SAY IT

SAY IT

Saturday 5 April 2008

Artists RanK* at the Sun and Doves

Artists RanK*

A lecture performance by Deej Fabyc

It does not matter whom I talk to in London at private views, everyone has an opinion often a very strong opinion about the Artfacts Web site. This is the international site that has worked out a ranking system for artists via verifiable web presence in group and solo exhibitions worldwide. Some artists are very annoyed that they cannot seem to get their exhibitions listed, some are just annoyed at their “rank” and others profess to wish to be deleted from the system. Many are uncomfortable with the whole notion of ranking and the fact that It seems like if you are represented by a gallery that pays to be on the site you are more likely to get your shows listed. The curators I have spoken to have all said that they use Artfacts as a research tool sometimes. I first became aware of the site when an exhibition I was in, in Germany in the year 2001 was listed on the site. I am the 9743 artist to have been listed on this site, which is now up to over 185,035 artists represented by at least one exhibition. When I first saw Artfacts it was not ranked, it was just that those artists who were more represented in the International exhibition circuit had more shows on their CV’s. At that time the site was not Web 2 enabled and one had to rely on the busy archivists at Artfacts finding your show.

Now more than 114,000 artists are ranked on the site however the ranking is not that simple as the 114,000 artists are all ”ranked’ at 50,000 or below with sometimes up to 100 artists occupying the same place value, if they all have previously had no rating and have all been entered at once in the same show. 

It is of course an interactive system and as I run an internationally based not for profit, project space called Elastic Residence in London as well as having curated a few other exhibitions over the years I have been in a position to really test out how the system works and watch those artists whom I have worked with CV’s change overnight sometimes from having had no visibility on the site at all. When the system is so seemingly random and flawed both by the site methodologies and the often poor archiving of even major museum shows why bother getting in a stew about it? Treat it as a game over which you have some control in the user defined content.

For my Performance in Mark McGowan’s (Rank 13594)  The Guy Hilton Gallery Presents, Live on Stage  at the Sun and Doves in South London on the 18th of April I will be humorously colliding Artfacts with Facebook or Stalkbook as it is now known, another Web 2 phenomenon