An Ode to Are.na

I want to tell you about a website I have been using for the last 4 months called Are.na. It is without a doubt the most comprehensive resource for researching information on a niche, compiling thoughts, structuring ideas, and building interests.

In my opinion, it is the greatest online creative platform in the world, and I think you should give it a shot.

If you are like me, you spend a lot of time on the Internet. For better or worse, I grew up with a lot of trust and independence when it came to using the internet and I took full advantage of that outlet. I can recount countless hours of watching mindless parkour fails at 2am in the morning, or best WWE slams during sleepovers with my friend Ally while our other friend Griff was fast asleep. Or when me and my friends would make ridiculous Youtube videos like Cooking Kids 101 under the moniker Taconacho1 and Pocogobars, blending whatever we could find in the pantry and subsequently drinking its contents for entertainment. I think we were inspired by the internet phenomenon of Will It Blend?, which opening melody plays as clear as day in my head today as it did 13 years ago.

I wouldn’t go back and change how I spent any of that time, as useless as it may have been, and I am glad at the very least that is not how I spend it now. I guess that’s what we call growing up. I digress.

Have you ever catalouged every single website that has been useful to you? Or compiled a list of everything visually, physically, spiritually, and intellectually that interests you? That’s what Are.na is built for. It’s a place on the internet that provides a mindful space to record and research new and old information without judgment. A place where herds of like-minded, knowledge seekers meet-up for online sharing and connecting.

If you understand Virgil Abloh’s thought process behind FREE GAME, then Are.na is the building blocks of another aspect of that model. Are.na is an arena for everyone building a vision to come together and put it right out in the open for everyone to see.

“I like are.na because I don’t have to make sense — I can add unfinished fragments of thoughts and let them simmer; no pressure, no concern.”

—a thought I found somewhere on are.na.

here are two of my channels and their corresponding blocks.

Its users can do whatever they want with it and someone like me can view it and stick around or simply move on. I can compile unfinished thoughts in a few clusters that I’ll likely never get back to and have no shame about or work through an idea to the core of its existence and know that it is completely public for everyone to see. I have learned to love the idea that it doesn’t matter where I am in my process and to let go of the responsibility that everything has to be perfect before moving on. I put down ideas and then move on to the next one…seeking, finding, connecting, repeating. The core aspect of this platform is that you connect blocks within your various channels and then those connections are public across the entire platform. On social media, for the most part, you curate what you want to see and what others see. If you’re using Are.na the way it is intended to be used then you still might be curating to a certain degree but you have no control over who sees what and how. And the best part is that recognition doesn’t come from a like or a comment, but rather forming a connection to another train of thought somewhere else on the platform. For instance, when you get a notification that someone decided to follow one of your channels… what makes this experience unique is that they’re following your train of thought. For lack of better words, they fuck with whatever is oozing out of your brain and want to stay updated with your new additions. As an artist, when someone acknowledges your vision, that fulfills one of the ultimate feedback loops.

A series of channels made by other people that I follow

It's like walking into a room and everyone has something interesting to say. A niche for every niche walk in large numbers on Are.na. I found channels with hundreds of blocks, as they are called, in areas of interest that feel very nuanced to me. I am talking about hundreds, if not thousands of articles solely about looking. How to look, where to look, what is looking? How to look like a looker looks, are you looking enough? where to look when you don’t know where to look, the list goes on.

On the right side of screen you can see every channel where this PDF exists in

The more I use Are.na, the more I realize that this is a similar framework to what I am building with Studio MAXIMA and within Artist Assembly. This idea of maintaining the clearest forms of individuality with the implementation of connection and collaboration. A willingness to put ourselves and our work out in the open for others to see is immensely vulnerable. Sharing our personal stories as an artist with others can be a brutally raw experience and a commonly avoided circumstance, but it is that very thing that is stopping us from reaching beyond the boundaries that exist in the creative field and even more pertinent, in the human experience.

I urge you to give it a go. It’s free for your first 200 blocks, and if you must surpass that then you know it’s worth it to pay for it.

Are.na is not paying me to write this, I just love using it so freaking much that I thought I ought to share it with all of you.

Look out for another Artist Assembly conversation tomorrow and an announcement later this week.

Thanks for being here,

Eli Bucksbaum, Studio MAXIMA