Intro

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hello uh welcome we’re here with a famous new media artist

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and other things jeremy bailey jeremy is a blend of

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performance art and technology in his artistic practice but he wears an incredible number of hats sometimes

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simultaneously sometimes as augmented reality as we can see here

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the the lean artist program is one of the reasons we’ve been talking with jeremy over the last year uh these this

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idea of blending uh sort of uh corporate uh startup culture with artistic

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production um jeremy also wears the hat of head of experience at freshbooks

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so a wide variety of things so welcome how you doing today jeremy

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great thank you for having me yeah thanks for the introduction big fan big fan of yours too ryan

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thank you um well let’s start with the the sort of uh uh the basics um we’re talking to the

What drew you to the lab

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different people who’ve been involved in the digital economies lab and maybe we can just start with what drew you to the

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project and why you accepted our invitation to help sort of shape um the

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digital economies lab yeah i mean for me um i mean first of all personally

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as an artist it’s it’s it’s an important topic for me just because you know in in my own experience

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though i come you know i have every advantage by you know um by sort of the the privilege knapsack um

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terms you know like intersectionally i like and even just from a background i didn’t

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pay i don’t have any student debt i you know i came out of school with every advantage and i still struggled you know

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to establish a career as an artist where i could i could live and sustain life uh as an

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artist and so it starts with like just this awareness that has increased

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to you know to a point where i can’t you know i couldn’t ignore it i i couldn’t ignore it early on but to the point in my life

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now where you know it’s just all around me all the time that artists are out

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creating a lot of what um we consider meaningful in life um but

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are personally not you know feel unrewarded uh renumeratively for that

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effort um and you know it’s a privilege to make art is often the kind of the counter

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argument and it’s like in one of those dream jobs and there are more artists making art and living from making art

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today than there ever have been in history however um you know i think enough enough great art

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is not seen or heard from people who don’t have the opportunity to continue to try and

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survive we don’t have the mechanisms to do so that i feel like it’s like a culturally

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kind of imperative it’s a cultural imperative that we figure this now ultimately and

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that you know as a human species if you will we’re holding ourselves back artificially and for no

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other reason except that we uphold myths about the value of art and

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the reason art exists that are destructive to the artist’s character

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and so you know the idea of the lab was really exciting to me just because hey why not question some of these like

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assumptions um the same way we question any assumption like cultural revolution

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um is a result of that type of questioning historically and has

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resulted like art hasn’t been this way forever right it’s gone through many phases and we might be on the brink of

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yet another and i think frankly we’re past the break now we’re experiencing

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a new wave a new way of thinking um and that that’s a healthy thing that’s what

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artists are supposed to do um and it might finally be be our time

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yeah i wonder like we you know we invited uh you to to uh

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to to help us shape the program because we saw you know the the the lean artist

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program sort of evolve in your efforts to try and um bring these elements of the sort of

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startup ecologies uh to artists can you talk a bit about um your experience around

Tension between art and capital

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uh this you know this tension that exists i think between in the cultural community where there’s this sort of see

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art and capital as oppositional or exclusive things or at

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least within the domain of this more experimental world so i guess we’re leaving some of the art market out of

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that discussion or maybe not i don’t know but maybe you can talk a little bit about how you’ve

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experienced that tension and how trying you’ve tried to resolve it yeah i experience it all the time and i

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do a lot of work collaborating with artists as you mentioned i have the lean artist project where i work with other artists to create products that are you know

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literally for sale but i also started working with artists to create digital artworks for sale online through an

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e-commerce platform for augmented reality sculpture that i built

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i think and so in all of these encounters i almost always um run into the the same thing which is

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a skepticism in regards to capital like with a big c but specifically that it is this

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corrupting force right and that art is this pure being and if it touches capital it will be

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absolutely corrupted i think it comes it stems from there’s an art historical trajectory there and it does

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include the private art market too because even artists i know who have made money in the private art market there’s the old

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saying and cliche that you know like you know you don’t want to be an artist at an art fair you know like it’s being

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it’s like being a cow at a butcher or something like that like you don’t want to be you don’t want to you know you the pride

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the idea of the private market was like offload the financial responsibility from the artists to the gallerist right

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and they’ll leverage their relationships with rich people to help you and all you have to do is focus on making great work

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right that’s the old kind of model so i think it exists in both worlds there are many many worlds in there in the art

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world of course but this idea that art is pure and if it touches capital it is

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corrupted does persist and i think in a way there’s a healthy skepticism

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and for me anyway i trace it back to you know there are many many kind of movements and collectives and

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and for me anyway flexus in the 1960s is one is probably one we’re still being influenced by and that i’m currently

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influenced by um and specifically you know the reaction of the manifesto flexes manifesto

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against the bourgeoisie the art does not belong to the bourgeoisie and it’s not for the bourgeoisie and i think in a way

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it’s actually similar to the spirit i was talking about earlier which is like

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if if you really think about it if the art if the if like the artist feels

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they’re losing power in the relationship the original gesture was to reclaim power right the flexus gesture was like

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art it’s not going to be on the walls anymore it’s going to be experiential it belongs to all of us it’s like a

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proletariat movement um and so but that gesture actually is not different from the gesture that you

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know i think we’re seeing now where artists like i deserve to make an income my freedom and prosperity depends on it

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and so the tension i think is obsolete uh to a certain extent and the reason else like i would i would

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posit that is because well a there were successive generations and decades after

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flexus the investigated capital specifically via technology during video art movement and then by the computer

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art movement and then internet art movement that they came after where artists critically investigated the like

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capital power and and subverted capital as a manner of expression right and they embedded their identities within that

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like you can take namjoon pike and his idea that a coca-cola commercial is painting and he was able to like sustain

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a career as an artist be a flux he was able to balance it all out right because he was actually more aware he was hyper

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aware of the context do you think that that materialization is like

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um do you think that is being kind of uh because it was it was a very radical gesture to try and um to try and counter

Materialization of art

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and create a kind of uh a reclamation and and a distribution of the art

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experience within a wider uh wider wider public uh do you think that is being sort of

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uh are we seeing like an interesting hybridization of that as like experience

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uh you know it becomes much more uh sort of much many more corporate

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entities see the opportunities within um excelling experiences are we seeing an

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interesting hybridization or is that actually kind of an uh is it another yeah i think that’s an interesting point

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i would first distinguish between a corporation and a sole proprietorship right like as sole proprietors artists

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you know who work for themselves um they they actually all the risk is embedded in their body and all of the

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expropriation is so is is their own like they choose how they’re gonna you know use their

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labor to express value and so if they monetize that there’s no no one’s taking advantage of that

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like whereas in a corporate environment in theory unless it’s a not-for-profit and you can incorporate it as a

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not-for-profit right like just to get it like semantically right in terms of the canadian government um in a not-for-profit what you’re doing

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is you’re saying hey i’m not going to serve a shareholder or external profit maker like i’m not going to try to

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expropriate or steal any labor here any excess labor that i’m able to monetize

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i’m going to put back into the growth of this social you know enterprise

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artists can operate the same way and even within a not-for-profit rate you can pay yourself a salary right like you can value labor

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now i think a lot of people confuse that with like amazon or like a large corporation where

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potentially what’s happening is they’re seeking to pull out the most value for shareholders right and there’s

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like that started in the 1980s and that might be where this like the plot got lost yeah which is a form of capitalism

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that’s crisis capitalism it’s like a race to the bottom it’s a zero-sum game where only one person wins and everyone

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else loses yeah but cooperatives and not-for-profits and other ways of monetizing labor have existed as a

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matter of sustaining activity forever right like you know you wouldn’t you wouldn’t call like uh

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the the metal smith in medieval times like a capitalist you’d say this person has a

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craft yeah they’re offering it you know and they’re mastering it and they’re offering it as a service to others and

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we’re gonna pay them for it well we’ve and we’ve thought a lot about that here too we like i remember at one point we

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were looking at um just prior to the dl like how um sort of different governance models

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and particularly a place like england which has that um also the uh

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i can’t remember the right name right now it’s like the third you know the sort of an extra bottom line it’s like in between not-for-profit uh kind of an

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ethical corporation structure like a b corp in the united states yeah and so we we there are administrative and

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governance tools because there’s also the other semantical thing of we are not for profit but also a charity and those

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are actually two separate charity is a different profit without being a charity

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um and those things change what you can do and we if we had you know more and

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different governance structures because the not-for-profit has its own baggage and its own administrative

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weight which actually takes up uh a lot of space in an organization and transforms it and is there another and

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third and fourth i mean i think people are doing it informally but it would be nice that there were leverages from from

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a sort of governance perspective um i wonder like personally for you um you

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know uh as we’ve had conversations over the course of this uh this project you know i think you’ve

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said it sort of tongue-in-cheek sometimes of the sort of the places where you feel like a socialist in the

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places where you feel like a capitalist even though you feel like it’s the same identity you put yourself in different contexts and you’re perceived in these

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different ways how how do you think about that sort of how your capitalist sort of uh elements

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speak to your your socialist elements how do you resolve some of those uh tensions for yourself as you go through

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all these different experiences and contexts yeah i think for me as an artist and for

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most artists that i’ve ever worked with investigation or study um is a matter of you know it’s it’s

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tied to curiosity right so being curious about capitalism is how you know i got into it

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but understanding how it works um often means like i worked with a marketing agency once actually and they had this

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great expression um this is my my day job at freshbooks but they’re like you know you should try

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we should try things on as like as the same way we try on a sweater when we go shopping or whatever we try on different

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clothes um trying it on can help you come to understand what it means to you and how

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it it’s reflected in your identity and to ignore it would be like first of all

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you can’t you’re probably wearing it you’re just not even aware like it’s a little bit of an emperor’s clothes kind of

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situation right yeah we’re all wearing this outfit and as an artist i think it’s important

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to actually be self-aware of that and to consider what it means um

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and so that paired with like you know there are socialist ideals that are flawed as well i think it’s important

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like to recognize that the the social contract at the end of the day um

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you know actually be you know in line with the goals that we’re seeking right and and even aligning on that that’s a

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values-based discussion which should endure regardless of the contextual parameters well and i think

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what’s interesting about uh what you say there and what i what i what i see in

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the different ways that you try on the different elements of your practice administratively and all of that is that

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these these things are not they can coexist right and they often have to

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coexist um that it’s you know you’re um you’re not ex there’s not an exclusive

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aspect to any aspect of our identity either we’re you know our personal identity is made up of different

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relationships and so your professional and artistic identities can have those things too they can coexist in the same

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place absolutely i’m sorry go ahead no no absolutely i agree

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yeah i i was gonna uh turn back a bit towards um the

Network of care

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the del and how um participants here one of the things that we found really interesting

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is i think how they sort of challenged our assumptions about um technology and

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how we thought technology might be used in the program um a kind of zig to our

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zag if you will um they there was a lot of um

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uh movement towards sort of building networks of care um

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did how did you have you seen that in other programs that you’ve done and and how that kind of in some ways it and this

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was even before the pandemic i think like before we knew such a such such a

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crisis would happen there was still a real desire to to push back against uh

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technological assumptions yeah i mean i think artists um especially always not always but many

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take on a communal aspect to the work right and i still think like the flexus

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imperative was com community right and communes actually of that time you know produced a lot of

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art right there and a lot of those still exist like arcasante and arizona like these the the ideal is

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like what if we could all go away to an island and come commune to create a better society

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um and i think so that’s like a a utopia that is like always just over the

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horizon similar to augmented reality um but i have seen it like when i did lean

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artists the last time in chicago you know um all of the projects had a community orientation

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um that said i found the people that i work best with also like have that community awareness and i i say that

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because like i’ve identified two types of artists and i know there are many many types of artists but like there is the type of

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artist that is like selfishly driven and like believes that art is the same

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you know kind of sanctuary for individualism for like self expression and identity like the unitary kind of

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i’m going to make a thing and i should be allowed to make whatever i want and that’s absolutely true and then then there is the other another

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type of artist that is more socially minded is considering the sociology of you know in regards to

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the context of their art making and those artists are the ones that i tend to work better with to be honest

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with you because they they’ve acknowledged that the audience matters the other type of artist might be like yeah audience

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doesn’t matter whatever i do if they like it hey great yeah but this type of artist is like the opposite they’re like

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well i have to really care for my audience or community i have to nurture it you know i’m meaningless unless there

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is this kind of mutual um good right um and i think i think both kind of right now coexist both

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modes i i tend to lean towards that second mode yeah the the interesting thing i think

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you said though too is like the is technology exclusive of that conversation do we believe that

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sociology and technology or like community and technology are at at odds with one another i

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i don’t know if you want to unpack that but like i don’t think that’s true and i don’t know why we saw that at dell to be

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honest with you like a rejection of technology at a technical technology driven

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initiative maybe just because we put tech in the description or something like that but yeah

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there were there was something about uh and i it was again one of those why we

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why a research project that has uh broad sort of boundaries on where they

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can go it becomes a really fascinating and important thing it’s like because we’re like oh oh okay this is not what

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you what you want to do and that’s very interesting and i think it’s been a really fascinating learning experience

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for us um but i i think yeah i’m trying to i think that’s what some of these

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conversations are about for us as we uh talk to the different participants and different people who’ve been involved is

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is why why do we think that is and i i don’t yet have a have a good

Artists responsibility

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answer um although one that has come up in in some of the conversations

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is about time and slowness and that

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i think occurred even as the pandemic became more serious and

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the consequences began to be felt within the people’s particular communities of

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taking the time to consider and figuring out ways that that

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longer more considerate approaches to development were made possible so that’s definitely

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something that i think was maybe there underlying some of the early moves and really was amplified and changed

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i personally find it concerning if i’m honest though because you know my fear um is

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that the rejection of like a macro sociology like you know the

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the amount of technology that’s stacked on top you know of technology in in our in our society overall the

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rejection of that by artists is potentially the rejection of helping codify or unpack or you know culturally

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translate what that means for everyone like if if artists have some responsibility it is to like advance

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culture but to kind of like ignore that a culture exists that is is one of the

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things that worries me because it’s not a viable alternative for most people at this point to

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completely reject the constraints of technology just you know the same way it wouldn’t

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have been you know it’s in successive like generations of technology it’s not you know the ludic

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didn’t necessarily we’re not living in their society today right so like what was necessary was for people to

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find ways to transmute or transgress um or subvert

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um those movements right and not let people just run riot with the new way right to actually

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help interpret and help and and help define you know in like the mcluhanous kind of way the terms of the

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new media and so i my personal point of view is that artists have a responsibility and i know

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people hate hearing that like for several responses that sentence i remember when i was at syracuse

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university like david ross who was the first curator of video at the whitney um

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and he well you know he was curious about the whitney and he was first curator of video art at the everson in syracuse he

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gave a talk about artists responsibility during the and it was during the iraq war and i remember it really upset quite

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a few people but i really like took it as a call to arms like as an artist you have responsibility

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you know the same way we demand responsibility from our corporate citizens or anyone right yeah you have a

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responsibility and what is that responsibility well it’s a responsibility to advance culture i think and i don’t know how you can do that on

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the outside yeah it might be i think it is possible but i think we need both in

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an equal measure yeah well i think that’s and that’s something we’ve definitely uh taken here at art engine

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um thinking about the question of artistic responsibility and particularly uh

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framing it also in the in the idea that well we are you know by and large uh government funded and so we should be

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working in the public interest and so if we are it is really um it’s a complex question

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of what the public interest is but we need to be able to articulate that and then engage artists who are going to

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join in that question of of working in the public interest um

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yeah i mean a conversation is the minimum public interest i think right like a dialogue versus a rejection yeah

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and i think that’s what this program was about too was like okay how do we engage artists in the question

How to engage artists

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of infrastructure right um and i i mean it’s uh it’s interesting to

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you know all these different modes of like okay well do you if there’s inhabiting the technology that and and

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some of those administrative and bureaucratic structures or governance structures of the different

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organizations that engage with the technology i think i wonder for a question for you have you seen

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going back to the one about slowness in sort of

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the the more startup world and the more technology-driven product development world that you uh circulate in have have

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you seen these conversations as well about speed time development oh yeah

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yeah i mean anecdotally on monday mornings i do meditation with like 50 other people at work and

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it’s it’s quite it makes me kind of uncomfortable because meditation in that way is almost appropriate out of a you know

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of a culture i mean not almost it is and it’s like been appropriate by corporate culture now to deal with like the

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anxiety of of an extreme environment right but people are i mean i can report from

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corporate culture especially from white collar work and like you don’t need to be sympathetic but there’s extreme amounts of burnout and fatigue and so

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the stresses are real and i think you know artists are in tune with um feelings and

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obs and are very observant and yeah so what we’re all observing in terms of speed and a need to slow down

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um you know is compounded obviously during a pandemic but it is real it’s and but and it’s not just like artists talking

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about this there’s definitely i you know i work within quite a few different spheres even outside of my corporate life and everyone talks about

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it so whether yeah there is a need to slow down or interp sorry that’s different

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that’s within the sort of say the organization itself but does that translate also to think like is it like

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we need to relax like we need to find regeneration so that we can go back to producing the fast things

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uh is there a is there a connect with the idea of what um what certain certain ways of the

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developing of the thing itself and and even i mean i know you’ve mentioned too even things uh like the questions of

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analog and automations i think you brought up some of those in terms of product development like

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you know maybe really considering how you do it within a human context before you try to automate something like yeah

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yeah i mean absolutely like in corporate environments like one of you know one of my initiatives is figuring out how we co-create and take

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on anti-racism as like a process of developing products right like that’s something that exists

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is it properly funded absolutely not like a lot of people are gener you know generating activity um through in off

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the side of their desk right i know lots of people and i’m sure this is true in the art sector too right they have to have had

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to push for um for for new convention amidst like you

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know complacency yeah like we just need to go faster make more money um being the kind of like status quo

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but like as an example you know purpose-driven organizations didn’t exist in the way they like now if you’re a

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company and you don’t have like a company purpose like some reason for being other than making money it’s very

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hard to recruit people just as like a weird cultural example from right okay like so you have to be donating your

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money to like schools in egypt or you have to be trying to save the environment in some way so having a social intersection

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um is now like the status quo is considered like status quo to to be like

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an attractive company for just from a recruiting perspective to be honest with you um and

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you know millennial site that like they’re not willing to buy from or like research sites that millennials aren’t willing to buy or 60 aren’t willing to

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buy from companies that don’t express some sort of social purpose um and i think that’s an interesting you

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know um uh an interesting evolution in terms of yeah well and going back to that yeah

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our culture might intersect sorry going back to that english example is the the question of okay that’s a really

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interesting um it’s an interesting element of this corporate culture and

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the idea but how do we measure that how do we have uh like um

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a wider accountability of of of saying and how we measure up to those those

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goals that’s a i think and that’s the english example is that there is an actual

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uh way on which you’re reporting you’re you’re a socially responsible

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corporation and this is your stated mission to serve these things and you but how are you meeting those things and

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and that’s a kind of really fascinating you know feedback loop there um definitely and there’s like yeah

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keep going one thing uh to to that i’d like to talk about a little bit

How to share knowledge

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is the um the question of uh sort of circulating and sharing uh

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knowledge and ideas that emerge from experiences and projects like this i

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think that we’ve found it as we’ve sort of reached the end of this phase

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we’ve been thinking a lot about um how do you how do you translate

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and get and share some of the the findings and the thing is it really only through mentorship or um we thought

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these conversations were kind of an interesting way because it it allowed us to engage in more nuanced conversation

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about what what’s been happening how have you found that experience and what are ideas you have that

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can help us and help others understand how to share and how to how to how to bring this knowledge and experience to a

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wider group yeah um i mean i’ll just speak from personal experience i really think the

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learning happens only when you try not to only by making um as an artist that’s like a primary

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mode of learning it’s experiential it’s getting you know it goes on unfortunately back to like the cliche of

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the bauhaus or whatever but you have to you know know you have to learn the tolerances of wood to really understand you know by

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actually touching it you can’t just look at it and read about it and it’s unfortunate because

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i’m like anyone else i want to sit around in a salon and with friends and just like gossip about

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the future all day but i i honestly would i would encourage anyone who

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skeptical or not uh you know for example let’s take nfts like you can you can definitely be like me and i’m super

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skeptical of a lot of their nature but then a lot of the platforms are actually created by artists they’re actually like

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hand ruled by artists several of them like casey reese has one um called feral file as an example and

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he started that as a prototype a few years ago where artists were exchanging uh editions digitally and figuring that

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out and it was an experiment and and that experiment has led you know led to a platform and now people are building

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platforms on top of platforms and things like that these are things that only exist because we’re willing to experiment

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yeah um and so i i don’t see a world where artists don’t participate by making or

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trying things out and failing and failure also doesn’t it’s what’s great about br is that failure doesn’t

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exist like this is the thing that i love about being an artist is that

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you can have there is no there’s no one that that can judge what you’ve you know really done

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because obviously like the art press doesn’t matter like like but at the end of the day there’s

30:28

there’s no boss or anyone that’s telling you what you can or cannot do yeah of course there are capital constraints

30:34

like money or access to technology and things like that but within your means there is no there isn’t there are no

30:40

hurdles to expression so i just yeah if if you have access

30:45

and there are lots of organizations that promote access right and can teach and and help you get access and that’s

30:52

something i’m doing now is like helping teach artists or build works with artists and if we can learn by making together i

30:58

think it’s just a very powerful way forward yeah and i think that’s a really key component though is the together part

31:04

right that this like as we um and i think that’s the hybrid that we’re trying to

31:11

figure out how to do it in interesting and different ways because it’s we can’t

31:16

uh yeah you can’t just read about it and you can’t just hear someone talk about it um but those things are also

31:23

essential to the to the loop that helps you make and helps you kind of um you

31:28

know not not make it necessarily more efficient but like put up guard rails in

31:34

places that that are sufficiently wide but also prevent you from you know losing you know three months on a

31:41

project that is you might not you know or or like whatever that how do we productive

31:46

failure as opposed to simply failure that drains and i think that’s a really difficult

31:52

place yeah i just remind you though or like one thing just to remember is that a lot

31:58

of tiny experiments add up to macro change right like a lot of tiny little efforts

32:04

um little sketches little drawings add up to big master paintings right

32:09

yeah yeah and i think the question of what those um

32:15

we know what uh sketching looks like in in that in the

32:20

painting form right and i i go through this as a as a teacher with students all the time like what

32:26

uh i teach a lot of first years and i get them in this moment where they’re coming

32:32

really from high school and they mainly know you know teaching painting drawing they they maybe they make video in their

32:39

everyday lives but not necessarily have a deeper understanding of the technology as a creative tool so trying

32:47

to get them to understand what it means to sketch and build a project within a

32:52

technological framework it’s interesting yeah i think of it as like a solved problem like that’s what

32:58

the exhibition you know that’s why exhibitions exist but you’re right like within certain new forms the exhibition

33:04

is no longer a white cube yeah um i thought relational aesthetics probably you know like i don’t know if

33:10

that’s still taught but like and when i was a student that helped me take the leap into oh an exhibition

33:16

can exist as a way of life but um you know yeah well we have a lot of we i

33:23

i it was a joke within the department that i share with all the students that basically like all courses are media

33:28

arts courses now in art school uh which i think is amazing like painters have to figure out a way to

33:34

mediate and share their works through a mediated experience and and then have these mediated you

33:41

know network-based discussions so it’s it’s quite fascinating and fun um

33:47

well i think uh i think the arc of our conversation is maybe uh getting to uh a

33:52

close uh thanks we didn’t talk about nfts i know well you mentioned it and i

33:57

thought you know should we should we go there but that’s like a rabbit hole that maybe

34:03

well i i the only thing i would i would add in that regard is that so for years and years i there’s i don’t know if i

34:09

have all my books out here but there’s a book called uber worked and underpaid by this guy trevor schultz

34:15

uh he teaches in in new york um it’s relevant but the book is about platform cooperativism but this idea

34:22

that in the future artists would come together and because the parts are so cheap like you know

34:27

remember how you go to radio shack in the 80s and build you know you could build a radio yourself yeah right like that’s that seems like a clean idea

34:34

except that does exist today it exists with like internet technologies and you can actually like

34:39

build like a platform with off-the-shelf parts and some simple instructions and so what we’re seeing right now

34:45

is exactly what dell he conceived of not necessarily um you know just nfts because they’re

34:52

actually myriad of artists experiments right now including like people doing drops and like ticketed sales for

34:58

experiences all kinds of things that leverage technology to monetize their practices but not just to monetize

35:05

them but also reach out new audiences i i think what we’re seeing right now is like kind of this um golden age of

35:10

artists actually cooperating to own the means of production and i that would be like the one thing i’d

35:16

just love to leave the audience with which is like at the end of the day like to be a true like anti-capitalist you

35:23

would want to appropriate the means of production that’s what like that’s always what i pursued and personally

35:29

clear it if you can that’s like my my own personal philosophy but like turn it upside down and misuse it

35:35

for your own purposes and but we’re actually seeing that like the wave is just building you know

35:42

and i foresee like the uh you know this is the opportunity and for artists to get involved right

35:48

now and to chart a future where we’re not we’re our futures aren’t dictated by

35:54

corporate citizens who believe they know what’s right for culture and for artists but it can be determined by ourselves um

36:00

and i just think that yeah i just want to leave our audience if if you can’t get this message out go out

36:06

like sees them we can we definitely can okay now it’s our time

36:14

tonight that’s a great way to uh to to of course i have like you know 17 more threads

36:21

that i’d like to follow now that we’ve said that but uh you know we’ll leave that for another

36:26

conversation and we’ll have you uh back and uh and chat in this way again soon

36:33

thank you thank you

36:51

you

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