The action «One Hundred Applications» by STO group, initiated by Bohdan Moroz (Kyiv), took place on Saturday, December 12, 2017.
Watch the online broadcast (8h 39m) here.
‘If you try to rationalise this great, spontaneous desire and freedom to work (by means of rigid contracts or labour agreements, for instance) or to bureaucratize or routinise it, you are in danger of letting the metaphorical creative genie out of the bottle. However, we should not forget that creative work as described here is always a form of cheap, unstable work, which makes the art scene of great interest to outsiders like company managers and politicians.’
Pascal Gielen, ‘The Art Scene. A Clever Working Model for Economic Exploitation?
The artists (members of the STO group: Alyona Mamay, Anastasia Putilovska, Bohdan Moroz, Sasha Roshen) sent applications for open-calls, grants, residency programs and competitions in order to submit 100 applications in total. The only reason for such a quantity is the name of the group.
During the performance, Anna Samar, Sasha Roshen, Alyona Mamay and Luka Basov read excerpts from the book «ART/WORK: Everything You Need to Know (and Do) As You Pursue Your Art Career» (Heather Darcy Bhandari and Jonathan Melber).
The participants managed to fill in and send 56 applications within the allotted time. After the application was sent, they removed one of the 100 stickers hanging on the wall and wrote the name of the residency program/contest/open-call on it.
Temporary collective household ritual
Understanding our incompetence in the art system, we create a duplicate of it or gather for the sake of individual progress. The artist becomes a manager and an accountant in his own business, exaggerating the obligation to socialize and institutionalize his products. And it becomes a ritual. Artist-adept, artist-accountant, artists-employee.
The STO group («STO» in UA — one hundred or abbreviation for maintenance service) was formed as a result of the student movement in Ukrainian National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture, that was criticizing Ukrainian system of art education. The participants’ precarity forced them to create an agency that combines a design bureau and a craft shop. The performance «100th anniversary of the Academy was the first work of the agency.
100 years at 100 per cent!
Participants of the performance (STO group): Alyona Mamay, Bohdan Moroz, Anastasia Putilovska, Sasha Roshen, Anna Samar.
The artist Luka Basov joined the action.
Online broadcast record:
