I held a photography exhibition that broke all the taboos of the art market

Last November, I held a small photography exhibition in Beijing and recorded some of the dramatic moments in the process. The article was first published on the WeChat public account "BIE Others" (ID: biede_).

After the publication, more drama happened. Among the people I wrote about, some people took the initiative to forward it to many friends, and some people sent me a circle of friends to rip me off. Some students from the Experimental Art Department of the Academy of Fine Arts came to interview me and invited me to hold exhibitions together in the future. I just realized that things are not over, they are just beginning.

(I used to read articles on Matters, but I will synchronize my articles published in various media here, and I will also post some records that have not been published elsewhere. Welcome to pay attention.)

I held a photography exhibition that broke all the taboos of the art market

Siqi

1 A Taoist priest asked me to set a high price and then pulled a few

At the beginning of November, my friend Ziyu and I made some art prints and postcards and planned to hold a small photo exhibition. I set myself a kpi that sells at least one pair of art prints. But I am particularly insensitive to numbers, and I have never done photography, so I don't know how to quantify the abstract labor in art works.

In the past, I tried not to set a price, and let the people who liked it as a reward. It sounds super cool, but every time it scares away people who would have wanted to ask me for a photo shoot or buy a photo.

I asked a photographer friend for help to find out what's going on in the industry. He said that you should not pay too much attention to the result. If there is no frame, you can sell it cheaper, 300 yuan a piece. (Actually, I thought 300 was quite expensive.) He also said that you can make more editions. (Actually, I don't know what "several editions" mean.)

But the number 300 is too boring, how about 298? 288? 289? But we chose such a sublime location as the Drum Tower, and I didn't want to make it look like a promotional conference. I think that everyone may be more willing to consume a kind of fun, so it is better to sell postcards for 11.11 yuan per piece, and artistic micro-printing for 250 yuan per piece, and advertise that they are only sold to people who meet this temperament.

Now that I think about it, these two numbers are really too earthy to say. But I felt very good about myself that day, and I did an interview that night. The interviewee mentioned that he was running some music salons recently. One time, a player who was not very good at playing and singing would sell a ticket for 3,000 yuan, and two people actually bought it. My indifference to fame and fortune was stirred at once. At the same time, I also thought of what another interviewee said. The shame behind many people's money is that they are not confident enough and demand too much of themselves. So that night, I added another sentence to the pricing, "My favorite art micro-sprays, 2,500 yuan/piece".

Then I smugly went for a drink. Drinking and drinking, a friend mentioned that one of her clients was the richest man in a certain district in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai. Fan, he felt that the Internet celebrity was very kind.

After listening to it, I understood a truth: eating only costs 200 yuan, but kindness is worth 4800 yuan.

Of course I started twitching again, trying to put a shamelessly high price on my "kindness". But within a few minutes, another friend said that a person broadcasted a small bug crawling and earned tens of thousands of yuan a night. This time I really don't know how to compare, do you want to compare with the little bugs who crawl cute?

Later, I felt too tired to think about these things. It happened that I had been hanging out with a Taoist priest for the past few days, so I asked her if she could help me calculate a fortune and set an auspicious price. She said, you have already counted your fortune today, and seeing that your fortune is not very good, then I suggest you stop wasting money. I asked, does it mean that it can't be sold no matter the price? She said it's about the same, so you might as well set the price and pull a few.

But I don't know how expensive a thief is, so it's better to give a reward of more than 1,000 yuan. Barter is also fine, like sending me your unused camera and lens. If you are not interested in these photos I am taking now, you can also ask me to make an appointment.

Anyway, to sum up, let's sell it a few times, I gave up struggling.

2 Tinder taught me a lesson

The paragraph you see above is the pricing instructions I posted on the show floor.

This exhibition is located in a small room that can only be found by turning around in Langjia Hutong, with an area of only ten square meters. There was a bed inside for us to lie flat on when no spectators came. Every day, the smell of sewage and formaldehyde mixed together, and every day the old man in the hutong and us eavesdropped on each other's conversation.

The exhibition arrangement is more casual than this room. We will change the exhibits casually every day, and then give some random meanings to the exhibits. An audience member once said that our toilets are helping people connect with nature, criticizing anthropocentrism. We were wrong, we gave the toilet a new name, "The Wave Maker," and we set up a booth there. I also pasted a photo of Diplodocus, the lead singer of the second-hand Rose, on the whiteboard, and wrote a few big characters next to it with his jiyan—"Allow some artists to get rich first."

Every day for the 14 days of the show, someone snickered and took pictures at the pricing note in that corner. I have a little bit of mixed feelings, maybe while I'm proud, I'm jealous at the things I wrote before that were bitter and hated and no one saw them.

But then I was very unsure about the high price of 1,000 yuan, so I wrote a nonsense below - "Welcome to the reward, you can bargain."

Ziyu doesn't disturb the market order like I do. She honestly wrote 20 yuan next to the postcard. (Ziyu later corrected me and said that she is not really a good person, she is just too lazy.) The audience saw it and thought that I was the same, and that a casual person like me would be wrong. To put it bluntly, I am still worried about losing money.

Most of the audience who came were friends. At the beginning, Ziyu and I would say, you can buy it if you want, and you can take it directly if you don’t have any money. But one day I found out that Tan Weiwei had a lyric in the song "Tan Moumou", "In the summer of 2008, I opened a bar and fantasized about making money to buy freedom. My friends eat and drink for free, It made me fascinated, and I lost 100,000 after reckoning." Since we have such a lesson from the past, we decided that we must not bow to the bailing culture of the Drum Tower, and we want to get out of the circle!

Since there is no moral pressure to compare to selling to strangers, we chose a Tinder ad slot with little hesitation.

At the beginning, in order to create a momentum of "earning money while standing", I wrote in my bio, "I'm just promoting our recent exhibition, don't think I'm interested in you. Come and visit our exhibit near the Drum Tower! No fwb. Benefits ONLY, meaning BUYING our photos with actual money. (Our works are very cheap so don't be nervous.)”

At the beginning, this kind of promotion was not very effective, because every time someone on the match sent me a ❤, I would go back and say, "Don't flirt with me, didn't you read bio?" As a result, they either unmatched me , or you can say "Excuse me" first and then unmatch.

Until one night, someone on match a long time ago suddenly told me that we seemed to be WeChat friends. He put up a few pictures of himself singing rock on Tinder, so I'll just call him "Rolling Green". After thinking about it, I realized that at the scene of a feminist event not long ago, this Gun Qing was under a lot of pressure to sing for everyone. I felt very brave, so I added WeChat. We didn't recognize each other at the time, but I told him that in the future if he had a show and needed to take pictures, I could help. What I meant at the time was, of course, free, for the sake of feminism.

I asked Gunqing if he wanted to come to the exhibition and he agreed. He arrived not long after, and almost only saw one exhibit, which was the price of "20 yuan/piece". He asked what it meant, and we explained that it was 20 yuan/piece for postcards. Large photos can also be bought but more expensive.

He said, "Oh no no, I wouldn't buy it, and I'm not stupid."

My gangster essence was aroused at once, "What do you mean, are you saying that our works are too low to be worth the price?"

He explained, "No, no, I want to say that all works of this level are not worth the price. But if someone buys it, there is no problem. Anyway, stupid people deserve to be deceived."

As soon as I heard it, it was a good word, and it scolded both the rich and the poor in one sentence. But the stupidest one was me, who wanted to take pictures of him before.

I said don't take it too seriously, we didn't let you buy it, just introduced it to you according to the workflow. He said yes, and then expressed his views on contemporary art, using words such as "ruins" and "wrecks", which I don't remember much, and I don't understand art anyway.

When I got home in the evening, I thought this was an interesting episode during my boring duty days, and I wanted to write it. But then I thought about it again, the people in the Drum Tower looked down and saw him, maybe he would scold me behind his back, should I keep a low profile? But I thought again, Gun Qing is so enthusiastic about teaching us how to behave for free, I will be so sorry for others if I don’t record it and reflect on myself.

After five consecutive days without substantial KPIs, on the evening of November 8th, I decided to face up to my wrong decision and changed the Chinese text on Tinder to "I'm holding a photography exhibition that will disappear soon, at No. 26 Langjia Hutong. There's no place for 'immediately'. (It's a very secret small room, don't miss the opportunity to go deep into the alley.) It's not expensive to sell works at random." I call this the "Interesting Soul" version. At the same time, I also slightly changed my personality, for example, when replying to messages, I brought more "hahaha" and emoji. I even endured contempt for a lot of idiots who swiped right and wrote in their bio that they have several houses and several cars. I thought that they have so many houses, they must need hundreds of works to decorate them.

In just one morning, several people have already promised to come. So I posted screenshots of these two different versions of the ad on the whiteboard and called it "I was taught a lesson by Tinder."

The first customer after the strategy upgrade is a cultural investment, and I will refer to him as an "investor" in the following text. After a brief chat with the investor, I invited him to come to the exhibition in the evening, and he invited me to watch the rehearsal of a play he pitched in the afternoon. So I confirmed the time with him half an hour in advance in the afternoon, and rode there in the cold wind.

But when he arrived, he hung up my phone and said he was having a meeting with the leader and asked me to wait. I said that I can't wait any longer, I have to go back to receive the audience. After more than an hour, the investor finally finished the meeting and asked me if I wanted to have dinner together. I said no, I missed 100 million for a short class. Then I made a bet with Ziyu that the investor would definitely spend money out of apology!

When the investor arrived at the exhibition site, he started chatting with me, "Your place is really hidden, and most people can't find it. The main reason is that parking is not easy in the alley. I walked around on the road for a long time and came over. I don't usually drive into the alley, it's too troublesome, didn't you tell me?"

I said enviously, "Oh? Really? We don't even have a car."

Seeing that cars are not a common topic, investors began to watch the exhibition. He pointed to a photo taken by Ziyu and asked me, is this a shemale? After suffocating for a second, I said, this is called cross-dressing.

Then he saw that I had posted some chats about men on Tinder on the whiteboard, and he seemed slightly embarrassed. I wanted to pretend to say that we are paying tribute to the classic drama "Curse the Audience". But I'm a little guilty because I haven't seen it at all. Fortunately, five or six friends came in at this time, and they were all pretty cool. The room was lively, and the investors stopped talking. A few minutes later, he picked out a postcard and said he was leaving.

After he went out, I looked at my mobile phone and transferred 100 yuan to me at once. Although I knew it was like buying a bottle of water on the side of the road for investors, I couldn't help but convert it. It was enough for Ziyu and I to eat more than 20 buckets of instant noodles!

However, my luck on Tinder didn't last long, and the more I got carried away, the easier it was to miss.

One afternoon, I spotted a guy who was very polite and didn't mean to flirt at all, and asked if he could come to the exhibition at night. When I saw that he was in the media, I quickly said, of course, you are welcome to make an appointment with us!

Maybe because Tinder let us know, and my Tinder usage report has become part of the exhibit, this media person has been chatting with us about dating app-related topics since he came. But until he said that the last podcast he made was the theme of the dating app, Ziyu and I became more vigilant: "Shouldn't you record a podcast related to the dating app next time, let us break the news? Said that I was tricked by a woman on Tinder to go to an exhibition."

He said, "What? How did I get deceived? Don't you think I'll come to buy something? Of course I'm here to prostitute, and if I want to deceive, I'll deceive you."

As soon as we heard it, we were so righteously poor that we deserved to be our media people. After all, if the media had a future, Ziyu and I wouldn't come here to engage in art. Two or three hours later, we relented and sold him a postcard for half price each.

After the media guy left, I found the podcast he was talking about. Then I found out that he is a graduate student in sociology, and his graduation thesis is about dating apps and blind dates. No wonder he asked us endless questions. Sure enough, we were deceived, too young too naive.

But it was only a minor accident, the real blow came from a creature that was a notch above me.

One day I met a white guy who said he matched my partner Ziyu. Ziyu also mentioned this exhibition, but he was not as aggressive as me. I said of course, we have different strategies.

He sanctimoniously accused me, saying he wanted to date Ziyu, but now he knows we're just marketing.

I shamelessly say that Ziyu only dates people who support her art, how lucky you are to have the opportunity to support her!

Bai Nan said that he will only support in a non-commercial way, because marketing is the cancer in this world, and he is the victim in our marketing.

I have been prostitution for so many years, how can I be afraid of his provocation. I asked him if he thought artists should be charitable? Can we not eat, drink or sleep? Or is it raining red packets as soon as you go out?

He also didn't give in and started educating me, to the effect that he is also an artist, but he never does art for money, if we don't have money, then look for a job instead of letting others pay for guilty.

I saw that you, a white man who is a researcher in China, even know what a guilty is! I'm right, we like art, music, literature even if we don't have money, but we just don't like you. “Anyway, I will stop saying nonsense with you, your poor privilege white man.”

After finishing this battle of such racism, I turned to Ziyu and announced, "I am injured at work!"

But then I found out that the biggest victim of this accident was Ziyu. Because she didn't know that person was going to date her at all, she thought that what the man said about making friends was really just making friends. "It seems that men only tell the truth to a third person," she concluded.

3 Diversified income generation = performance art

When we first came to the residency, Ziyu and I didn't think of ourselves as artists, but as journalists, freelance writers, homeless people, and so on. But after thinking about it, we even paid the rent for the venue, and it's not a good thing. Anyway, after these two weeks, no one will admit it.

So, in the skin of this artist, we began to forcefully interpret everything in the room as art, and make money everywhere.

On Double 11, a boy who I liked but didn't like me a few years ago came. Seeing him sitting on a chair in the corner, doing nothing, I started to actively create embarrassment, "Think about how many things you've done to me over the past few years, do you want to pay them off today?"

He said that I am PUA, but his body stood up honestly and looked at the photo. He pointed to a postcard and said, I quite like this one. I started to add oil and vinegar again: "Yeah, wasn't this taken when the two of us were out together!" In the end, he really bought that one.

One day an audience member picked up an envelope we had placed on the table and opened it. We said, "Ah, how did you take it apart! This is our blind postcard box! No peeks!"

He said, "Ah, this is it, then I'll buy it!"

It's kind of surreal that we made 100 bucks so easily.

Another time when we were chatting with a viewer on WeChat, Ziyu and I exclaimed, "So you are that XX!" He was frightened and kept asking where we heard about him. We did this for a long time, and finally sold the answer to him for 10 yuan.

In order to provide some leisure activities, I brought more than half a bottle of whisky left at home to the exhibition site, and wrote on the bottle: Lonely Man Whiskey, straight men 29 yuan/person, please help yourself, and their ta people are free.

The first straight man came in and said, or I will buy it at the original price and give you a drink. I said that of course it's good, it's not expensive, it's less than 100 yuan, and he transferred 88.8 to me.

But I didn't stop there, because in the world of art one cannot drink the same bottle of wine twice. After recovering the cost, I invited several beautiful women and straight men to drink for free while waiting for the next unlucky straight man.

On the last night, there was a real photographer at the exhibition, a lot more than me and Ziyu. I could have given him the photo he liked, but he said he only kept his own works at home, so he rejected my gift. But at the same time, he paid 50 yuan to drink the remaining 1/3 bottle of whiskey without a word. It turns out that the rigid needs of artists are not art, and the strategy of multiple income generation is indeed correct.

That night was also the most lively. The friends who came were those who had just resigned, those who had just been fired, those who endured stupid jobs, those who failed to start a business, those who were trying to convince themselves to eat old, etc., but the common point was that they all wanted to do some art.

We were discussing how to survive by art, and one of them suggested that everyone can develop their business downwards as appropriate, such as engaging in live broadcasting. I said that it is not always possible to do this, it is better to start the live broadcast now, and those who see the income will have a share!

I opened the live broadcast platform that I didn't want to name, and moved the tobacco and alcohol out of the camera area. A friend who had used the short video platform to promote it skillfully opened the scene with the phrase "family". Within a few minutes, more than 20 people came to the live broadcast room. We got excited, and quickly started to show the audience Yun to see the exhibition. The first big feature was the phrase "Allow some artists to get rich first" on the whiteboard. Another few minutes passed, and the number of viewers became a dozen people. We stopped looking at the exhibition immediately.

I suggest that everyone sell a miserable one together. A friend said that she had really participated in a miserable competition. One of the contestants had been unable to get pregnant, so she went to a big fairy to figure it out... The story is not yet After I finished speaking, the platform reminded me, "Do not spread superstition or pseudo-scientific content." After clicking OK, the number of viewers was only 5.

We're starting to get in a hurry and want to keep everyone with something fun. A well-informed friend chose a cheerful song for the audience, filled with incomprehensible images such as "big rooster", "little star" and "little earthworm". We danced and sang in front of the camera, and finally—the last audience member was gone.

After another revenue-generating solution failed, we gave up making money completely and started talking about the topics we really wanted to talk about. In the early hours of the morning, another boy who also does photography and is much more serious than me said cautiously that he had a question for me, but it might be a little offensive, about how I think about the realization of art.

I said, eh, then I have a question, why do you find it offensive?

He said that he had wanted to ask for a long time, but seeing everyone chatting so happily just now, he couldn't bear to spoil the atmosphere with such a question.

I think he's really cute, he actually knows the answer better than I do.

4 Artists Who Are Seriously Underrated in Today's Art Market

It's interesting to watch the audience's reactions at the exhibition every day. Most people came and asked us where these pictures were taken. Friends who do photography pay more attention to the visual logic in the exhibition. Doing media is like watching Douban. Artists who make experimental music praised the booth in front of the toilet, saying that it was a combination of sound and vision.

Viewers often say that they envy me and Ziyu for being able to talk about interesting topics with different people every day. I take this as a compliment for the seriousness of our work, after all, we're not really happy every day. Sometimes the two of us are not in a good state, but we still have to be enthusiastic in front of the guests, and even help the guests to enlighten their negative emotions.

When no one came, I would look at the pictures on the wall and reflect on the bad things I did, the ones written above. But more often, I was constantly convincing myself that I was doing nothing wrong.

In the past, I always felt that I was just shooting for fun, and I didn’t plan to be a serious photographer, so I didn’t bother to make appointments or set prices. But slowly, more and more people want to take pictures with me. They may think that taking pictures is just a click of the shutter, which is effortless, so whether they are hanging out with me, walking or eating, they open their mouths and ask me to help take pictures. . There were so many times that I didn't agree to A's request, but took the initiative to take a picture of B, and was asked by A why I didn't take a picture for him. But the question is, am I really obligated to serve each friend for free?

I remember a friend who wanted me to take a graduation photo. He said that he would pick me up no matter where I was, and that money was not a problem, so I could make an offer. I had no experience in making offers at the time, and I didn't want him to spend money, and I didn't want to force myself. In the end, in order to avoid this problem, I used every excuse to turn him down, I said I was really busy, I didn't want to take pictures recently, my camera was broken, and so on. He probably thought I was avoiding him on purpose, and he didn't contact me much after that. Not only did I lose my income, but I also lost friends. Now that I think about it, it might be a good thing to charge for something like this to not happen again, which is one of the reasons why I decided to set a kpi for myself.

Going back to the pricing description at the beginning, many people will ask me if I have reached the KPI after reading it. In fact, my kpi was reached on the penultimate day of the exhibition. The buyer is also a friend of mine. He also bought works from Three Shadows before, and it is said that he bought a photographer who has won some awards.

He looked at our wall full of photos and said, why do you take everything, so how can buyers know how to choose! Why do you still print a lot of each photo, the more popular it is, the more limited it is!

I can't argue with that, because I also know I've committed every major taboo in the art market.

Fortunately, I have other sales tactics. I remember when I went to an art fair, and I followed a group of collectors to eavesdrop on how the gallery was selling, and the most common sentence I heard was, "This artist is seriously undervalued in today's art market. ."

So, no matter how much my buyers questioned, I always said, "I'm seriously undervalued in today's art market!"

In the end, I don't know if it was out of appreciation or pity, but he still collected two of my works. Our transaction price is...

Don't guess, I won't write this kind of business secret. I only know that if this article can be published, the price of my collected works will definitely increase.

By the way, in the last paragraph, what I wanted to write was "if this article can become a hit." But I thought again, if it doesn't work, it would be too embarrassing. So in order not to lose face, I lost the spirit of the artist and changed it to "if you can send it out" - just like the phrase "rewards are welcome, and bargaining is accepted".