About
We are a design research studio that develops didactic media, exhibitions, publications, and other forms of intellectual property for artists, nonprofits, and creative businesses.
Book free 15-minute consultation
Book sliding-scale hourly consultation
Staff
Wye Coday
Senior Researcher
wye@nor.la
Evan Kleekamp
Operations and Development
evan@nor.la
Client Services
Product and Publication Development for digital, print, and subscription products.
Ghostwriting for business plans, grant proposals, fundraising and emial marketing campaigns.
Business Management including lead generation, coaching and consulting, triage and austerity audits, strategic communications, web portfolio development, and competitive research.
Statement of Purpose
We pride ourselves on the quality and thoroughness of the investigations we develop for artists and creative businesses who seek to grow their enterprise and repair their relationships to money, power, labor, and personal identity.
Unlike many art professionals, we encourage artists to develop fully integrated businesses that hold no illusory distinctions between artistic expression, studio practice, commercial labor, and business administration.
This means conducting audits, interrogating financial objectives, setting measurable goals, and preparing our clients to advocate for themselves — and their businesses — with confidence while also supporting the development, production, distribution, and sale of their artwork.
In our view, this integrated approach represents a movement toward transparency and financial stability in an industry that is widely disingenuous, opaque, and exploitative.
It is also an optimistic gesture that demonstrates our commitment to advocating for artists who seek to make an independent living through their creative practices.
Statement of Method
We describe ourselves as a design research studio because we use research methodologies to define and counter the structural inequity and economic disenfranchisement that plague the arts.
Our artworks extend our research practice. To date, they have taken the form of grant proposals, photographs, sculptures, catalogue essays, legal interventions, lecture performances, and recorded conversations. We also advocate for what we described as “post-institutional” business models that allow artists to diversify their sales portfolios.
Rooted in the core of our approach is our belief that artists must reconcile their relationship to money if they want to have uninterrupted time to produce their work.
Statement of Equity
Artists with nontraditional backgrounds are encouraged to contact us for specialized consultations. We proudly work with and support neurodivergent, queer, disabled, and otherwise economically marginalized groups.
studio@nor.la
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About
We are design research studio that develops didactic media, exhibitions, publications, and other forms of intellectual property for artists, creatives, startups, media companies, small businesses, and nonprofits.
Staff
Wye Coday
Senior Researcher
wye@nor.la
Evan Kleekamp
Operations and Development
evan@nor.la
Book free 15-minute consultation
Book sliding-scale hourly consultation
Services
Is My Body Meant To Be Read?
Structured as a two-week bootcamp, IS MY BODY MEANT TO BE READ? invites participants to build infrastructure for their creative practice while engaging in countermarket insurgency — organized economic activity that aims to accrue and mobilize social capital.
Working as a research group, participants will revamp their portfolios, start newsletters, create digital publications, assemble a business plan, and develop accountability practices that transform their creative labor into a functional business entity. To complete this goal, they will review and evaluate sample projects before making their own and soliciting feedback from their peers.
Throughout the intensive, the studio will provide templates, checklists, and additional office hours to ensure participants walk away with an updated and savvy web presence.
Portfolio Recap
PORTFOLIO RECAP gathers the findings from the portfolio research we conducted in IS MY BODY MEANT TO BE READ? and synthesizes them into a three-day sprint. Meeting for two hours each day, the sprint examines online workspaces as forms of investment and digital real estate. Considering a handful of unique, dynamic artist portfolio sites as well as artist-run online stores, we’ll probe how these artists navigate topics typically relegated to marketers, promoters, and the gallerist-agents who hire them.
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Past Iterations
The Summer 2023 session included guest appearances from art critic Rahel Aima, Dirt Media CEO Daisy Alioto, curator Alex Jones, artist Coco Klockner, Paper Monument cofounder Dushko Petrovich Córdova, collector Felipe Núñez, artist-gallerists Matt Morris and Eric Ruschman, and filmmaker Em Weinstein.
More Information
Structured as a two-week bootcamp, IS MY BODY MEANT TO BE READ? invites participants to build infrastructure for their creative practice while engaging in countermarket insurgency — organized economic activity that aims to accrue and mobilize social capital.
Working as a research group, participants will revamp their portfolios, start newsletters, create digital publications, assemble a business plan, and develop accountability practices that transform their creative labor into a functional business entity. To complete this goal, they will review and evaluate sample projects before making their own and soliciting feedback from their peers.
Throughout the intensive, the studio will provide templates, checklists, and additional office hours to ensure participants walk away with an updated and savvy web presence.
Portfolio Recap
PORTFOLIO RECAP gathers the findings from the portfolio research we conducted in IS MY BODY MEANT TO BE READ? and synthesizes them into a three-day sprint. Meeting for two hours each day, the sprint examines online workspaces as forms of investment and digital real estate. Considering a handful of unique, dynamic artist portfolio sites as well as artist-run online stores, we’ll probe how these artists navigate topics typically relegated to marketers, promoters, and the gallerist-agents who hire them.
+
Past Iterations
The Summer 2023 session included guest appearances from art critic Rahel Aima, Dirt Media CEO Daisy Alioto, curator Alex Jones, artist Coco Klockner, Paper Monument cofounder Dushko Petrovich Córdova, collector Felipe Núñez, artist-gallerists Matt Morris and Eric Ruschman, and filmmaker Em Weinstein.
More Information
Screengrab from the 2023 summer session of IS MY BODY MEANT TO BE READ?, featuring Eric Ruschman and Matt Morris.