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.
