IdeaMe is an online platform, which helps creators, be they inventors, artists, or designers, among others, to finance their projects through crowd funding. Each week, the Indy features and promotes one project every week, with the aim of helping the creators finance and achieve their dreams. This week: AMEBA.
Ameba in action (Photo courtesy of Ameba)
AMEBA is nothing short of an art movement. Even their name implies movement in two connotations – mobile and experimental. Arte Móvil Experimental Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires Mobile Art Experiment) is the love child of three artistic, socially conscious and itinerant individuals whose main purpose is to share their vision.
The self-defined aim of the group is to create a social-map of Latin America using material collected on their travels. And by collected, they mean holding workshops all over South America for people to create their own art, or procuring people to contribute artistically. This art is then put up in public ‘museums’ to be enjoyed by anyone who happens to be passing by. Their idea of the museum defies conventional restrictions. It is a museum on the street, making art available for everyone on both sides of the wall. To both participate in and see – by everyone, for everyone.
For Facundo Ezquiel Rodriguez one of the three members of AMEBA, this is the beauty of the project. “AMEBA Art has two possible definitions: one is that our activity is considered a manifestation of our personal vision of the world through expressive resources, without the conditions imposed by the academy or the market,†he explains from Peru, where the troupe have momentarily paused during their tour of South America. From the back of a bicycle he and his two collaborators are bringing their vision to the rest of South America.
“But art is also in another sense is a virtue or disposition to do something, it is much closer to a know how than an exclusive system categorising art.†If art is without borders then there are no constraints to who can participate. AMEBA felt that the constraint of museums, for example the fact you have to pay to enter, or be famous to display both inhibits the growth of new artists while ignoring hidden talents.
“The idea came in the middle of last year following a job we did for the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Design at UBA,†continues Rodriguez, explaining the conception of their project. “For the course Expressive Means II, we had to carry out an urban intervention. When we experimented, we liked the reaction of people when they were finding the museum and realised, in a way, they could too be an artist or could speak freely.â€
What they are asking from the lovely people who help through idea.me is money to make this moving art project happen, covering the costs of the art equipment and workshops. They want to continue bicycling around South America “opening museums†of work from the workshops in each location they visit.
AMEBA argue that their art is unique, because the art of the street “disappear, mutate, destroy, change, break, go to a better life –they move.†They are asking people to help this movement of art. They are asking them to be part of an art movement.
