An Interview with Black Swan, a Berlin-based collective pursuing horizontal and decentralized approaches to the traditional art world templates for art making.
Established in 2018, Black Swan is a Berlin-based collective pursuing horizontal and decentralized approaches to the traditional art world templates for art making. Through peer support, artist-led funding and community organizing, they place resources into the hands of the users rather than the gatekeepers of the arts.
Black Swan is developing digital toolkits for artists through a methodology that puts play at the center. Existing communities of creative practitioners are invited to test and experiment with forms of interaction, modes of organization, and sustainable economic models in role-playing events, working groups, and hackathons. Through play, Black Swan is building an open-source and interoperable protocol for artistic communes, which will enable collaborative institutional forms and allow for a redefinition of what art can be. Launching in 2022, the Black Swan DAO aims to become a translocal and mutable source for distributing resources and value differently across interdependent art worlds.
Light Art Space partners with the Black Swan DAO initiative as a platform that engages the arts and its community. The partnership will enable the development of digital toolkits through an app that would put forth new ways of working together.
Black Swan is currently maintained by Laura Lotti, Penny Rafferty, Calum Bowden, and Leïth Benkhedda.
Black Swan has previously worked with or presented at: MoneyLab Berlin, The Serpentine Galleries, Goethe-Institut London, Furtherfield Gallery, AND Festival 2021, 221A, Trust Berlin, Berlin Art Week and KW Institute for Contemporary Art.
