Getting Closer

As the relaunch date of my Kickstarter campaign approaches, I've been  increasing contact with several in the crowd funding circuit, asking for advice.

Crowd funding has become an industry, with many, many blogs, websites and marketing companies giving free advice or offering their services for a fee. I found this deplorable at first, because, as a fine artist, the crowd funding platform represents a way to get ideas realized in the ever-shrinking grant arena. And specifically for me, it's as difficult to find funding for highly experimental installation work as it is to find a venue to exhibit it. Now, to get a project funded I have to give someone a cut?!? But on exploration, employing a service might be advantageous because launching a project is enormously time-consuming in an area many artists abhor: Marketing.

A well-respected crowd funding consultant, Rose Spinelli (Crowdsourcing.org) commented on my posts on a LinkedIn Kickstarter forum that artists are often reluctant to launch a campaign and that perhaps writing about some of my experiences would reverse the trend. Talking to my artist buddies, culling stories and insights from around the web and adding snippets of my own, listed below are some reasons why I believe many fine artists often turn their backs on funding projects via social media platforms like KS or IGG:

1. Describing your project to convince a backer is different from describing it to convince a curator and artists don't know that. When writing about their work, artists concentrate on the meaning of the work, its intent and the concept behind what brought it into being. A backer is interested in that information, yes, but on a secondary or tertiary level. Rather, they want to be reasonably certain that if they give you money, the project will get done, hung, seen. The description must be geared toward them.

[Note: some say that patrons of platforms like KS rely very heavily on the rewards; and that installation art, performance art and fine art in general don't offer tenable goods in reward for a pledge. I disagree. If people who like art like your project and are convinced you'll bring it to fruition, they'll throw $10 at it to see it done. They believe in it and are happy to help you out, something much different from designers, inventors and their backers]

2. Putting in the time to build a social media following is something that many artists just don't have. Most are already working two jobs. See my post http://ow.ly/i/2tocC. I launched my first campaign in the spring which was only 28% funded before I took it down. During that time, it was even voted as a Staff Pick by KS. The percentage of people who contributed was exceedingly high, indicating an inspiring campaign. The problem was that not enough people saw that inspiring campaign.

So I embarked on building a following: a time-costly task. The tweets, the IMs, the chats, the follows and unfollows took hours out of each evening. But, using the computer as the tool to get my show done, I put in the time: emotional labor, as Seth Godin says, or, taking from Amanda Palmer: She'd rather sleep on a fan's couch if they had wifi rather than on a comfy bed in a hotel that didn't.

Has it paid off? Dunno if it will in KS terms. But something else has happened: a devoted awareness has developed for the installation itself--the core reason of making art. So, as artists grumble about one more thing to do on the road to making it (and I'm not going to go into what that means), they ought to take heart: lots of people found out about my work and they're excited about it. That cosmic energy always leads to something else, something good.

3. Putting together a video is sheer torture for almost all artists. While most artists have gotten to where they are because they possess some degree of extroverted self-centeredness, making love to the camera is tantamount to balancing a checkbook. They can hold conversations with anyone but a lens. My first launch's video had me introducing my work, and I hated it so much that I re-edited the whole thing with a voice-over. At a KS info-session I went to a few months ago, the verdict from hosts and guests alike was: get your face on it. Sigh.

4. The money chores and timing the launch around them is annoying to most artists. But, if cash is to be deposited to your account, grin and bear it.

5. The intense fear of asking others for money. Probably because many artists have done it before, they've had to field smirks and snorts of "Again?!?" Well, building a following is all about asking. And hand-in-hand with that, appreciating--every thing, every dime, every gesture as an acknowledgement of one's talent and ability. Perhaps in that light, some artists' fears and cynicism may melt away.

6. Having to explain "what went wrong." If goal isn't reached, "Again?" comes up, one more time. It's ego slashing. But sometimes that's all an artist has to keep going. It's the one thing that can't be taken away by anyone. Nothing wrong with a calloused ego as long as it's still there.

So where does that leave me, SIS and Kickstarter? I'll be talking about this more in the coming weeks. For now, please consider all the above as a chapter in my climb up the rocky ledge with the rain beating my face and a knife clenched in my teeth: sooner or later I'll get to the top.