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Recognized August 22, 2026

Against the subsidy system

Transition and Art Collision were made specifically against the version of the European, subsidy-dependent art system the artist encountered in practice while at art school in Utrecht -- not against concept-based art or institutions as such, but against a system where funding could substitute for a public audience rather than serve one: shows staged and photographed as proof of compliance for a funding body rather than made to be seen. The artist's own DIY, self-organized exhibition network (New York artists, plus contacts at spaces in Holland) was a deliberate alternative. The artist later connected this directly to why the archive's honest, open record-keeping matters: documentation without an institutional audience it has to perform adequacy for, able to hold typos, wrong guesses, and unresolved discrepancies as part of the record rather than smoothing them into a compliant account. The same anti-substitution distinction (funding in service of an audience, not replacing it) is expected to shape any future foundation structure for Artism, though not yet worked out in detail.