Net Community Hacks Cultural Funding System

Vienna, 2 May 2006

“Our much-discussed, game-theory-oriented approach to cultural funding represents a clear rejection of all the Austrian cultural industry’s hegemonic tendencies,” states MANA coordinator Stefan Lutschinger: “This hack of the outmoded jury and committee system opposes every rationalistic funding cut with pure difference, contingency coping and the fruitful development of paradox.”

Software-based Funding Distribution

Last week, a participatory cultural support budget of 125,000 euros was distributed to artists and cultural producers in Vienna using the MANA Community Game – an innovative software-supported selection process. The decision regarding the distribution of funding was not made by curators, juries or committees, but by the submitters themselves. Twelve people will receive project grants between 5,000 and 15,000 euros, whereby 42% of the recipients are women.

“Old” Concepts and “New Thinking”

The Community Game is one of the most innovative distribution systems for cultural funding worldwide. It is based on “old” concepts of the avant-garde – auto-curating and self-organization – and the “new thinking” of second-order cybernetics. MANA’s great advantage is its capacity for self-correction and adaptation to intelligent system environments: errors and irregularities can be recognized and corrected immediately by the net community, which emerges strengthened from this process. Here 120 submitters agreed to a complex set of rules.

A Self-managed Cultural Funding Budget

Since the autumn of 2004, the open net community “netznetz.net” has grown out of the numerous digital cultural initiatives that have developed in Vienna in recent years. In order to do justice to these diverse cultural and artistic modes of expression, an application has been made to the City of Vienna’s Department of Cultural Affairs (Net Culture Unit) for a self-managed cultural funding budget to support this very active scene with around 500,000 euros yearly. The heart of this funding model is the software-based selection process MANA. After a two-month evaluation phase in early summer, the net community will decide on its specific adaptation and further development.

Inquiries:

Stefan Lutschinger, Johannes Grenzfurthner, Hans Bernhard
Email: s.lutschinger@digitaldrafts.at
+43 660 6538616

http://mana.netznetz.net
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netznetz
http://www.parliaments-of-art.net