When Art, Business and Community Converge

[Yvette Dubel]

Do you have an interest in open inquiry into bridging business needs with those related to sustainability? If so, I would love to hear from you. The Cultural Fusion groups now have hundreds of members on various social networks and the numbers continue to grow.

I have been working with the IFOSSFoundation to develop the IT research concepts for this series (if you in the IT industry and have an interest in the commercial potential contact me), and G-Squared is assisting me to develop the ideas for our metaverse concept for ComFusion, a ring galaxy evolving from the genesis of the series collaboration. The immersive virtual worlds are a path to engage communities globally to address regional economic development from the bottom up, while also integrating the needs of established businesses (need for meaningful marketing, R&D of new products/concepts, new approaches to branding based on cultivating social capital as part of customer retention strategies and CSR program).

I have assembled the conceptual framework for corporate sponsorships that regard sponsors as collaborators in the series or artwork to be sponsored. Since it is unlike traditional event sponsorships in some aspects, it does require some sponsorship expertise to take it to the next level.

The sponsorships are central to monetizing the concepts to launch the demonstration projects on the ground so that the virtual reality and installation art components operate as the links they are intended to be.

Currently I am working with children homes in Ethiopia, India, South Africa and the community served by the Reverence for Life Foundation in Kingston Jamaica. I am especially interested in homes meeting the needs of AIDS orphans.

The big question I am looking for help with is this:Who can identify the businesses that are seeking to invest resources (time, attention, sponsorship support, technology, etc.) in this series or a single project as a viable, yet innovative solution that advances global social responsibility while also addressing their needs?

Having asked the question I would add that I am working on a new video that introduces the series in relation to these kinds of business issues specific to branding and economic consequences of failing to address the BIG CHALLENGES.

Here is some info to introduce the project:


See Cultural Fusion 101 beta video here


Installation as Happening venue

CF Installation Garden (integrating game as performance art) starts as a venue for World Reverence for Life University, conceptual & process art series framework within Cultural Fusion art series collaboration with Reverence for Life Foundation. It is the first virtual "gallery" and another studio space. It is also a bit magical, in that it is a trans-portal where people can access specific resources to be located in Cultural Fusion-Hotel Infinity (focusing on Room concept here), an art installation and digital artwork inspired by the story explaining the mathematical concept. When turn-of-the-century mathematician Georg Cantor approached the subject of infinity with mathematical rigor, he encountered many paradoxes. Hotel Infinity, or the story of it, expresses these paradoxes.

The game begins with World Reverence for Life University , which was inspired by my study of the history of installation art. Although not Fluxus Art per se, this is was a big inspiration for me in that at a time when I felt a bit insecure about what I wanted to do and was doing because so few people seemed to get it. Fluxus Art helped me see there was some historical precedent for the type of work I wanted to create, in essence reassuring me that I had the right to pursue my art as legitimate evolution into the area of art with purpose aka Cultural Fusion-Art as Philosophy.

See: http://www.fluxus.org/
"An art movement begun in 1961/1962, which flourished throughout the 1960s, and into the 1970s. Characterized by a strongly Dadaist attitude, Fluxus promoted artistic experimentation mixed with social and political activism, an often celebrated anarchistic change. Although Germany was its principal location, Fluxus was an international avant-garde movement active in major Dutch, English, French, Swedish, and American cities. Its participants were a divergent group of individualists whose most common theme was their delight in spontaneity and humor. Fluxus members avoided any limiting art theories, and spurned pure aesthetic objectives, producing such mixed-media works as found poems, mail art, silent orchestras, and collages of such readily available materials as scavanged posters, newspapers, and other ephemera. Their activities resulted in many events or situations, often called "Aktions" — works challenging definitions of art as focused on objects -- performances, guerilla or street theater, concerts of electronic music — many of them similar to what in America were known as Happenings."

So, in the tradition of "Happenings" the courses at World Reverence for Life operate similarly, echoing the tradition of institutional critique as a sub-genre of installation art further contributing to the evolution of both.


"In more technical terms, Institutional Critique is an artistic term meant as a commentary of the various institutions and assumed normalities of art and/or a radical disarticulation of the institution of art (radical is linguistically understood in its relation to radix which means to get to the root of something)."

In addition this work also serves the practical function of cultivating the best in participants by delivering a real program which is Reverence for Life aka The Practice 101. Thereby operating as a community intervention program which enhances the idea of the Cultural Fusion Installation Game (garden) as feng shui for communities.

Although the focus has been on delivering this as a context for intervention programs for communities in developing countries, we are addressing root causes for challenges facing communities around the world....systemic corruption and lack of community empowerment are core issues that directly impact those issues associated with poverty, economic sustainability, social cohesion and environmental degradation.

This is my concept for an art based solution that addresses sustainability plus a multitude of symptomatic issues effecting commercial and community enterprises.

Interested?