Comment by biztos | Hacker News Reader

Comment by biztos | Hacker News Reader

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I just bought what will eventually become an artists’ residency, and we will start renovating it later this month. It will probably take about two years to get it started. The plan is to have a few artists a year come for about a month each and make art under the influence of the crazy dramatic landscape there. It will not be a paid thing, I’m financing it myself. At first it’ll have to be informal but eventually I want to have some kind of foundation running it so I can assist artists with visas where necessary.

I find it very exciting to work on a big long-term project like this, though it’s also frustrating because I’m doing it from a significant distance. Self-inflicted frustration but still.

Also, I’m learning a new language and moving to a new country, slowly but surely. Well slowly anyway. The residency is in yet another country. Maybe my life is complicated.

I didn’t win any lottery, but with a little juggling I had enough for a year or two without a day job. I was originally going to concentrate on just making art (I’m an artist as well as a techie) and trying to get settled in the new country.

This has worked pretty well considering the state of the world, but with a limited runway I will start looking for something to do in the industry next year. Maybe an indie project, maybe a startup, maybe just contracting.

The art center was in the back of my mind for a few years, and now that it exists (as a piece of land with some concrete on it anyway) I am quite happy to have a specific project that should bear fruit on a longer time scale than just a painting or a gig, and it helps that it’s not my source of income (like a company would be) nor existentially important (like kids). I can do more, or less, with it as circumstances allow.

Anyway that’s what I’m up to. In the likely event some of the art is tech related I will do a Show HN about it some day.

This sounds awesome. I've had half baked ideas along these lines for different intersections of disciples. Great you're pursuing it and making it a reality!

Are you comfortable sharing any more specifics? Do you have a landing page or is it all offline at the moment?

Offline until the paperwork all goes through.

But sure some details. It’s in the Canary Islands so pretty far from “Europe” but not exactly hard to get to. In a village about 20 minutes drive from the city. Under a volcano but not that volcano. By the time it’s all fixed it will have cost me about a year’s gross income from my fancy tech job (which paid less than in California but quite well for the EU).

It’s a house with a studio and eventually it will also have a ceramics oven and a printing press and whatever else seems necessary. There is a bit of land with food growing. Interestingly, I will probably never be allowed to make the house any bigger, which is a useful constraint actually.

Solar and wind for energy so even stuff like long-lived powered projects can be considered. If I’m ever VIP enough I’ll bring Trevor Paglen out to watch the ships at sea. :-)

The master plan is to use it myself as a sort of recurring self-residency and then have other artists doing the same. How many depends on my capacity to manage it, at the beginning it’ll just be artists I already know and trust. If any artist has a particularly strong resonance with the place I would try to get them recurring as well, but that remains to be seen.

There will be exhibitions and studio visits and art parties, at some point. I will try to help the artists sell (including myself) but that’s secondary.

I could run it informally forever but I would really like to give it some official status eventually, partly just because but mostly in order to be able to sponsor artists. In the long run assuming I have enough money I’d like to bring out artists who would need help paying for it and getting the visa.

Part of my motivation in this is to find a way of being in the Art World that does not fill me with dread like exhibiting my own work does. But that’s another story.

Very cool. I have been planning to do something similar on 5 acres in FL. Your location sounds much more exotic! My main issue is I am still accumulating funds so most likely I will need to set up a 501C and have future artists continue my vision.

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