Blog of the Moment: Come Into Land

 

We spoke to founder of Come Into Land Travis Street about inspiration, the urge to publish and his advice for aspiring bloggers.    What made you decide to start the blog?   I had been running an art collective in South Korea for a couple years and was itching to get back to England, but didn't want to lose my contacts in South Korea so I decided to start an 'online magazine' to give me an excuse to keep in touch. That quickly turned into a blog with chunky articles... which quickly turned into what LAND is today - a 'running dialogue' of features on contemporary art, music, video and design.      Whats your favourite feature on the site?    My favourite feature is the CREATE/CURATE section where artists can create their own posts about themselves and upload their work to be featured. The features then go into a group pool and the public can decide who they like the best. Those artists then get an interview and a permanent feature, which for a lot of up and coming artists is great because its the first thing that comes up when their name is Googled. This idea came about because we just couldn't keep up with the emails of artists wanting to be featured... so we put the submission process in place to cut out a lot of the leg work involved in researching an artist.   We really love the diversity of articles on the website, from art to fashion. Is it something you did very purposefully? or did it just kind of come about?    LAND's beginnings started with me actively seeking out new artists to feature, checking other blogs, going levels deep into Flickr, that kind of thing. But after 3 years, things started just to come to me in the way a habit forms and you just run across things in your daily meanderings through the internet. I used to struggle with 'will people like this? oh god, what if no one likes this?!' and then it got to the point where I stopped caring and trusted in my own (and the other contributor's) tastes. Now, when I come across something (no matter what it is), within a few seconds I'll get this burning uge to put it on LAND. Like last night, I was listening top Radio 6 and heard a band I had never heard before. I had put a feature up on them before the song was over! I love when that happens.     Finally, what would you suggest to people who are thinking about doing a similar thing?   Just do it. Pick a topic you're passionate about and register a domain name or start a Tumblr. Your project will always change and evolve into something that reflects where you are at any one point in time. I periodically like looking back through the hundreds of posts on LAND and remembering where I was and what I was doing when I was so totally into that artist or musician or music video. The best reason to do something is because there's passion there to be explored.