Daily Slots + SF Media Co

Daily Slots sent a powerful message a couple weeks ago. The results from the social media involved: SF Media scraping up money to compensate artists for their Rock the Box Contest

The backstory:
Paz and I decide to an action in front of the Twitter building. Inspired by calls for artists by the SF Media Co – to “Help us trick out 15 San Francisco Weekly, The Examiner, or San Francisco Bay Guardian boxes in the city.” We looked at the guidelines and noticed there was NO compensation whatsoever for the artists to design a piece, except for exposure. In their Do’s and Don’ts – they specifically ask artists to ‘Plan out space for one of our logos’. We totally thought this was yet another one of those instances where artists were yet again being exploited to  create for free. So, last Friday we did an action..which generated alot of buzz – so much so that the action that we were directing to – SF MEDIA Co responded quite promptly and immediately to remedy the situation. Paz posted our action on her FB page asking folks who were game – to send pictures of our action to the actual calls. Then from there the message went slightly viral. All this talk about gentrification and the exploitation of the creative class were all a buzz. The result from our actions (along with FB respondents) was that SF MEDIA Co. scraped up a few bucks to compensate the artists. Apologizing profusely saying that when the calls went out – they weren’t even sure if they were able to fund the recipients of the awards…but alas money came through – thank you Mark. But you’re really missing the point. Back –pedaling and featuring our project in the Bay Guardian does not make us simpatico..it merely means you’d rather have your enemy close to the sleeve. We never asked you to publish our work in your paper which was odd as we were featured in a show at Mission Cultural Center last September and no mention of it your paper.  We’re glad you are motivated by your reputation…but know that press is really not our aim…our aim is movement, thoughtfulness and change – which is what you did meager as it may be.