About Artery
Hi and welcome, thought you’d want to know why Artery exists in the first place. This about page may change, but our mission won’t.
We started Artery because we believe that culture is more than content — it’s a connection between people.
We’re both journalists and Artery came out of many conversations about reporting from around the world. It’s hard to convey the richness of a new culture, whether it’s the Bedouin people in the deserts of the Middle East or the mountain dwellers in the South Caucasus. You have to capture not just the performer but the humanity around them - how they are greeted, where they sit, how they joke with their friends.
Seeing the little stuff up close is the only way to understand the big stuff. Out of that came this idea about a website that actually connected people to the real culture of a place. Just like salons in Paris or rent parties in Harlem, there’s nothing like the intimacy of seeing a performance in people’s homes.
Artery is already a remarkably diverse community. It cuts across occupation, ethnicity, income levels - just like culture is supposed to. One reason people go to an Artery is to experience something outside their cultural bubble, to meet new people at a human scale. Watching a group of strangers connect in a shared space around an intimate experience is amazing. The most common feedback we get from attendees is “you had to be there” and we’re proud to build a platform for this kind of community.
This welcome is on behalf of our entire growing team of coders, community organizers, chef, dancers, musicians, curators and developers who brought Artery from an idea to the ones and zeros, the red, blue and green pixels you’re seeing now.
<3
Salimah Y. Ebrahim, Vladic Ravich
and the entire Artery team
founders [at] artery.is
