The video above is representative of the events we cover in Buenos Aires. For more videos, click here.
Feel free to contact our editor, Rick, via skype: juanelear
JUANELE AR blogs about Argentine art all week every week in Buenos Aires. We cover young and emerging artists, small galleries and cultural centers, as well as graffiti and street art that the mainstream press ignores. Although about one-third of our posts are now fully bilingual and we are slowly moving toward 100% bilingual, we blog mostly in English in order to expose Argentine art to the widest possible international audience. Our
Weekend Portfolios provides a free online space for select Argentine artists to expose their work. The Weekend Portfolio is always bilingual.
Here are some of my favorite articles:
The energy of open artAll that is solid melts into airBomb the homeless!Whose street art is it anyway?The tags of CoronaJUANELE AR also sponsors street artists, events, painting parties, exhibitions and shows, and we offer our large, colorful and creatively painted space. Local arts orgs, non-profit advocacy organizations such as FALGBT, indie bands, emerging sculptors, photographers and other visual artists have traditionally used the space for free.
Every three months we provide free studio space to a local artist or long-term expat. At the end of three months, we sponsor an exhibition, reception or show to promote that artist's work. In addition, we frequently collaborate with expat organizations, such as Second Story and COME, that produce unique events and projects for the expat and bilingual communities in Buenos Aires.
JUANELE AR conducts
street art and gallery tours in San Telmo, Buenos Aires' oldest and most bohemian barrio. We give discounts to university students and offer free tours in English for those studying English as a second language. Our tour not only covers arts and culture but also places those activities in the context of the history of Buenos Aires and San Telmo's arts scene. At the moment, the Art Walk is our only source of income other than donations and patronage.
Our ImpactAfter a year of publishing online and sponsoring artists and events, we have made a name for ourselves in the arts community here in Buenos Aires as the one organization in Buenos Aires that's open to
artists of all disciplines, even those still working to make names for themselves. As a result, we have far too many requests for sponsorship and offers of collaboration than we have the resources to accept or provide. Besides the impact on individual artists, we've provided opportunities for artists who did not know each other before to meet and collaborate.
What We NeedRight now, Juanele AR is angel-funded by a generous patron.
While we wish that the work
we did would help him come closer to breaking even, we recognize that
art is a labor of love, and so is Juanele AR. We want to make sure that
his generosity and our hard work can carry us into the future, but it's
time to recognize that we need outside funding to continue moving
toward financial solvency. While many of our contributors donate their time and work, we have three paid staff members, and unlike most other English-language blogs and sites in Buenos Aires, we pay our freelancers. We believe that results in a quality of content unmatched anywhere even on larger and much older sites.
We invite you to check out our site and make your own judgments.
By American standards, our budget is small. We can pay 3 people (2 Americans and one Argentine) to work full-time, pay our freelancers, pay for hosting costs, provide grants to street artists and emerging visual artists -- all for just under $55,000 USD a year. Right now, our office space is donated by our patron and that will continue.
We can't get rich doing this. But we believe that what we're doing is uniquely valuable and we want to continue if we can. This is a wonderful time to be an artist or a patron of the arts in Buenos Aires. There's so much happening here that even blogging every day would not be enough to cover it all.
Our near-term goals include:Becoming as close to 100% bilingual as we can.
Launching Red Juanele or the Juanele Network.
Red Juanele will be a network of artists' blogs provided for free to the artists of Argentina. Right now Argentine artists use a wide variety of blogging platforms and sites scattered across the Interent. They invest time in sites that receive very little traffic and which exist in isolation from their fellow artists, patrons and fans. We believe a central network will greatly increase the opportunities for collaboration so important to the practice of art in Argentina.
Launching the Come to Buenos Aires and Paint ProgramBuenos Aires is the best place in the world to paint for a street artist.
Graffiti and street art is not considered vandalism here -- it's part of the culture and encouraged and sometimes sponsored by corporations and municipalities. We consider providing opportunities for international artists to come to Buenos Aires and collaborate with other artists to be part of our core mission.
Growing the Art Walk
We
want to grow our only source of profit. We're already starting to gain
notoriety locally, but we still need funds to generate print materials
to continue to reach out to tourists, visitors and expats interested in
the arts.
Hiring an SEO Expert
Our
articles, even using very precise search terms, often fail to show up
in Google searches. In order to raise our profile and continue moving
toward financial independence, we need to hire someone to help us work
out what to do to increase our visibility among people who are looking
for the kind of news that we provide, week in and week out. This would be a temporary project that would ultimately result in greater expertise for all our permanent staff.
Other Ways You Can HelpWe also need a Macintosh laptop, used or new. Processor speed doesn't matter so much. Maximum RAM does.