Artist trading cards

Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) is a Collaborative Cultural Performance initiated by the Swiss artist M. Vänçi Stirnemann in 1997. ATCs are the size of commercial hockey or baseball cards, but are unique artworks or small series exchanged and collected by the people who participate in the collaborative performance.[1]

The project

Artist Trading Cards are miniature artworks of the same size as modern trading cards (hockey cards or baseball cards), or 2 1⁄2 by 3 1⁄2 inches (64 mm × 89 mm). They fit inside standard card-collector pockets, sleeves or sheets. ATCs are self-made unique works or small series, signed and dated on the back side; series are numbered. Like commercial trading cards they are swapped between the people who create them, mostly at regular trading sessions as they exist today in more than 30 cities in Europe, Canada, the US and Australia. Producing cards, exchanging and collecting them thus becomes part of an ongoing collaborative process beyond the art market.[2] Anybody can participate in the project and all techniques are allowed.[3] ATC are produced in various media, including dry media (pencils, pens, markers, etc.), wet media (watercolor, acrylic paints, etc.), paper media (in the form of collage, papercuts, found objects, etc.), even metals, fiber, wax and other materials.

Trading sessions, exhibitions and editions

In 1996, the Swiss artist, author and curator M. Vänçi Stirnemann started producing small artworks the size of commercial trading cards. From 23 April until 31 Mai 1997, he organized a first ATC exhibition at his second-hand bookshop and gallery INK.art&text in Zurich, Switzerland, showing 1200 ATCs created by himself. The show also spawned the first trading session on Mai 31, 1997, and a first newspaper article by a local journalist.[4] A few weeks afterwards, the Canadian artist Don Mabie (aka Chuck Stake) adopted the idea and showed ATCs at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary, Canada. In September 1997, an ATC trading session was organized at the New Gallery in Calgary. The Zurich and Calgary trading sessions, which both started in 1997, are still held on a regular monthly basis today.

In April 1998, ATC editions were shown at the Academy of Fine Arts ("Staatliche Akademie der bildenden Künste") in Stuttgart, Germany, and in June and July 1998, ATC shows and trading sessions were organized in Arnhem and Nijmegen, both in the Netherlands.[5] In July 1998, the New Gallery in Calgary showed "Hot Town: Artist Trading Cards in the Summer" (curated by Don Mabie). From 15 October until 27 December 1998, an exhibition of Artist Trading Cards (copy-left editions) was taking place at the Kunsthaus Zurich in Switzerland, and in May 1999, the Kunsthaus Aarau (also Switzerland) organized an ATC show and trading event in the context of the "SALON 99".[6] In September 2000, a first "Artist Trading Cards Biennial" (curated by Don Mabie and M. Vänçi Stirnemann) was taking place in The New Gallery in Calgary, Canada, and in 2003, there was a large ATC exhibition at the Kunstverein Stuttgart in Stuttgart, Germany. In May 2002, the 5th ATC anniversary of the project was celebrated with a trading session at the Cabaret Voltaire (birthplace of Dada) in Zurich.[7] During the subsequent years, shows and exhibitions took place in many places in Europe, Canada, the US and Australia. The project was continuing to spread, people started organizing trading sessions in many cities. ATCs were published in different catalogues, mostly performance catalogues or small press magazines,[8] and there were newspaper articles and TV shows about the ATC project.[9]

M. Vänçi Stirnemann himself has created nearly 17'000 ATCs until today and exchanged more than 14'000 of them, which means that they are part of other collections now. Between 1997 and 2004, he published 333 ATC editions (copy-left edition). For each edition of 20 copies 15 people contributed 20 ATCs. Altogether, more than 800 people from 40 countries participated in the edition project.[10] In 2002, Cat Schick started publishing editions of "Sister Trading Cards" (STCs) with ATCs from women only.[11]

Commercialization

Selling ATCs is in conflict with the original concept. Nevertheless, the project has been commercialized and single Artist Trading Cards, ATC editions or entire collections are being sold on auction sites such as eBay. When sold, the cards are usually referred to as "Art Cards, Editions and Originals" (ACEOs) in order to avoid legal issues with intellectual property rights. ACEO is an offshoot of Artist Trading Cards. It originated when Lisa Luree began an eBay community group in 2004 to create cards with the intent to sell, in addition to trading them. As the term suggests, ACEO may be small original works of art or editions of small prints.

In addition to selling ATC, people started operating Artist Trading Cards supply shops or selling blank cards, paint, stamps and other "useful material" via the internet. Others specialized in step-by-step craft tutorials, focusing more on the handicraft work, less on the collaborative aspect that was at the core of the initial idea.

Historical context

The Artist Trading Card project builds on different traditions. Miniature art has been in existence for centuries tracing its heritage back to the illustrated manuscripts of scribes in the Far East and Europe prior to the 15th century. The Ottoman miniature was part of an aristocratic art in the Islamic world.[12][13] It was influenced by the Persian miniature, and by Chinese artistic traditions.[14][15] The center of the Renaissance miniature art was Verona, Italy. During the Victorian age miniature curiosities, souvenirs or pornographic reproductions emerged.[16] Another historic reference are tarot playing cards, used in Europe from the mid-15th century onwards.[17]

The origin of the modern trading cards is associated with cigarette cards issued by the US-based Allen and Ginter tobacco company in 1875. These cards were the precursors of the sport cards and other trading cards. Each set of cards typically consisted of 25 or 50 related subjects. Popular themes were "beauties" (actresses, film stars and models), sporters (in the US mainly baseball, in the rest of the world mainly football and cricket), nature, Indian chiefs, military heroes and uniforms, heraldry and city views. Building a collection implied communication and exchange - one had to swap cards in order to get rid of duplicates and to get new images instead.

A third - conceptual - influence were art movements of the 20th century which advocated a more popular art: Art not for museums or auctions but from and within everyday life. In this respect, the ATC project has affinity with the Fluxus movement[18] and with Robert Filliou's notions of a "fête permanente", a "création permanente", or an "eternal network".[19] The "art of participation" as an interactive process can be traced back to the 1950s, and it developed within different genres like performance art and happenings, action art, mail art, or later computer art.[20][21][22][23]

External link

Official Artist Trading Cards website

Artist Trading Cards (Argentina)

References

  1. ↑ Boettcher, Shelley. "The New Art Dealers. Forget Pokemon and Hockey Cards. Today’s Creative People trade their own Works of Art", Calgary Herald, 15 January 2000.
  2. ↑ van den Berg, Karen, and Ursula Pasero (eds.). Art production beyond the art market? Berlin, Sternberg Press, 2013.
  3. ↑ Osborne, Catherine. „Keeping it real: Public art for people“, Broken Pencil - The guide to alternative culture in Canada 3, 1999.
  4. ↑ Bossardt, Fredi. "Trading Cards", WOZ, 18 April 1997.
  5. ↑ Pieterse, Martin. „Een Artist Trading Card is kunst op speelkartenformaat“, The Gelderlander, 4 June 1998.
  6. ↑ Stirnemann, M. Vänçi. "Artist Trading Cards", SALON 99, catalogue for the SALON 99 exhibition. Kunsthaus Aarau, 1999.
  7. ↑ Lind, Maria (ed.). Performing the curatorial: Within and beyond art. Berlin, Sternberg Press, 2012.
  8. ↑ For example: POW.WOW: WYSIWYG. Performance catalogue; edition of 25 (contains hunderds of ATCs). Nijmegen and Arnhem, 1998.
  9. ↑ "Kulturzeit". 3SAT / Radio DRS 1 & DRS 3, April 1999.
  10. ↑ Stirnemann, M. Vänçi (ed.). Artist Trading Cards, issues 1-333 (limited editions of 20, 15 artists each). Zurich, copy-left, 1997-2004.
  11. ↑ Schick, Cat (ed.). Sister Trading Cards, issues 1-100 (limited editions of 20, 16 artists each), 2002-2015.
  12. ↑ And, Metin. Turkish miniature painting (the Ottoman period). Ankara: Dost Yayınları, 1974.
  13. ↑ Aslanapa, Oktay. Turkish arts: Seljuk and Ottoman carpets, tiles and miniature paintings. Istanbul: Doǧan Kardeş, 1961.
  14. ↑ Titley, Norah M. Persian miniature painting and its influence on the art of Turkey and India. London: The British Library, 1983.
  15. ↑ Jain, P.C. The Magic of Indian Miniatures. New Delhi: Academy of Fine Arts and Literature, 2008.
  16. ↑ Remington, Vanessa. Victorian miniatures in the collection of Her Majesty The Queen. London: Royal Collection, 2010.
  17. ↑ Farley, Helen. A Cultural History of Tarot: From Entertainment to Esotericism. London: I.B. Tauris, 2009.
  18. ↑ Friedmann, Ken. The Fluxus Reader. Chichester: Academy Editions, 1998.
  19. ↑ Spoerri, Daniel. An anecdoted topography of chance. Done with the help of Robert Filliou; further anecdoted by Emmett Williams; enriched with still further anecdotations by Dieter Roth. London: Atlas Press, 1995.
  20. ↑ Frieling, Rudolf et al. The Art of Participation. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2008.
  21. ↑ Chandler, Annmarie, et al. (ed.). At a Distance: Precursors to Art and Activism on the Internet. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005.
  22. ↑ Hopkins, David. After Modern Art, 1945-2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
  23. ↑ Dezeuze, Anna (ed.). The 'do-it-yourself' Artwork: Participation from Fluxus to New Media. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010.
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