Sarah Hromack

May I kindly rally the troops (a.k.a. you) to back Triple Canopy/Light Industry/The Public School’s 155 Freeman project on Kickstarter? This fall, the triumvirate moves to a new space at 155 Freeman Street in Greenpoint. Help support their first year of programming by backing the project at any level for incentives by Cory Arcangel, Paul Chan, Rivka Galchen, and R. H. Quaytman. (NB: a $150 donation garners free admission to all events for an entire year. Light Industry screenings alone are $7 a weekly pop. Math time! Deal.)

Do it for the love film, publishing and pedagogy! Do it to score art for well below market value! Do it because you love Greenpoint and want to see it grow the right way! Back the project. And pardon my enthusiasm, but if Spencer Tunick can rake in $96K via Kickstarter ($60K from a single backer!) to roll out his show in the Dead Sea, I feel confident that the rest of us can scrape together some loose change for three of New York City’s most promising nonprofits. Yeah, I just went there.

R & R

I spend some—not all!—of my last day of my summer staycation researching a piece I’m currently writing on The Future of Publishing (or Something Equally Grave). Enter Kickstarter, the crowd-sourced microfinancing site I’ve considered before as a harbinger of good will (and resources!) for writers and creatives. Obviously, I’m interested in why some projects succeed more wildly than others—or rather, in what factors contribute to that prosperity; it’s a flawed, but hopeful system. I’ll save my notes for the narrative, but in the meantime, here’s a brief glimpse into the (wider-than-expected) range of projects I stumbled across in the course of mere minutes:

+ Punk Mathematics: Portland-based math prof, improv comedian, and co-host of the podcast Math For Primates, Tom Henderson is writing the math book that probably would have kept me at least marginally interested in the subject. One of the more popular initiatives I found on Kickstarter, 254 backers have contributed $8,622 with 15 more days remaining. (Goal: $2,400)

+ Eat Your Serial: Shawn Abraham’s website draws on the literary tradition of the serial novel by posting new chapters online each week; a “robust mobile experience” is in the works, too. Eat Your Serial currently has 10 backers for a total of $365 pledged with 82 more days to go in the campaign. (Goal: $7,000)

+ The Upper East Side Cookbook: Author Linda Ollie’s alter ego, Parsley Cresswell, dishes the recipes for this satirical “regional cookbook.” Given the amount of time I spend wading through white bread for a decent lunch on the UES, I firmly support this project. Just launched, 1 patron has backed The Upper East Side Cookbook; it has raised $30 with 75 days remaining in the campaign. (Goal: $3,700)

+ Send No, Dear to the Letterpress!: Brooklyn-based, poetry journal No, Dear would like to letterpress the cover of its next issue. Simple! As of today, this project has 24 backers, and has raised $383 with 17 days remaining. (Goal: $500)

+ Fierce Compassion: A history of San Francisco human rights activist Donaldina Cameron written by midwest mother-daughter writing team Kristin and Kathryn Wong, who will travel to SF’s Chinatown to conduct research for this project. This project successfully raised $4,265 on July 26. (Goal: $3,600)

I have a little Riot Grrrl-meets-Lilith Fair tear I go on whenever I’m upset about the Internet—Melissa, you know this one all too well—wherein I rant about how important it is for Women Who Internet to treat one another well online. And I mean it, too: the world doesn’t need another episode of “Mean Girls” streamed in real-time; our lifecasts are complicated enough, as-is.

How refreshing then to see my position put into practice this evening at Lady Parts, the first of (hopefully) many co-working sessions hosted by harbinger of civic good, Kickstarter, at their Rivington Street headquarters. ‘Twas grand to sweat it out alongside a small army of leading lady nerds: I met an architect, the senior editor of a classic feminist magazine, a few underground restaurateurs, and more than one publicist in an environment that proved conducive to conversation, not claws. Let’s keep doing this.

[Image: Female workers breaking for lunch at the Chicago and Northwest Railway Company, Clinton, Iowa, in April 1943, is a photography by Jack Delano, reprinted from a slide in the Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. It is part of an stunning set of photographs taken from 1929-43 by Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information and published recently by denverpost.com.]

Is Brooklyn-based microfinancing startup Kickstarter the next fountain of non-profit arts funding? Let us see. (We already know what I think about book publishing.) In the meantime, I’m backing equally Brooklyn-based art space—and podcast!—Marian Spore’s summer campaign, which hopes to raise $4,000 in the next 21 days to support projects by Marina Zurkow, Joe Winter, and Thom Kubli. Current status: $1,585. Go, Spore.

The trick with Kickstarter lies in its donor incentive system: Arts non-profits in particular need to strike a sweet spot in determining the value of their content, whether it be physical—should Marian Spore meet its baseline goal by July 14 at midnight, I will receive a limited-edition poster designed by UK-based burneverything in exchange for my paltry $15 donation—or virtual: part deux of my donor package, the inclusion of my name and a link back to this domain on the gallery’s website, is arguably worth much more given the nuanced relationship between the longevity of web content and the social capital it generates. I could have secured my spot on Spore’s virtual donor wall for a mere $5, the lowest contribution level, a fact that belies a general tendency among non-profit arts organizations to underestimate the web as a means of generating fiscal capital.

Briefly: People, support Kickstarter, Marian Spore, and other web-based arts fundraising initiatives. To Marian Spore and others seeking to play online as such: don’t sell yourself short along the way.