Ishtar Gate

“Coming up during Berlin Art Week is the STATISTA Conference, which includes working sessions, talks and presentations that are open and free of charge to the general public. One project to be presented and launched is Ishtar Gate, a new digital platform that invites radical change to the way we write, regard, interact with and distribute art criticism, as well as the way such cultural producers are rewarded. In May, critic and theorist Penny Rafferty began publishing an ongoing series of critical commentary on Ishtar Gate, where, in an effort to build a sense of collective authorship, readers are encouraged to also add their own comments on and build links between Rafferty’s thoughts. In exchange for their time reading and/or contributing thoughts, users (whose names remain unknown; no registration is necessary) are rewarded with tokens, a kind of digital currency known as Ishtar. To begin, Ishtar will be accepted by KW in exchange for studio visits, gallery space, tickets to the institution, exhibition catalogues, gallery dinners and more. Over the course of time, Rafferty and Nascent—an “exit tech production studio” with whom she collaborated to build the platform and currency—aim to establish new partnerships, allowing Ishtar to create a micro-economy that encourages and rewards passive reflection as well as active engagement.

Prior to Ishtar and Ishtar Gate’s official launch on September 11th at the Werkstatt Haus der Statistik, Rafferty and Nascent’s Paul Seidler and Max Hamshire told us about the project’s beginnings and how Ishtar might be used to help transform criticism and its traditional hierarchical structures.” via berlinartlink