callsandopps.com
Marisa pointed out that the name of http://www.callsandopps.com is so familiar… Starting in 2001 I edited of The Calls and Opps List, www.TheRedProject.com/calls. It was a newsletter of Calls for Work, and artist opportunities. From 2001-2005 it was an email newsletter sent to 5000+ subscribers. In 2005 I closed it, looking for someone to take it over. In 2006-2007, it was published as a blog, but it got blown out of the water with spam. It has since been retired.
Being copied is one of the things that I have been trying to work harder at. When my brother would copy everything I did as a child, my father always told me that ‘imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.’ This was small consolation as a pre-tween struggling to establish my own ‘individual’ identity. But now, it really does ring true. Of course I wish they would cite the obvious precedent and inspiration, and maybe do a better job on their web design, but frankly, i just hope they can keep it going for a few years and keep the quality high. Good luck to them, and the community they are hopefully serving.
From my retirement letter:
At the end of one of their essays in one of their books Critical Art Ensemble offers their definition of the gift economy (from Lewis Hyde), which i remember as going something like this: at some points certain people have more time/labor or capital and can give it away to others who have less, which they do until they no longer have more time/labor/capital and then they cannot give it away, so they stop and someone else gives.
Deleuze (in one of his essays in one of his books) speaks of the idea of ‘becoming,’ and the way i always understood it was that an idea/person/etc should always be in the process of becoming something, as opposed to having become something. always evolving, changing, not staying still.
At this point i do not have the time/labor/capital to continue the calls and opps list. my service provider is making it difficult/impossible for me to run my own independent mail script (sendmail throttling, changing anti-spam verification rules, etc). i thought about possible methods of sustaining the project, (advertising, membership fee, etc) all of which turned the project into an institution. an institution is about as un-becoming as you can get, and also the last thing i want to be responsible for at this point. (smile.)
The thing i liked best about it was how un-institutional it was. I did it because it was easy to do, and made things easier: rather than sending out these list of calls by typing in all of my artist-friends’ emails, i could just set up mailing list and have them join. and then i and they could invite other people to join. and after four years, there would be over 5000 people subscribed worldwide.
Tags: Calls and Opps · copies2 Comments
2 responses so far ↓
I am truely sorry – I had absolutely no idea about your calls and opps list, which had to be a wonderful website and mailing list, to reach over 5000.
Our inspiration came from many websites we knew – tranartists, rhizome, exibart, dexigner, artshow, artquest, pourinfos and many more – all of them operating either on a national level or addressing only one or two media.
We wanted a place that could bring you all international opportunities without having to go through dozens of websites and without using the google translation.
And we wanted the unworthy opportunities, asking us to pay hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of dollars just to be shown scanned out.
I am sure that some of the websites I mentioned (or know and didn’t mention – there are plenty) were inspired by your first initiative, it’s amazing to hear that you thought of this way back in 2001 (when I was not even in art school yet). I hope we can stand up to people’s expectations for a long time – right now we’re still working up the logistics (you may have noticed that our continental calls are not there yet – only a few of the variety that is out there).
I know that our design sucks, that’s because we have no money to invest, and the platform is not very design friendly. We decided that the content was more important and hopefully people will forgive us for that.
I thank you for the compliments – I can understand you run your mailing list on your own, which makes the compliments even more flattering (we’re a group of 5 from 3 different countries, and we still barely keep up with all the news).
If we had thought of this in 2006 – I have no doubt we would eventually find you mailing list and join, instead of raising our own.
Sincerely yours,
Mary B
callsandopps.com
One of the interesting things is that everyone knew about the list, everyone was on the list, but *no one* wrote about the list. It was as if they thought it was their little secret. Them at the 5000+ other people.
Frankly, I’ve been waiting for someone to come and take the place of my list. It is something that is much needed. And it was an email list — so 2001, not a blog w/ RSS feeds, and an API, etc…
But either way, very hard to maintain.
I wish you success, and more importantly, endurance.
m