n.e.w.s. is a collective online platform for the analysis and development of art-related activity, drawing upon contributions from around the globe, bringing together different voices, accents and outlooks from the North, East, West and South. | Read more..

About n.e.w.s.

n.e.w.s (http://northeastwestsouth.net) was launched at ISEA 2008 in Singapore at The Substation. n.e.w.s. is a collective online platform for the analysis and development of art-related activity, drawing upon contributions from around the globe, bringing together different voices, accents and outlooks from the North, East, West and South. n.e.w.s. reflects geographic diversity and facilitates a framework for collaboration, content and visions of change from outside the normal parameters of established art world networks. n.e.w.s. offers space for a potential series of global dialogues, transactions and collaborations concerning art and its discourse. Content is curatorially determined: images, texts, podcasts, livestream and sound archives provide documentation of discussions, works or new media. Contributors change during the course of the year depending on interests and time. n.e.w.s. structures these contributions in the form of a blog/archive (images and text), regular online forums on diverse subjects ranging from Asian Biennials, an Internet for introverts to the paradoxes of slackerdom, on error and errorism and remuneration for usership. Building upon shared knowledge and past references, contributors engage with others’ practices. Multilingual translation, tagging and commentary contextualise the contributions and open up new possibilities; collaboration in the form of future projects such as our forthcoming publication and the Shadow Search Project.

n.e.w.s. is non-commercial and uses the visibility of distributed networks to create value around immaterial resources in a knowledge-driven economy. Using a bottom-up, grass roots methodology in a Web 2.0 economy, what distinguishes n.e.w.s. from other online communities is its collaborative curatorial model and partially remunerated content, without being an academic, governmental or cultural institution with structural subsidy. A system of trust and unexpected contingencies measure this intangible input. This strategy encourages a return not strictly based on attention economy (reputation) principles. A tool for the creation of immaterial resources and intellectual goods in an era of diversification, n.e.w.s. attempts to initiate, build and foster relations and provide a valuable platform dedicated to cultural bricolage, enabling less seen artistic endeavors worldwide visibility. n.e.w.s. is attempting to leverage the potential of participative technologies and communities to facilitate the possibility for an artistic discourse through (partially!) paid content. How can we negotiate the attention economy of the Internet with remuneration? In order to pay contributors n.e.w.s. is seeking out alternative models of exchange, collaboration and vocabularies by engaging visionaries and financial supporters in order to bridge not only fields of interest but shared enterprise. We hope to be able to answer some of these questions in our forthcoming publication for which we won the Competition of Ideas prize that rethinks the social and economic conditions of art in the 21st century and speculates potential models for remuneration.

Credits - The current re-design is done by nk_ based on a theme developed by Prayas and Jayesh

n.e.w.s. contributors: Stephen Wright, Prayas Abhinav, Branka Curcic, Nishant Shah, Community Museum Project, Marijn de Vries Hoogerwerff, Renée Ridgway

n.e.w.s. advisory board: Gunalan Nadarajan, Kitty Zijlmans, Sarat Maharaj, Tiong Ang

n.e.w.s. CV:

March 2011: Space the Final Frontier. n.e.w.s. contributors Prayas Abhinav and Renée Ridgway team up with their respective institutions to work on Shadow Search.

December 2010: launch of N.E.W.S. Bibliography: please search at will. All sources are cited on the site and come up randomly

September 2010: n.e.w.s. pitch at 'Kom jij ook?' for Shadow Search Project

May 2010: n.e.w.s. at Kuda.org. Discussions about Paid Usership and Cutting Slack forums

June 2010: n.e.w.s. nominated for Digital Communities prize for Ars Electronica

March 2010: Paid Usership: An open forum on the question of “remunerated usership”

January 2010: Unspeakably More cont’d: Lexical issues. A forum that follows up the discussion on the Brahmaputra, at Periferry, kicked off by Nishant Shah

November 2009: Presentation at Khoj@1ShanthiRoad, Bangalore Experimental Economy Camp at CIS (Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore) and results of Shadow Search )partially funded by Arts Collaboratory, Seminar at Sorbonne, Paris presenting research so far for Arbitrating Attention: Reinvesting Attention Surplus in Plausible Artworlds, organised by Association Forum de l'Essai sur l'Art

October 2009: Open Call: Shadow Search

September 2009: Unspeakably More: Naming, Deframing (lexicon for contemporary curatorship (Art after Space), organised by n.e.w.s. and hosted by Periferry (Desire Machine Colletive) and Khoj

August 2009: Ruminations on Remuneration: presentation of one-year n.e.w.s. at ISEA 2009 by Renée Ridgway (partially funded by Mondriaan Foundation)

June/July 2009: Redesign of the n.e.w.s. (Drupal) site by Prayas Abhinav & Jayesh Gohel, Multilingual and livestreaming capabilities added

May 32, 2009-ongoing: Errare Humanum Est: a forum on error and errorism, moderator Stephen Wright

April 2009: Khoj/n.e.w.s. collaboration (funded by Arts Collaboratory) (research trip to Dehli, Mumbai and Bangalore and Experimental Economy Camp at CIS (Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore)

March 2009: Wintercamp: My Creativity workshop hosted by (INC) Institute of Networked Cultures, participants Branka Curcic, Prayas Abhinav, Renée Ridgway Asian Biennials (Part II) online forum, moderator Lee Weng Choy

February 2009: Broken Webs: Imagining an Internet for Introverts, moderator Prayas Abhinav

January 2009: Cutting Slack: paradoxes of slackerdom, an online forum, moderator Stephen Wright

December 2008: Winner: Competition of Ideas prize from the Association Forum de l'Essai sur l'Art (collaborative writing of a book that rethinks the social and economic conditions of art in the 21st century)

November 2008: Asian Biennials (Part I) online forum, moderator, Susan Kendzulak

September 2008: Presentation at Basekamp, Philadelphia-feedback/Skype forum

July 2008: Launch: ISEA Singapore at The Substation, moderators Lee Weng Choy, Renée Ridgway

April 2008: Pilot project funded by Mondriaan Foundation

May 2007-December 2007: N.e.w.s. is an initiative of Sannetje van Haarst and Renée Ridgway. Support: Bemiddelaars FONDS BKVB

January 2006-April 2007: N.e.w.s. thanks the former Gate Foundation for its 18 years of constant dedication and undeniable support to migrant artists living in the Netherlands. The n.e.w.s. platform developed out of a series of two-year discussions about the future of the Gate’s artists archive and library, with the former board and various cultural institutions in the Netherlands and abroad. These (Gate’s artists archive and library) are now incorporated into the library and archive of the Vanabbe Museum, in Eindhoven and can be accessed online.