Art Writing Is Not Dead (It's Just Gone Online)

By Ruth Skilbeck

Over the last couple of years there have been reports, in the mainstream and even online media, of the supposed demise of arts journalism. These reports have come not only from publications in Australia (homebase of Arts Features International)– which had until  relatively recently tended to take the back foot in the art world as connoted in the antipodean moniker ‘Down Under.’

Sure, there have been a number of reports from here about this. But notes of change have also rung out from the former heart of the art world: the UK. A long feature article in The Art Newspaper in 2009 spelt out a mixed prognosis, “let’s be clear: arts journalism has never had it easy.” * What the discerning reader may note in reading these pieces is that they have more in common than the doom and gloom, they were all written in 2009. This was the year of calamity in the world of art journalism, when art periodicals  folded all over the place.  But now, it seems the winds of changing are blowing back again, and what is returning is a new rush of interest in art writing and arts journalism.

After years of neglect arts journalism is finally making its way into university courses in Australia, as well as in the US, Canada and the UK along with new forms of cultural journalism. It would be even more surprising if it were not so. The meaning of art journalism is wider than art in and of itself; it correlates to art as culture, and art as the new cultural language and form of visual communication in the global art world. Over the last 10 years social and economic changes in the  region, around Australia, have seen countries that formerly were hidden behind a curtain now openly participating in the art world, for example as seen in the new gallery scenes, Biennales and art fairs in countries such as China, Singapore, the Philippines.

At the same time contemporary art museums and art galleries around the world have, at least in the fortunate peaceful zones, become cross cultural melting pots and meeting points, safe cultural havens where people of the world can communicate through the medium of contemporary art, and come to appreciate and understand each others cultural heritage (and not seek to blow it up it, as has been a sad warring counterbalance to peace communication in this century).

The spread of Biennale and art fairs, and the ever-expanding programs and institutions of contemporary art museums in virtual and life modes, are evidence of the effects of ongoing global social change and mobility.

Other movements are occurring around the world such as the new mothers art movements (M.A.M) a new form of feminism in arts which rather gloriously continues the work of the Women s Art Movement (W.A.M.) of the nineteen seventies.

These are all positive signs of art as the currency of global cultural communication. And all these rapid changes also bring into focus the incredible need for art writing and arts journalism that is investigative and clear. Not only in reporting on and analysing the new trends but in building up the relational aspects of understanding and cultural exchange through dialogue and discussion which are processes, exemplified in artist and arts journalist interviews.

The doom and gloom reports, in recent media, are however counter-balanced by acknowledging that the demise of arts journalism in newspapers is not a sign of the demise of arts journalism.  (If anything it is a sign of the demise of newspapers and their financial inability to support as large a staff in this era of crisis: digitization and cost cutting for traditional media). Moving with the times arts journalism has gone online, as have communities of artists, and audiences of viewers and readers who form the international contemporary art world. Emerging in new forms and modes of online art writing.

As a further sign of the changes of the last few years, that have affected all journalists, and arts journalists in very specific ways, blogging has now been recognised by the UN as a form of journalism.

© Copyright Ruth Skilbeck, 2012

First published in www.ruthskilbeck.com

E-Gads! Self-publishing is the new black of the transnational digital world.

Self-publishing is, it seems, the new black of the online digital world- and that means the world of the Blog and its internets. Self publishing e-books is cool, it’s attracting agents and traditional publishers, and it makes more money for authors and artists. That is according to the latest news from professional networking Linked-in group ‘Ebooks, Ebook Readers, Digital Books and Digital Content Publishing’.

An article posted in the group today by Robin Sullivan, entitled ‘The New Midlist: Self-Published E-Book Authors Who Make A Living’ details a persuasive list of reasons, backed up by  facts and figures, as to why self publishing e-books is now a more viable way for first time book authors to introduce the gilded fruits of their inspiration and perspiration, into the brave new world of digital media. 

Sullivan refers back to the bad old world when “self-publishing produced little to no revenue, and doing so was often the last resort for a project that had been rejected by everyone it had been put in front of.”

But now she says “in the post digital revolution” all this has changed.

“[T]he model has been turned upside down. Authors are going to e-books first based on earning potential and a quick time to market. If they do well, then they leverage their sales for larger advances and favorable contract terms.” 

She adds: “Of course self publishing is not for everyone, but at least for those that decide to go this route, they won’t have to be that one in a million outlier—if they can achieve the e-book midlist status, they stand a good chance of telling their boss, “I quit, I’m going to stay home and write for a living.”

Sullivan cites a “watershed moment”  that occurred in October/November 2010 when “the sales of e-books from previously unknown authors skyrocketed.”

She gives as a case study her husband , author Michael J. Sullivan, who has published six novels in the Riyria Revelations series through her small press Ridan Publishing. Starting at this time, hIs publishing income went from $1,500 approx per month to $102,000 in five months. 

Michael J. Sullivan’s  book series has also recently produced $154,000 in foreign rights, showing that with the new affordances of Amazon and Kindle, self-published e-book authors can now sell foreign rights. 

Self published e-book authors are also commanding far larger publishing advances from mainstream traditional publishers picking up their books which already have a following of readers.

All of which leads to the response: E-Gads!

~

As your humble scribe has several unpublished books, a novel art book and a new life journalism novel unfolding by the day (with glimpses on this Blog!) perhaps I should think of this as a publishing option? Sounds like it’s worth a try!




References:

Sullivan, Robin, 2011, 'The New Midlist: Self-Published E-Book Authors Who Make A Living’. PublishingPerspectives.com.

http://publishingperspectives.com/2011/06/self-published-ebook-authors-earn-living/



© Ruth Skilbeck 2011

Digital Existentialism: from "Nausea" to the "Writer's Fugue" can social media polyphony save the world?

Readers who've followed this blog since the beginning four months ago  will know  that - after years as a professional arts writer and academic - I have recently started to blog and am enjoying the freedom of experimenting with what feels to me like a new philosophical condition of digital existentialism, blogging and nothingness, I call it, that I keep returning to here in my posts.

I'd be interested to know if anyone has thoughts to share on their experiences of writing in digital media, how does it shape your sense of identity, how is it different to non digital writing - or not...do you have a different sense of yourself in online writing...is it more, or less, sociable... is there life beyond the screen and how much does that matter?  Does it keep you sane? is it a lifeline or a form of disconnection and dissociation that keeps you attached to the eye of the screen and away from real life?

 I’m not quite sure about that one as I spend so much of my time online.

This blog is like my writing has always been: my way of filling an empty space the realisation of one's own  existence in a cold world. Sartre called it "nausea" in his novel by the same name. I call it 'the writer's fugue' and explored the condition in my PhD: 'The writer's fugue: musicalization, trauma and subjectivity in the literature of modernity'. I may write about that here in later posts... meanwhile I am applying my idea of the 'writer's fugue' to writing in digital media, and it seems to me we're all doing it.. in the process creating a new global polyphony... Maybe if we can create enough positive energy and creativity and love for humanity through digital media writing, reflected in writing that shows the truth of what is happening in the world and what it means to be human in this new digital age of  human/machine,  this will counterbalance the wars and destruction and exploitation of this world and repression of our humanity... before it is too late....and we run out of time in the virtual reality of cyberspace... 

Remembering Australia's Forgotten Mothers

REMEMBERING AUSTRALIA’S FORGOTTEN MOTHERS

MANIFESTO:

WOMEN’S LIBERATION FROM INTERNALISED OPPRESSION AND CULTURAL & PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA THROUGH CATHARSIS IN PHYSICAL ACTS OF PERFORMATIVE WRITING AND ART, IN DIALOGUE, AND IN RITES OF ECSTATIC INTERPRETIVE DANCE.

I am. An Australian-based feminist textual artist and theorist. I work in the tradition of feminism that articulates new modalities of writing and art from life experiences of the female subject and self. My focus is in creative writing and critical cultural theory. Pushing the project of post-structuralist reflexive writing as conceptual art across textual modes and boundaries. Into disjointed narratives of exile, fugue and dissociation.

I seek to make conscious the unconscious processes that call out for Catharsis. For Healing from personal and cultural trauma. Through performative acts of fugal writing that bear witness and reclaim dispersed and lost identity. My project and method is to use rituals of writing as action, and occasions of exchange through interviews and conversations with artists, to bring into consciousness, to evacuate and exorcise the internalised content of cultural and personal oppression and trauma. 

To rise beyond fear of the censor and surveillance into words and art that speak OUR name and make us STRONG again. Through acts of writing I remember how to feel again. I will remember who I am again. I learn how to think and take part in the world again.

My project is to break through the wall of SILENCE that removed my Mother’s mother’s entire existence from the family record, so that, not only did I, and my siblings, never know WHO she was, and had been; we never even knew, and were not supposed to know, that she had ever existed at all. 

My project is to honor the Mothers who were erased from the family record as if they did not matter.  At the same time, it was in the twentieth century, the third century of the ‘nation’s’ cultural history; the Fathers, the men folk, the returned soldiers, from the two ‘Great Wars’  were commemorated in endless ceremonies of Remembrance that almost 100 years later still continue. 

                                                               ~

I have nothing against men being remembered, and valued and commemorated and am very proud of my grandfathers who fought bravely and suffered in the World War. 

But why was it that at the same time in Australian cultural history, that men were Remembered and commemorated excessively, women, specifically MOTHERS, were massively disregarded, excluded, denied, forgotten, and lost in the decades of the ‘stolen generations’, that lasted over six decades, when one hundred thousand children of Aboriginal mothers, were taken and placed in orphanages, missions, or with adopted parents, under a policy of attempted 'assimilation'. There is a huge gendered cultural imbalance in these practices that has not been widely acknowledged. A cultural amnesia has prevailed. My project is to resurrect the memory of the forgotten mothers. Make a plinth and cover it with their names. Write the story of my family, to start with. The long journey of finding my grandmother.

My mother’s mother died shortly after she was born. She was adopted. By an upper class couple. Grandfather was an officer and a gentleman. Grandmother was a lady and very concerned with appearances. They lived in a big house overlooking a gully on Sydney’s Upper North Shore. To spare their feelings (so the story goes now) a cover up ensued, the result being that the very existence of my grandmother, was denied and hidden. This would have been forever (had those involved successfully had their way).

It was only by chance and accidence, through little slips and whispers, from the other side, that my forbidden grandmother’s presence re-entered consciousness. I was the conduit.

To be continued.

Copyright © Ruth Skilbeck, 2011

From:  Australian women contemporary artists project.

Remembering Australia's Forgotten Mothers

REMEMBERING AUSTRALIA’S FORGOTTEN MOTHERS

MANIFESTO:

WOMEN’S LIBERATION FROM INTERNALISED OPPRESSION AND CULTURAL & PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA THROUGH CATHARSIS IN PHYSICAL ACTS OF PERFORMATIVE WRITING AND ART, IN DIALOGUE, AND IN RITES OF ECSTATIC INTERPRETIVE DANCE.

I am. An Australian-based feminist textual artist and theorist. I work in the tradition of feminism that articulates new modalities of writing and art from life experiences of the female subject and self. My focus is in creative writing and critical cultural theory. Pushing the project of post-structuralist reflexive writing as conceptual art across textual modes and boundaries. Into disjointed narratives of exile, fugue and dissociation.

I seek to make conscious the unconscious processes that call out for Catharsis. For Healing from personal and cultural trauma. Through performative acts of fugal writing that bear witness and reclaim dispersed and lost identity. My project and method is to use rituals of writing as action, and occasions of exchange through interviews and conversations with artists, to bring into consciousness, to evacuate and exorcise the internalised content of cultural and personal oppression and trauma. 

To rise beyond fear of the censor and surveillance into words and art that speak OUR name and make us STRONG again. Through acts of writing I remember how to feel again. I will remember who I am again. I learn how to think and take part in the world again.

My project is to break through the wall of SILENCE that removed my Mother’s mother’s entire existence from the family record, so that, not only did I, and my siblings, never know WHO she was, and had been; we never even knew, and were not supposed to know, that she had ever existed at all. 

My project is to honor the Mothers who were erased from the family record as if they did not matter.  At the same time, it was in the twentieth century, the third century of the ‘nation’s’ cultural history; the Fathers, the men folk, the returned soldiers, from the two ‘Great Wars’  were commemorated in endless ceremonies of Remembrance that almost 100 years later still continue. 

                                                               ~

I have nothing against men being remembered, and valued and commemorated and am very proud of my grandfathers who fought bravely and suffered in the World War. 

But why was it that at the same time in Australian cultural history, that men were Remembered and commemorated excessively, women, specifically MOTHERS, were massively disregarded, excluded, denied, forgotten, and lost in the decades of the ‘stolen generations’, that lasted over six decades, when one hundred thousand children of Aboriginal mothers, were taken and placed in orphanages, missions, or with adopted parents, under a policy of attempted 'assimilation'. There is a huge gendered cultural imbalance in these practices that has not been widely acknowledged. A cultural amnesia has prevailed. My project is to resurrect the memory of the forgotten mothers. Make a plinth and cover it with their names. Write the story of my family, to start with. The long journey of finding my grandmother.

My mother’s mother died shortly after she was born. She was adopted. By an upper class couple. Grandfather was an officer and a gentleman. Grandmother was a lady and very concerned with appearances. They lived in a big house overlooking a gully on Sydney’s Upper North Shore. To spare their feelings (so the story goes now) a cover up ensued, the result being that the very existence of my grandmother, was denied and hidden. This would have been forever (had those involved successfully had their way).

It was only by chance and accidence, through little slips and whispers, from the other side, that my forbidden grandmother’s presence re-entered consciousness. I was the conduit.

To be continued.

Copyright © Ruth Skilbeck, 2011

From:  Australian women contemporary artists project.

Under The Volcano: Latest Flight News from Australia

Those who have been following your humble art scribe’s attempts to leave the ground, and stay airbourne, since this web-log began seven weeks ago may have winced at metaphors of flight delays and disruptions... There are now readers from around the world connecting through the blogosphere to these haphazard pages who have read records of struggles to take flight....and then, in a miracle of rebirth, witnessed the Scrolls soaring like a firebird from volcanic ashes... 

Imagine my surprise, though, when yesterday I received a message in my inbox, addressed to yours truly, from the Chief Executive Officer of Australia’s national airline, giving a detailed and reassuring explanation as to why flights to and from Australia have been disrupted over the last few days, due to the eruption of the Mt Puyehue Cordon Caulle volcano in Chile, and the dispersal of volcanic ash clouds into the atmosphere which apparently can make all kinds of problems; if the ash enters an airplane engine it can turn into molten glass and cause the engine to fail, a horrific prospect indeed.

When I began writing this weblog, the eruption from the Mt Puyehue Cordon Caulle volcano was but a rumbling in the bowels of the earth. But due to the current and ongoing extreme turbulence on Planet Earth, my attempts to fly into digital writing in the blogosphere have coincided with bad weather and catastrophic disruptions around the world in what must be one of the most turbulent years in human memory, when seismic, social, economic, environmental and industrial nuclear meltdowns are all coinciding to form one ‘hell’ of a Stygian Goya-esque tableaux down on dear old Mother Earth.....It’s hot down there... Now we’ve flown into another  post modern digital merging of reality and imagination...Many global art critics are frequent flyers... Yet  before realising that this must be a courtesy message sent out to the mailing lists, your scribe did wonder for a moment, if it was a sign this flight record is being read by people in high places - pilots and flight attendants? Either way thanks for the information, and keep up the good work of safety first on the airlines.  On the ground, as in the air, your passengers, do sincerely appreciate it!

This is especially relevant to yours truly, as readers may also know, my daughter and ex-husband are due to return quite soon to Australia from Newfoundland, flying across land and oceans, on the longest flight with no stops in the world.  

Air Safety First!

Under The Volcano: Latest Flight News from Australia

Those who have been following your humble art scribe’s attempts to leave the ground, and stay airbourne, since this web-log began seven weeks ago may have winced at metaphors of flight delays and disruptions... There are now readers from around the world connecting through the blogosphere to these haphazard pages who have read records of struggles to take flight....and then, in a miracle of rebirth, witnessed the Scrolls soaring like a firebird from volcanic ashes... 

Imagine my surprise, though, when yesterday I received a message in my inbox, addressed to yours truly, from the Chief Executive Officer of Australia’s national airline, giving a detailed and reassuring explanation as to why flights to and from Australia have been disrupted over the last few days, due to the eruption of the Mt Puyehue Cordon Caulle volcano in Chile, and the dispersal of volcanic ash clouds into the atmosphere which apparently can make all kinds of problems; if the ash enters an airplane engine it can turn into molten glass and cause the engine to fail, a horrific prospect indeed.

When I began writing this weblog, the eruption from the Mt Puyehue Cordon Caulle volcano was but a rumbling in the bowels of the earth. But due to the current and ongoing extreme turbulence on Planet Earth, my attempts to fly into digital writing in the blogosphere have coincided with bad weather and catastrophic disruptions around the world in what must be one of the most turbulent years in human memory, when seismic, social, economic, environmental and industrial nuclear meltdowns are all coinciding to form one ‘hell’ of a Stygian Goya-esque tableaux down on dear old Mother Earth.....It’s hot down there... Now we’ve flown into another  post modern digital merging of reality and imagination...Many global art critics are frequent flyers... Yet  before realising that this must be a courtesy message sent out to the mailing lists, your scribe did wonder for a moment, if it was a sign this flight record is being read by people in high places - pilots and flight attendants? Either way thanks for the information, and keep up the good work of safety first on the airlines.  On the ground, as in the air, your passengers, do sincerely appreciate it!

This is especially relevant to yours truly, as readers may also know, my daughter and ex-husband are due to return quite soon to Australia from Newfoundland, flying across land and oceans, on the longest flight with no stops in the world.  

Air Safety First!

Message From Your Flight Captain

This is your flight captain speaking. We are currently flying at a height of approximately 32,000 feet, at a cruising speed of around 918 kilometres per hour, or for our northern passengers, that's around 570 miles per hour.

The Scrolls that you have been offered are for your reading enjoyment on this flight.

Oh Oh Oh 

Scrolling back wildly she came across some notes written long ago in a far off place.

The future is a  -was  a-  she flying or was she scrolling through the sky... scrabbling in her capacious cabinbag handbag for her art critics kit: mobile switched off, executive leather bound organiser with at least six names and addresses inscribed in red pen, make up bag,  loose lipsticks, the scribbled name and number of the renowned  male British artist she was going to interview in his new Camden studio; the scrambled number of the personal assistant of the "most famous living female British artist", whom she had hung out with, serenaded by the artist’s Dad in Sydney, and wanted to meet again, and the   

Dead See

she scrolls

the Dead See

our names

in every way,

from every passing day,

the dead call out our names.

Welcome to The Skilbeck Scrolls!

As the global public takes to social media by the billions, citizen journalism is flourishing, and global media empires are tottering and scrambling to reinvent their ‘business model’ in mass firings and casualisation of journalistic labour forces (witness the current shifts at the UK’s BBC, as one example of many). The past couple of years’ turbulence in the mainstream press is no more keenly felt than in the arts media, where your humble scribe found many a commission over the past couple of decades; yet as the doors of the old publishing model close, new doors to communication open in fresh forms and modes of digital media. Celebrating the spirit of re-invention and re-birth, we are launching this weblog under a new name and purpose, to bring readers informed comment and critique on international contemporary arts and culture and feminism, and to interweave comment and critique with the ancient practices of the oracle, gazing from the windows of the air-bus, and reading the signs in the clouds... Ladies, gentleman, and many shades in between and beyond, we hope that you may join us on our flight!