An Example of Crowd Funding: Felix de Rooy’s ‘ego documenta’

With all governments and institutions making drastic cutbacks when it comes to financing cultural projects, different ways of making art related projects possible had to be found. A new strategy to obtain resources is ‘crowd funding’.

Wikipedia’s definition: “Crowd funding or crowdfunding (alternately crowd financing, equity crowdfunding or hyper funding) describes the collective effort of individuals who network and pool their resources, usually via the Internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations. Crowd funding is used in support of a wide variety of activities, including disaster relief, citizen journalism, support of artists by fans, political campaigns, startup company funding, movie or free software development, and scientific research.”

One project which will be at least partially made possible through crowd funding. This is the book ego documenta, about Felix de Rooy and edited by Barbara Martijn & Felix de Rooy, published by KIT Publishers. A preview of this extraordinary book can be found on this KIT Publishers-page too. To finish the book, another Euro 10,000 is needed. Via website Voordekunst people can donate and make this book reality. Felix de Rooy’s book is on this page. A video with Felix de Rooy sending a message can be seen on this page too. At the time of writing this blog post 14% of the estimated necessary funding has been donated: Euro 1,490. There are 21 days left. So Sranan Art readers, make it happen!

A fragment from the description of ego documenta on the publisher’s website:

“In my bloodstream collide Amazon Indians, Africans enslaved, slave masters and abolitionists from the Netherlands, Germany, France and persecuted Jews from Portugal. My spirit has traveled beyond battlefields of racial and cultural confrontation. Molded by generations of male sperm invading female egg cells I was fertilized, nurtured, full grown, squeezed, pushed out and given birth, a fresh nomad in no man’s land.”