Artist trading cards

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Artist Trading Card by M. Vänçi Stirnemann

Artist Trading Cards (ATC) is a collaborative cultural performance that was initiated in 1997 by the Swiss artist M. Vänçi Stirnemann . ATC have the same format as commercial football or hockey images. They are miniature works of art - unique pieces or small editions - that are exchanged and collected.

The project

Artist trading cards are 64 × 89 mm (2 ½ × 3 ½ inches) cards. The format corresponds to the commercial trading cards (ice hockey or football swap cards ), which have a long tradition in North America. They are individually designed and then exchanged - mainly at trading sessions that are currently held regularly in around 30 cities in Europe, Canada, the USA and Australia. ATC are unique or small editions. Materials, topics and techniques are freely selectable. The cards are signed and dated on the back, editions are numbered. The project is not exclusive, which means that not only established artists are allowed to participate. Inspired by the Fluxus movement and Mail Art, it is designed as a counter-movement to the art market. The focus of the collective open-end performance is not the individual work or individual artist, but the exchange.

Collections, editions and exhibitions

M. Vänçi Stirnemann himself designed more than 17,000 ATCs, of which over 14,000 were exchanged (i.e. they are now in other collections). Between 1997 and 2004 he published 333 ATC editions, with a circulation of 20 copies per edition. For each edition, 15 people contributed 20 cards each. In total, over 800 people from 40 countries were involved in the edition project. In 2002 Cat Schick began issuing editions of Sister Trading Cards (STC), with ATC exclusively for women.

In 1997 the first exhibition with 1200 ATC by M. Vänçi Stirnemann took place at INK.art & text in Zurich (in this context also the first trading session). Also in 1997, Don Mabie (aka Chuck Stake) showed Artist Trading Cards at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary , Canada . In April 1998 the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart showed copy-left artist trading cards editions and in July 1998 ATC exhibitions and trading sessions were organized in Arnhem and Nijmegen , Holland . In July 1998, New Gallery in Calgary hosted the exhibition Hot Town: Artist Trading Cards in the Summer (curated by Don Mabie). From October 15 to December 27, 1998 an exhibition with artist trading cards editions took place at the Kunsthaus Zürich , and in May 1999 an exhibition with a trading session at the Kunsthaus Aarau.

In 2000 an Artist Trading Cards Biennial took place in Calgary , Canada, and in 2003 a large exhibition at the Kunstverein Stuttgart . In May 2002 the ATC's 5th birthday was celebrated with a public trading session at Cabaret Voltaire (the “birthplace” of Dada ) in Zurich. In the following years exhibitions took place in different places in Europe, Canada, the USA and Australia and ATC were published in different publications and catalogs (mostly in performance catalogs with small editions). There were newspaper articles and TV shows about ATC. In 2015 M. Vänçi Stirnemann showed artist trading cards as part of a solo exhibition at Joli Mois de Mai in Biel / Bienne . Also in 2015 there was an exhibition with a trading session in the Max-Frisch-Bad in Zurich .

Historical context

The artist trading cards project borrows from different artistic movements and commercial formats. The miniature painting has a long tradition in art - from the medieval book illumination through thumbnails on jewelry, boxes and jars of the Renaissance until the advent of miniature curios, souvenirs or pornographic images during the Victorian era . The Ottoman miniature painting was a highly aestheticized and ornamental book design art of the Ottoman aristocracy. She amalgamated Western and Eastern art forms and was particularly influenced by Persian miniature painting .

The origin of the modern trading cards goes back to the cigarette pictures , which appeared in the late 19th century (in 1875 the American tobacco factory Allen & Ginter first added collective pictures to the cigarette boxes) and from the First World War onwards through cheaper printing techniques and higher editions Were mass produced. In Germany, collecting cigarette pictures became a kind of mass sport in everyday culture, especially in the 1930s and 1940s; the editions of the albums ran into the millions, those of the pictures into the billions. Popular subjects were actors, fashion, sports, nature and animals, flags and uniforms, exotic items, technology and traffic. In 1955 the federal government banned the addition of collective pictures to tobacco products, whereupon the cigarette pictures disappeared. They were replaced in the 1960s by images of football that were first produced and distributed by the Italian company Panini .

A third - conceptual - influence were art movements of the 20th century, which campaigned for non-elitist, everyday art: for art from and within society instead of just museums and auctions. In this respect, the ATC project has affinities with the Fluxus movement and with Robert Fillious's concept of the fête permanente , the création permanente or the eternal network . “Participation art ” as an interactive process emerged in the 1950s and was further developed in different genres - in performance and action art , in happenings , in the mail art project and in media art .

Art market and commercialization

The artist trading cards art project was launched as a countermovement to the commercialized art market; selling cards is against the concept. However, the project was later commercialized by others. In order to avoid legal problems with regard to intellectual property, commercial movements are sometimes used under other names, e.g. B. ACEO ( Art Cards, Editions and Originals ). Individual ATCs, editions and entire collections were repeatedly auctioned on internet auctions such as eBay .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ M. Vänçi Stirnemann (Ed.): Artist Trading Cards. 1-333 (edition of 20 copies each, 15 artists per edition). Zurich, copy-left, 1997–2004.
  2. ↑ Cat Schick (Ed.): Sister Trading Cards. 1-100 (edition of 20 copies each, 16 artists per edition), 2002–2015.
  3. ↑ Fredi Bossardt: trading cards. In: WOZ. April 18, 1997.
  4. ↑ Martin Pieterse: An Artist Trading Card is art op speelkartenformaat. In: The Gelderlander. June 4, 1998.
  5. ↑ M. Vänçi Stirnemann: Artist Trading Cards. In: SALON 99. Catalog for SALON 99. Kunsthaus Aarau, 1999.
  6. ↑ For example: POW.WOW: WYSIWYG. Performance catalog. (Edition of 25 copies, contains hundreds of ATCs). Nijmegen and Arnhem, 1998.
  7. ↑ For example: culture time. 3SAT / Radio DRS 1 & DRS 3, April 1999.
  8. ↑ Hiram Kümper: Nothing but blue haze? Cigarette collectors' pictures as a medium for the formation of historical meaning - source-historical sketches for a treasure that has not yet been recovered. In: History in Science and Education. No. 59, 2008, pp. 492-508.
  9. ↑ Ray B. Browne & Pat Browne (eds.): The Guide to United States Popular Culture . Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2001, p. 776.
  10. ↑ Sylvie Jouval et al. (Ed.): Robert Filliou - genius without talent. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2003 (exhibition catalog).
  11. ↑ Daniel Spoerri: Anecdotes on a Topography of Chance. With the collaboration of Robert Filliou and others. Nautilus, Hamburg 1998.
  12. ^ Rudolf Frieling et al .: The Art of Participation. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco 2008.
  13. ↑ Annmarie Chandler et al. (Ed.): At a Distance. Precursors to Art and Activism on the Internet. MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 2005.
  14. ↑ David Hopkins: After Modern Art, 1945-2000. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000.
  15. ↑ Anna Dezeuze (Ed.): The 'do-it-yourself' artwork. Participation from Fluxus to New Media. Manchester University Press, Manchester 2010.
  16. ^ Wes Siegrist: Modern Masters of Miniature Art in America: Preserving Traditions and Exploring New Styles . Clearwater, Florida, 2010, pp. 49f.