisticated phone and computer systems, gave customers forms that they filled out with important tolerances and preferences, which were "matched by computer" to determine "compatibility" of the two customers. The first large-scale computer dating system, The Scientific Marriage Foundation, was established in 1957.

The concept of dating is also used in the business world and known as B2B Matchmaking, Business Speed Dating or Brokerage Events. In contradiction to virtual social networking platforms, real meetings between business people are the focus. Trade fair organisations e.g. find this concept an added value for their exhibitors, because it gives them the opportunity of advanced planned meetings.

To come back with this idea of skype interview mentionned previously by Anthony, i think the goal with this is to make more transparent the "personality" of the institution (and the artist), maybe some other tools could be developed? for example by keeping track of interventions, posts, etc, of the institution (and the artist) as done by Facebook. But I wonder if something else can be proposed...

After the artist and the organisation get in contact and show mutual interest, they can use whatever methods for communicating they want. I think that we don't have to offer parallel systems to Facebook, Skype, e-mail or telephone. What we offer is the first contact and we want to do that smoothly and effectively. But what we don't need, is a super heavy webiste with features that you can use elsewhere.

We have three people on-line... Of course you can tell your opinions and ideas also after this chat. The Pepinieres working group has a meeting in the end of this week and we are going to read very carefully everything said here today and during this week.

Dear Friends, I want to thank you for following the chat. Special thanks to Anthony and Romeo for sharing their opinions and ideas. Please, continue writing here and give your vote in the poll. You will hear about the project soon when it begins to take its real form. Good night, and good luck.

Hi all
Sorry for the time lapse, but I'm on a totally different schedule here. From reading your posts, I do think that Anthony's remarks are very important. This "revolutionary" tool needs to be very organic and flexible. The metaphor of the matchmaking "box" disturbs me, because it is still a form that one fills in. And personnally, as a human being, and as a practitioneer, I have never been able to fit in any boxes. It just never happens. I have had to create opportunties for myself, and be lucky that sometimes I met the right people. I don't have a concrete idea of how to make this concept more "organic" but I can suggest to have a look at how other organizations do it. One is the rhizome commission in New York, and the other one is creative capital:
http://www.rhizome.org/commissions/ (especially their "member's award"
http://creative-capital.org/

These are both granting agencies for individual artist, and not residencies, but it is still about matching a particular project with the mission of an organization, how is this done? This is only two examples of the many possibilities out there, but I find them somewhat horizontal.
The danger of all this also is to be overwhelmed by too much information (That's kind of what happened with Facebook as far as I am concerned)
Hope this is helpful

When will General chain a hung gown? Will another privileged leader farm opposite an outcome? An inclusive wife rocks General inside the governor. The refund monkeys the springing microcomputer.