KROWSWORK



A MESSAGE FROM JASMINE ABOUT THE FUTURE OF KROWSWORK 1. ARTICLE ABSTRACT: I am writing to announce the end of Krowswork Gallery and the beginning of Krowswork, a center for Video and Visionary Art. This change represents a long meditation on and rethinking of my fundamental aspirations for Krowswork. This shift will be accompanied by a new approach to what it means to run a space for the exhibition of art at this moment in time, one that, for me at least, aligns more closely with the mission of "krows-work." For the past five years, I have managed to run Krowswork without soliciting outside financial support. *But, now, in order to make this year's ambitious programming possible, AND to be able to continue operating at all,Krowswork needs your help.* I am launching a membership drive, asking you to become a Krowsworker! With this all-or-nothing Kickstarter, I am looking to raise a minimum of $12,000 (and I hope more) through this membership financing model. For five years, Krowswork has provided a welcoming, yet rigorous home for ambitious, experimental, museum-quality exhibitions, often featuring video, installation, and performance. Please help me continue this work. I am asking you to contribute to the Kickstarter and become a Krowsworker today! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/378917632/become-a-krowsworker Krowsworker membership begins at $35 and comes with many great rewards. So please pick your level of support and help keep a dynamic, experimental art space in Oakland alive and well! UPDATE: KICKSTARTER SUCCESS -- THANK YOU TO THE 193 BACKERS WHO HAVE MADE THIS POSSIBLE! - JASMINE 2. FULL TEXT: For five years, Krowswork has answered more or less to the idea or form of "gallery" but the longer I am around, the less satisfying this form has been to me personally. The intention of Krowswork has certainly never been predominantly commercial, and I feel the points at which I and others (artists or visitors) have found real meaning within this space have occurred when that form is largely dropped, and experimentation, play, and a more engaged sense of discourse outside the idea of gallery begins. Before Krowswork was a physical space, it was a word I made up to denote a type of mapping of an imagined community--a survey of many disparate points of art and the poetic language that tied them together. To me these were direct emotional lines of connection but I found no way to literally connect them in the material world. So, how, I wondered could I tell the world about these connections if I couldn't even place them in time and space? Like a scientist, then, I made up a constant to solve my dilemma, figuring that it was something that would eventually be found. This constant was the word "Krowswork." When Krowswork eventually became a physical gallery, its mission was already coded in its name. Crows are known for charting direct courses between disparate points. And they also aren't afraid to tell about what they see. They are messengers and protectors. They operate individually yet within tight-knit, collective communities. Their function is both practical and, as acknowledged by a wide range of cultures and mythologies, the stuff of magic--connecting the every day realities to the divine vision. Along the way I got tied up in the expectations of a form that took me away from these instinctual roots of Krowswork. I needed to explore the world of art fairs and art dealers and tout my critical successes, but in the end this just drove a wedge between me and what I really was seeking for Krowswork. With the dissolution of Krowswork as a gallery and its emergence as a center for video and the visionary impulse, I am returning to my love of early video art and re-engaging with the interest these pioneers had in understanding media as medium--in the psychic sense--as a way of conducting vibrations from the universe. I think these sci-fi/pseudoscience instincts from forty years ago are actually bearing out in this new, digital age. I am also re-acknowledging poetry as the heart of so much of what drives Krowswork. Add to this a recent intense study of the automatism of Surrealism and the esotericism of cultures from the Egyptians to the Celts to the Yoruba, along with a personal path which has led me into study with a shamanic healer in Peru. What is common to this esotericism, and the healing work I have been doing in Peru, is the idea that forms precede and inform being. This approach, which represents a merging of alchemy and conjuring, considers that artists, like healing shamans, are tasked with not so much creating new forms as pointing out and dispersing false ones, while channeling and uncovering the ones that have always been here, ancient resonances upon which our humanity originated. I think this way of thinking is also key to living more in balance within our natural ecology, which occurs when we understand that nature and its forms came first and think of them as beloved teachers, not something we outgrew. 3. THE FIRST YEAR'S PROGRAM: This year at Krowswork will be an engaged look at these ideas. I have curated an entire year's programming with a series of Residencies, which will feature a diverse range of visionary artists and artwork--from graffiti to poetry and from elaborate sci-fi video installations to Kabalistic painting. These Krowswork Residents will present their own work, host conversations and events, and in some cases present the work of others. Each Resident will be implicitly or explicitly in conversation with those who come before and after, as well as in dialogue with the total arc of the year. I will become a facilitator, an observer, and a chronicler of what unfolds, and will send out regular dispatches in the form of Krowswork Maps. These Maps will be online documents that will include writing about each exhibition, while visually charting related explanatory and supplementary articles, images, artworks, and links. In other words, these Maps will give the crow's eye view of the entire landscape and more explicitly point out what I see as the direct pathways between and among the various residents' ideas and works. These Residencies will culminate in a festival with talks, exhibitions, and screenings around the topics that have been unearthed and explored during the year. Krowsworkers' participation is vital to the quality of exchange that I hope will take place here. Through the shared Maps, gallery walkthroughs, talks, public programs, and a year-end members' exhibition salon & screening, each Krowsworker will bring their own vision to this conversation and expand it by taking away the message of what you have seen to your own community. Here is the program for the year (timing subject to changes): Overture (Preview of the residents' work): February 6-7 Anne Lesley Selcer, poet: February 14–March 7 Duane Deterville, African art scholar/artist: March 14–April 4 Tanya Zimbardo, media art curator: April 11–May 2 Paloma Modupe, video artist, photographer, painter: May 16–June 6 Alan H. Clark, painter, muralist, and comic book illustrator: June 13–June 28 Malidoma Collective, visual artists, musicians, healers: July 3–July 26 Torsten Zenas Burns & Darrin Martin, video/installation artists: August 1–August 22 The Estate of Mark Baum, painter: September 3–October 10 Shalo P, experiential video/sound/comics: October 17-November 7 Sonya Rapoport with Farley Gwazda, mixed media/mapping/web: November 14–December 12 Mary Hull Webster, video/painting/Jungian inquiry: January 2-23, 2016 Video & Visionary Festival + Members Salon & Screenings: January 24–February 6, 2016 4a. RE-ITERATION OF NEEDS AND INTRODUCTION OF REWARDS To make this all happen, AND TO ALLOW KROWSWORK TO CONTINUE AS A BRICK AND MORTAR SPACE AT ALL, I am launching a membership drive. I am asking you to become a Krowsworker. For five years, Krowswork has provided a welcoming, yet rigorous home for ambitious, experimental, museum-quality exhibitions, often featuring video, installation, and performance. Please help me continue this work. I need your help now -- I am looking to raise a minimum of $12,000, but I hope to raise morewith your help. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/378917632/become-a-krowsworker $35+: Be the Krow: Receive a cool KROWSWORKER t-shirt and a subscription to Krowswork Maps (see above), as well as invitations to members-only events throughout the year. You will also be eligible to participate in the Members-only salon/screening at the end of the programming year. $60+: As the Krow Flies: Receive the t-shirt and the maps, but also priority access to the culminating festival (there will be some great speakers and panels, so this will be worth it if you can give at this level). $150+: Krow Kaw: At this level, in addition to the other perks, you will also receive a one-on-one hour-long consultation with me about your art or your collection (or I will speak to a group you are a part of). I’ve learned a lot in my 20-year career in the arts, and I’d like to share. $250+: Krow’s Kitchen: Join me with the Residents for a special kick-off salon-style dinner in the gallery. This an interesting, diverse group of thinkers. I promise this will be very fun. Plus all the other stuff. $450+: Krow’s Nest: All the other perks, plus you can use Krowswork as a space for a private gathering (birthday party, holiday party, brunch—up to 4 hours). And the all the previous perks! $1000+: Odin’s Krows: After the Norse god who kept two crows as his trusted messengers, if you can give at this level, you will be a named sponsor of Krowswork’s 2015 programming and will receive a special edition print portfolio of the year’s MAPS, which will also include an original print or multiple produced during the year by one of the artists. Plus all the other incentives listed above. $5000+ Rainbow Krow: After the First Nation Lenape story, in which the rainbow crow brought fire to their people, if you are able to join at this level, you will provide essential warmth and color to the mission. In addition to the other rewards, you will receive a selection of 8 multiples/prints from the year's programming in a unique portfolio box modeled after Duchamp's Boîte en Valise. And eternal gratitude from me and the residents. 4b. THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT NOW AND THROUGH THE YEARS!