At The Creators Project

I keep vacillating between admiration and skepticism over the Vice and Intel partnership behind The Creators Project.

If you haven’t heard of it, the idea is to spur collaboration between musicians, visual artists, and filmmakers with a nod toward technology. It’s underwritten by Intel with Vice providing the audience and, apparently, magical hipster dust.

The event stretches over two days and multiple locations around DUMBO. Bands play on temporary stages, open lots house site-specific installations. Coincidentally, I’d just read New York magazine’s feature on the latest in innovative urban design, so I had art and the civic experience on the brain as I toured the exhibits.

Is The Creators Project a corporatized NEA? Somewhat. It’s not open to the public but rather hidden behind an RSVP list. I was needled by the sponsors’ near-pathological framing of the endeavor as some kind of “happening” for the cool kids. There was no space for a critical dialogue, figuratively (seen any art reviews of the pieces yet?) or literally (good luck finding a bench or chairs).

Which is a shame, because some of the art was magnificent. I kept thinking of friends who would have loved to see it. How to recommend a pop-up art gallery hidden behind an email registration wall? The organizers encouraged sharing via social media – they’re highlighting people’s instagram photos on their homepage – but this conveys “I was there” more than it does “Let’s engage with art.”

Again, I worry this limits how one shares the actual art on offer. I’d like to highlight some of the artwork for its ingenuity, outside of its connotation as an asset in a giant marketing spend. (I’m still wrestling with the difficulty in doing so.)

Culture Is a Weird Online Video

Sometimes a single product can so epitomize a segment of popular culture that it simultaneously requires and rebuffs explanation. Die Antwoord at Creators Project is one such instance. It’s probably better if you have no idea what that previous sentence means.

Let’s break down the constituent parts:

Die Antwoord is a group from South Africa created as an avowed high-concept art parody. Their videos are YouTube phenoms, with viewcounts validating how precisely well they twine so many strands of pop, rap, fashion and criticism together. One part Edward Saïd, one part Andy Kaufman, one part John Galliano, and one part Vanilla Ice. (They played Coachella this year.)

Creators Project is a joint venture by Intel and Vice, two entities that have about as much in common with one another as well, Andy Kaufman and Edward Saïd. Corporate sponsorship of youth culture is of course nothing new. A computer chip manufacturer paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to market to les blogeurs (my translation) with all the latest blips on the tastemaker radar is what you kind of expect living in NYC. (I can’t even tabulate how many free concerts I’ve attended thanks to vodka brands desperate for market share.) It’s not new, it’s the norm. It’s representative of the “scene,” however you define it. That Bushwick loft party you went to last weekend where that skate punk band played the basement at 2am? Brought to you by ALIFE’s new sneaker collab with Jeff Koons.