A large number of artist-run groups and spaces in Portland and Chicago operate outside of traditional funding models represented by commercial galleries and the cultural non-profit sector. The Artist Run Benefit Society is a volunteer association designed to increase opportunities for collective fundraising and provide social and educational frameworks for Portland’s independent art groups and spaces to support each other, share resources and contribute to their community. The Benefit Society format is derived from the tanda, a monetary practice formed by a core of participants who agree to make regular contributions to a fund, which is given to each contributor in rotation. Such a form is often utilized by Mexican and Latin American immigrant communities as means of establishing informal credit when the use of banks is not a viable option. One of the most essential elements to any Tanda system is a mutual trust amongst all contributing members and a shared faith in the value of the community itself.
I am still looking for more members for the Society – so if any of you out there have questions or are interested in participating, please contact me!

How it works:
The ARBS runs on a cyclical basis, lasting as many months as there are participating artist groups/spaces. The initial cycle will include six local groups and therefore last six months. We are still finalizing which groups will participate, but at this time Igloo Gallery, SEA Change Gallery, Mike Merrill (pending investor approval) and Signal Fire Arts have stated interest in participating.

The ARBS functions in two parts:
Part 1:
Six member-organizations pay $10 monthly membership fee. That membership fee goes towards an administrator (me) who will work on a part-time basis (6 hours/month) on behalf of the members of the Society. The administrator will serve as primary liason between member-orgs and Fractured Atlas, a national fiscal sponsorship agency which:
· provides grant listings
· allows the member-orgs to apply for grants, and
· enables the ARBS itself to be tax-deductible in case outside funders want to donate to the group at large.
In the case that the ARBS does receive a grant or additional funding, those monies can be allocated to all the members as a bonus.
The administrator’s duties will be decided by the group, however possible tasks for the administrator include:
· assisting with organizing the bar night (below)
· sending weekly emails to the group listing available grants
· grant-writing or cultivating donations for the Portland independent community, or
· updating a website with a shared calendar showing member group activities and events
Part 2:
The ARBS will partner with a local bar or cafe who will agree to give part 15-20% of their proceeds one night per month to the Benefit Society. Each of the groups will sign up for a month during the credit cycle to take responsibility for promoting that month at the bar among their networks and taking home the proceeds percentage for their org to use however they wish.
Artist-run spaces and groups, by being mutually invested in the fund itself, will hopefully have an interest in attending each other’s fundraisers and building the community of participants outwards. The fund accrues value the more the community invests in its well being, meaning that it will become a sustainable model based on the group’s level of commitment to making it work. In essence, the Society is an experimental community bank in which artists can have a platform for sharing resources and discussing creative fundraising tools.

History of the Artist Run Benefit Society:
InCUBATE, a group of radical art administrators from Chicago, began work on a project called the Artist Run Credit League in 2008 as part of the exhibition Artist Run Chicago at the Hyde Park Art Center. In the initial structure, the League was set up to work so that each group would pay $20 dollars per month. Each month of the credit-cycle, one ARCL member would be paid the full amount of their individual credit. So, if 10 groups participated, the credit cycle would last 10 months, and each member would receive $200 during one month of the cycle. In the initial version, members were also required to throw one fundraiser per credit-cycle to raise at least $200, the collective sum of which would be distributed equally to all members on a quarterly basis in addition to the rotating monthly distribution. The Chicago version of the Artist Run Credit League developed through discussion with groups in Chicago but hasn’t yet begun functioning.
In order to better understand how to make this model work, InCUBATE is working with Portland artist and organizer, Katy Asher, to begin a League in Portland as part of their participation in the Portland State University Open Engagement conference in May 2010. Katy met with several Portland artists to sense out their responses to InCUBATE’s Credit League. Based on the input from Portland, InCUBATE adapted their model, changing the allocation of the monthly membership fee, and introducing the idea of the popular event in Chicago called the “Peace Party,” held at a place called Danny’s Bar which gives 50% of the bar’s proceeds to a different cause each month. These changes are meant to ensure that the person administering the group does not have to work for free, and that groups will raise more money than they initially invest while simultaneously connecting with others in a community event.

When will it start?
The Portland Artist Run Benefit Society will kick-off with a trivia night and cocktail party on May 15, 2010 at Portland State University. Funds raised at trivia night event will go to the Portland Benefit Society as seed money for their first credit cycle.

Web articles relating to the Credit League:
Journal of Aesthetics and Protest: www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org/7/tanda.html
Frieze Magazine: http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/artists_run_chicago/

It took me a while to post about the Signal Fire Residency I went on last fall because I’ve been trying to collect some photos to accompany my writing. Signal Fire provides residencies in the Mt. Hood National Forest to selected artists from a range of practices. Each summer they bring the artists out to the forest and provide them with food, maps, a bicycle, battery power and shelter for work and sleep space. I was one of the ‘guinea pigs’ for their first summer of residencies and was lucky to take along some friends, Michael Reinsch, Eric Steen and Ariana Jacob when I went.

I’ve been waffling about how much detail to go into in my post about the trip, and have finally decided to use the structure of an “official list” that Michael, Ariana, Eric and I made during our stay as the starting point for the following.

Signal Fire Residency Schedule, Sept 25-27, 2009
Michael Reinsch, Ariana Jacob, Katy Asher and Eric Steen

Wednesday:
On Wednesday, we were all excited to go down to Clackamas River which we could hear from our campsite. From there, we agreed that we should figure out a way to cross over to the other side and go poke around in the Big Bottom old growth forest on the other side. Amy (one of the Signal Fire organizers) had made a point of showing us where to go, explaining that this area had recently been designated wilderness, and that it was some of the 3% remaining old growth in the Pacific Northwest. Ariana curled up in the roots of some ancient trees while Eric, Michael and I spent a couple of hours collecting various mushrooms from the carpet of pine needles and moss and trying to identify them using the guides we’d found in the trailer.

After limited success at finding anything edible, we started pelting Ariana with the mushrooms, eventually heading back to camp to figure out sleeping arrangements and make some food. Eric and Michael both wanted to sleep in their own tents, while Ariana opted for the cushions she had spotted in the back of the suburban. I quite happily set up shop in the bed in the trailer. Ariana realized that she needed to drive back into town to make an emergency phone call, and by the time it got dark, she still hadn’t returned. We lit Michael’s camping lantern and carried our chairs and dinner up to the road to wait for her in the case that when she returned she wouldn’t know where to turn off to find us again. We waited and waited, and flashed our lights at a lot of cars that weren’t her. We wondered if she had gotten lost and had gone home for the night. After completing our dinner and drinking some wine, Ariana finally showed up, and we spent the rest of the night taking turns telling our life stories.

Thursday:
During breakfast on Thursday, we sat around the campfire and took turns reading aloud from the first chapter of Spell of the Sensuous. Afterwards we had a long conversation regarding the possibility of thinking outside of the human-centric state of mind and whether we could think in terms of something that was non-human and non-animate, such as a river or animal. After lunch, we went down to the river. Ariana went for a swim while the rest of us sunned at the bank and later, Ariana collected some musky smelling swamp mint to make tea with.

Friday:
On Friday, we decided to try and locate Austin Hot Springs which showed up as a small grayed box on our map down the road from where we were camping. We set out hiking, stopping to note familiar landmarks and refer to the map.
We actually stopped and looked at the map a lot. After hiking for a couple of hours, we stopped at a place that we thought might be the springs and I took a nap while Ariana and Eric tried fording the river to see if maybe the warm water was on the other side. Eric ended up coming back, while Ariana got stuck first on the far side of the river and then in mid stream.

After several half-fordings, backtrackings, and foot warmings on the hot rocks she hiked about a quarter of a mile upstream and crossed there, and climed a vertical hill to meet up with us. We spent that night in the warmth of the trailer night talking about the first time we each met one another and discussing our respective MFA programs in true art-student fashion.

Saturday:
Not to be thwarted by our failed attempt to find some hot springs, the next morning we got up early and drove to Bagby Hot Springs seven miles further down the road. While we soaked, we read aloud from Drop City. Upon return from Bagby, we spent several hours sitting in the sun discussing what we would make for the Signal Fire Soft Shovel show which was opening 4 days after we returned to town. We got out a typewriter, markers, paper and sketchbooks. Upon deciding to make and bury a time capsule as a gesture to what the residency might mean to us in the future, we spent the evening developing a detailed list (much more detailed than this recounting) of everything we experienced during the preceding days, read aloud from Ivan Illich in conversation with Jerry Brown and played the card game Shit Boots.

Sunday:
On Sunday, we got up, ate breakfast and started to take down camp. From there, we each completed our contributions to the time capsule just before Amy arrived to help prep the trailer for its trip back into Portland.
Our Bibliography: Drop City, Spell of the Sensuous, Ecotopia Emerging, National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms, The Gum Thief, Clackamas Ranger District Vicinity Map 2002, Love and Community (Jean Luc Nancy), Cabinet Magazine Testing Issue, The Rights of Man, Artist Placement Group: The Incedental Person, his art and ideas, City Works, All That the Rain Promises and More

Other: Much discussion of gastro-intestinal bombs and shovel-visits.

We buried the time capsule and drove back into town.

As an employee of Oregon’s largest university, I am enmeshed in a bureaucratic machine both monstrous and humorous. I interact with administrative assistants in a similar position to mine throughout the university system on a daily basis.
For a show called The Incidental Person, currently up at Apex Art in NYC, I’ve collected phrases from my colleagues that they wish they could stamp on the paperwork passing across their desks and service windows. The result (as seen in the phrases at the top of this entry) is a collection of rubber stamps less invisible and less anonymous than Date Received, Copy, Urgent or Paid.
Contributors to the collection include: Dan Ward, Cashier; Rachel Browne, Cashier; Sarah Roberts, Data Specialist; Andrew Bremner, Program Assistant; Connie Blumthal, Receptionist; Ruby Ramirez, Office Specialist; Colyn Ward, Office Specialist; Mercy Joy Luebke, Human Resources Coordinator; and Trudy Pellechia and Tammy Hooper, Human Resources Assistants.
—
Antony Hudek on The Incidental Person:
“The late British artist John Latham (1921-2006) coined the expression “the Incidental Person” in the context of Artist Placement Group, known as APG, which he co-founded in 1966 with Barbara Steveni, Jeffrey Shaw and Barry Flanagan. Contrary to most artist placement schemes, APG emphasized process, interaction and the artist’s independence in relation to the host institution, rather than any short-term tangible outcome. Like an unbiased observer or a third-party mediator, the Incidental Person placed through APG in industry, government, education or the non-profit sector would negotiate the terms of the invitation from the institution in question and adapt the nature of her or his intervention accordingly. This incidental function, as Latham explained, “is more to watch the doings and listen to the noises, and to eliminate from the output the signs of a received idea as being of the work.” Latham stresses the incidental person’s approach, that is, a certain position or attitude vis-à-vis the context in which she or he is placed. In other words, the identity of the incidental person is secondary to the effect she or he has on a given situation, for the aim of the incidental person is not to be anything in particular but instead “to generate maximum public involvement, and maximum enthusiasm which goes with the involvement.”

• Tesar Freeman & Claire LaMont
• Sandy Sampson
• Anna Gray and Ryan Wilson Paulsen
• Forrest Martin
• Jamie Marie Waelchli
• Abra Ancliffe

We’ll also be unveiling our new two-round (aka runoff) voting system.
Will you vote to fund start-up costs for a magazine, help an artist purchase supplies for a large-scale installation, support a stay-at-home lecture series, buy books for a specially curated library, pay artist fees for a talented-yet-unrecognized artist or assist in a campaign to remove a plaque from the park blocks?
RSVP to portlandstock at gmail dot com
When and where?
Sunday, October 18, 6-8 PM (do rsvp. dinner is first come first serve)
Gallery Homeland, SE 11th and Division