Critical Conversations-- Outsourced Crtics, Part II

History:

In late February Lillian Fellmann and I asked various people around the world if they would like to participate by being an Outsourced Critic. This meant that they would not be in New York City in March and would not be attending any of the art fairs. If they agreed to be an Outsourced Critic, I would send them the Armory catalogue and they would send back a critical essay based on the catalogue.

The catalogue is a document of an ephemeral event, maybe. It is also an object. It is a sales catalogue. It is a catalogue of all the participants.

Ten people accepted the assignment to write about the art from the catalogue, or the art fair. I purchased the catalogues and fedexed them with an inserted $1 bill as a payment in early March.

The Armory catalogue cost $20; I bought all of them. Fedex cost $80.

The scanned Fedex tracking forms will be added shortly.

We would like to thank the authros for their efforts and participation!

As with all projects everything did not go as planned. Catalogues were lost and a few ultimately found the project to difficult, or the lack of response to months of inquiries may also be read as a statement. I'm just not sure whether it was to the the catalogue and/or the money they were paid! Maybe they found better rewards else where. Or some other reason?

--Holly Crawford, June 2006.