Re: Syndicate: Prix Ars .Net Judging Article

[Annick Bureaud <bureaud@altern.org>]

Dear Syndicate,

Although I consider that this discussion about juries is a bit a waist of time
and bandwith, I will anyhow jump into it (OK, this is a contradiction, but we
are made of contradictions aren't we ?). I would like to give my impressions
from having been several times in a jury (not Ars).

1 - Usually the people sitting on a jury know about the field. They spend their
time "viewing" artworks. So, sometimes they have already "seen" a work and it is
not worth spending 30 minutes on it but more important to give more time to
works that the members of the jury do not know.

2 - A jury is always in regard of a show or a competition. Then sometimes, after
just 5 minutes you *know* that a work does not fit into the show or the
competition. I think this is not a problem. The diversity and fairness do not
come necessarily within one exhibition or contest but by the fact that there are
various exhibitions and contests with different approaches. In this respect,
there are works that *do not fit the show* although they might be interesting.
For instance, would you include an intimate, meditative work in Siggraph ? From
my point of view no, because Siggraph is a noisy thing and such a work would be
*killed* by the atmosphere of the trade show. We might regret that Siggraph does
not provide adequate spaces for this kind of work, but this is Siggraph and
there are other places and venues where they can be exhibited.

3 - When a work is on the Internet or on CD ROM it is pretty easy to *view* it
(when there are not too muh of weird plug-ins and programs that can be seen only
from one high end computer platform) but when it is an installation for
instance, usually the jury gets a description by the artist, a video tape or
slides. If no one in the jury has seen the work before, I can tell you that it
is very hard to understand the work from that and *judge* it and, from my
experience, the artists are pretty bad in documenting their work : you get
descriptions that do not give you the slightest clue about the work but which
are pretty good theoretical papers, and the visual documentation is often
incomprehensible. So, you have to rely on your knowledge of the field, on your
previous experience to try to figure out what (and how) the work can be.

4 - It is pretty easy to dismiss works that *do not fit* for various reasons, it
is pretty easy to select a few works that everyone agrees to be *top* but then
it is incredibly difficult to select works *in the middle* and to decide which
one from the *top*  is going to be *the best* and get the highest price. Again
from my experience, there is a lot of discussions, thoughts, questions, etc.

So, I have never been an Ars Electronica jury member but I can tell from other
juries that artists are treated with respect.

melinda jørgensen wrote:

>  that a committee may consider a
> proportion of the submissions are total crap is merely a reflection of that
> committee and the fashion of the moment....,  "good art' is totally
> subjective and what constitutes "good art" is about as stable as this years
> favourite nail polish color.

Well, art is made by humans and judge by humans. So, yes, art is totally
subjective (I wonder what "objective" could be here, judge by machines ? If it
was judge by artits and only artists, would it be more "objective" ? would
artists be less part of a committee reflection ? less part of what is done
around, at the time ? less considering the show/contest rules ?).

So, if someone disagrees with a jury process then just don't submit your work .
This is something  I can understand and do respect, there are artists who NEVER
submit their work to juries, for instance in literature, there are writers who
always rejected to be part of some of the biggest French prices, one was awarded
without having submited for a life time work, he refused the price, it is the
same with Nobel Price in Literature, I think this is coherent, and *really*
coherent because in both cases there was a huge amount of money envolved.

Art competitions are weird things with a lot of problems that we all know. I
don't think these problems will be solved one day, some situations might just be
improved but the basic problem will always remain. Then, the only *real*
solution is to accept or reject the rule. This is true also for jury members :
do you accept to be a jury member when you know that you will have to review
hundreds of entries in 2 or 3 days ? when you know that you will get
documentation on tapes that are not always going to be fair to the work ? It is
a private decision : some agree, some don't.

Best
Annick Bureaud

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Annick Bureaud (bureaud@altern.org)
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