A la Cart: Donation Archive Installation

2014 – ongoing

installation

collaboration with Urša Sekirnik / KUD NUM

Donation Archive Installation is part of a project called A la Cart Performance Webshop (a-la-cart.com), an online webshop where it is possible to buy performance art (and installations) and order it anywhere you like. The project exposes real costs hidden behind art making and proposes a system of pre-determined pricing, where it is not possible to purchase art for free.

Most of the performance chapters that can be purchased online are dealing with the topics of precarity and conditions of work and living in the arts.

In the Donation Archive Installation we try to open up a discussion on the topic of support for the arts. Most artists, art institutions and governmental bodies consider support strictly in financial terms. With my colleague, Urša Sekirnik, we wanted to challenge this ideology. We asked ourselves: “How could we support artists or the arts in non-financial terms?” For example, by offering a free car ride between Barcelona and Amsterdam, a free sleepover in a certain city, a rehearsal place, possible new contacts, new work connections … The list can be endless. 

We started collecting non-financial donations as part of our performance chapter A Chapter in Which We Receive a Donation and as part of our installation A Station For Donation.

A selection of collected non-financial donations is exhibited as part of the Donation Archive Installation. Within the Donation Archive Installation we normally also place a donation basket, so the exhibition visitors can contribute their own proposals for non-financial donations.