Dispatch from Goblin Market
The Goblin Market newsletter, 2025–2026. 19 letters on artists’ economies, gifts, markets and making a life in the arts. No new letters are being sent; this is the full archive.
- Being in Each Other's Business Imagining Alternative Arts Marketplace explores new economic models for artists beyond traditional funding. Through fairytales, collaboration, and experimental markets, six…
- How far do we go for something we love? We are exploring how the "art world" manufactures value through exclusivity, commodification, and speculative markets. Subsequently, if artists are behind value creation in the…
- Sacrifice, Magic, and Making Life Beautiful This week, we explore the evolving role of art in modern society by looking at how aesthetic experiences shape cultural inquiry, economic structures, and creative autonomy.
- We Heard that there's a Night Market in Toronto 🤫 The merchants, artists, and surprise guests will host a night market on Thursday, March 27 and Friday, March 28, from 6 pm to 11 pm at Allan Gardens Children’s Conservatory in…
- “It’s great that you do business for a living. Is that a real job?” This week, we got curious about performing business. Can intervening “business” be an art form itself? What's that cute slidedeck you've got there?
- DJs have their USBs. What does a conceptual or experimental artist carry in their bag? Luisa Ji | March 23, 2025 | Dispatch #5 If social media is a window into what culture looks like today, the most exciting arts experience is likely happening right now in…
- Goblin Market Toronto Thank you for stumbling upon the Goblin Market and generously sharing your time (and jokes) with us. At sunset, trade with the merchants, something you hold dear. Next up:…
- Gifts, Shiny Trinkets, and having fun when it feels wrong to have fun What to do when everything feels like a mess, and all you want to do is curl up in a blanket and eat ice cream straight from the tub
- Goblin Spatial Practice? What began as artists talking about money and unconventional resource-gathering has now evolved into a slightly unhinged market—an experiment in generosity, relationships, and…
- What is Art, Can We Eat It? As for Goblin Market—is it a market, an art fair, an artist talk, a performance, or a workshop? All of the above, and also a commentary on the urge to draw clear boundaries to…
- 🍲 ✨Learning how to receive gifts is equally as crucial as giving gifts. ✨🍲 At Goblin Market, artists don’t just show their work—they make memories with strangers, barter with bones and jokes, and dare to be unhinged with love. This isn’t just about…
- On to the next leg of the journey. Dispatch #9 | Luisa Ji | May 22, 2025 Writing over the past few weeks has been challenging for many, many reasons, but "change" is the common thread. Nothing feels more visceral…
- The concept of "cultural soil" and what it holds for living in a changed world One of the most delusional beliefs, as our lives slowly change due to massive climate shifts, is that living in dissonance with the environmental, social, and ecological context…
- On being unsettled, sincerity in the age of storyselling, and developing a taste for friction. This month, I’m operating from Hsinchu, Taiwan, in an urban cultural cluster called General Village. An opening for programming emerged when I discussed with our residency host,…
- Investing in the Arts Over the past few weeks, I've been brewing some thoughts on what alternatives we have access to as an arts organization and cultural producer under the broader narrative driving…
- Do the Arts Perform Poverty? Dear Canadian arts workers and organizations, we are welcoming back our beloved national funder this week. I was too exhausted to submit any grant applications before the portal…
- Another round. In 2025, someone is going to ask you to go to Taiwan and do a Goblin Market there. It is very important that you go and do it.
- More Experiments, More Learning Together It’s been about a year since this project hit the ground. I’m so grateful to have seen it go from a mere hunch that the funding system would give out under forces larger than we,…
- Call of the Void, trying new things, prototyping, artists' working capital The Call of the Void is a phenomenon in which a person experiences a sudden, intrusive urge to do something dangerous or destructive, such as jumping off a cliff. This intrusive…