Animal Collective Controversy on Kickstarter

Joshua Dibb, aka Deacon of Animal Collective, has been invited to perform at 2010′s Festival in the Desert. The Festival takes place in Essakane, Mali, approximately two hours from Timbuktu. Deacon is using online funding platform Kickstarter to fund the documentation and distribution of unique art objects created on his tour, which in turn, will be given as “rewards” to project backers at certain levels (e.g. $20 = an autographed photo; $100 = limited-run CD, etc). The project was posted only 2 days ago, and has already raised nearly $5000 of its $25K goal. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Kickstarter, let’s just say that most participants (invitation-only) in most instances are attempting to raise just a fraction of that, and over a much longer time period than the 24 days Deacon has given himself to rally his cash. The last two projects NHQ has backed–CRO’s Run, Blago, Run! and The Hinterlands’ Isaac Newton is My DJ–set out to raise $3500 and $1905, respectively. And while we have already seen similarly financially ambitious projects on Kickstarter, they all share one thing in common: the artists were relatively unknown, at least compared to the international superstardom of Animal Collective.

Deacon’s project has only been online for 48 hours, but has already managed to spark some serious controversy, both at Kickstarter and on other blogs and forums, such as Electrical Audio. Check out these excerpts from Deacon’s comments section on Kickstarter–ours included–and then head on over and see for yourself what the hubub’s all about:

P.J. CRAVEN: This is not even some starving artist using this site trying to make a record. This is a well-established act using its fame to, in essence, get anonymous people to finance a fun trip.

ANDRE WILLIAMS: Josh, don’t you think that $25,000 could be better spent helping the numerous problem situations in Africa than on entertainment? Also the other native acts probably can not even imagine $25k as overhead for travel and *experience* costs. While I support your wanting to participate in this festival from both a cultural and learning standpoint, this project seems excessive…especially when considering the other lesser known native acts who will be making nowhere near this amount. Seems a bit exploitative.

HUNTER KEIL ROBINSON: Most of the criticism of Josh’s project seems to rest on a knee-jerk reaction to the very fact that a member of a popular group is asking for financial assistance, rather than on well thought out arguments…The argument that the project is somehow immoral because this money would be better spent on charity is interesting, but not very compelling. This is an art project, not a humanitarian one…This project isn’t meant to better the world in any but an artistic and cultural sense. It is certainly not hurting anyone; the only people who give to the project will be people like myself: relatively wealthy individuals who love Animal Collective’s music enough to support this project and will treasure the unique art objects that will result from Josh’s trip.

NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS: We love Deacon and Animal Collective. (We do!) But what makes Kickstarter admirable is its ability to empower the underdog–the emerging and/or independent artist who needs help harnessing the collective power of the online community to popularize and produce projects of even the smallest scale. We think many artists will find this project audacious because it is an internationally celebrated act asking the public to fund the production of a VERY large-scale project that would nonetheless be produced regardless of whether or not it is successfully funded on Kickstarter… The show WILL go on even without our support. Meanwhile, AC will have effectively upstaged the rest of the community. And by featuring this project on its front page, Kickstarter is, in a way, jeopardizing the successful fundraising of those projects whose appeal might have otherwise grown in AC’s absence… This brings in to question why Kickstarter was founded in the first place, and for whom…?