Essex coda – a short tour

through things that relateto artists' collaborations

(and I like)by Alan W. Moore

for Essex University seminar on artists' collectivesSeptember 2013

see: http://collectiva.wikispaces.com/artcollectivesworkshop

for readings and further information

Colin Deland pictured among other East Village art gallery dealers, mid-80s, Lower East Side, NYC (he ran Vox Populi)

Liza Kirwin called this the “East Village gallery movement”

Colin Deland, proprietor American Fine Arts, 1980s & '90s, Soho NYCHe and partner Pat Hearn started the Armory Show art fair as a festival of

independent galleries. (Heh heh.)

Art Club 2000 in the early '90s – with Cooper Union professor Doug Ashford, ex-Group Material member

Joseph Kosuth, mentor to students who formed Group Material members in the late '70s at School of Visual Arts

(site of AWC “Speak Out” in 1969)

Bernadette Corporation, this year with retrospectives in two venues, Artists Space NYC, and ICA London

Bruce High Quality Foundation – (also a group of students from Cooper Union) – this year with a retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum of Art

Bruce High Quality Foundation “Brucennial”, exhibition held simultaneously with the Whitney Biennial

Jeffrey Deitch, proprietor of Deitch Projects, wrote about Colab's “Times Square Show” for Art in America in 1980. He was then an art investment advisor for

Chase Manhattan bank.

http://www.deitch.com/projects/sub.php?projId=128

“Give me product!” Nothing wrong wiith that. In addition to artists from the “Beautiful Losers” team, Deitch liked production

oriented artists' groups like Dearraindrop

Dearraindrop re-created in the Soho NYC gallery space something like what they had done around Fort Thunder, the legendary artists' factory residence in

Providence, Rhode Island, full of RISDI students

something about taking lots of acid... which is often cut with speed...

Philadelphia's ICA let their interns play with artists' groups too, in “Locally Localized Gravity,” the show about collectives –

local stars from space 1026 (the address of a collective studio space of some 30 artists), built an “Ewok-like” structure covered with prints

Let's make something! (Production imperative.) A hallmark of “Locally” was the extensive schedule of workshops, giving artists' collectives something to do – share their creative processes with visitors to the

museum. The needs of museums' education programs is often driving the interest in collectives.

Red 76 was imported from Portland, Oregon, to add some political flavor to the “Locally” show. Sam Gould flew in, and had people dress up in funny colonial-

era costumes and declaim 18th century revolutionary homilies around Philadelphia town...

No dish, though, the catalogue PDF online is pretty good, with lots of participants' statements

– many interesting groups, e.g., the gay publishing collective LTTR.

I was there as an invitee of Basekamp (hyperlinked above), which had earlier on organized a convention of artists' collectives in their downtown space – their international networking definitely drove the ICA to do the “Locally” show.

"Descent to Revolution" was a curatorial project of James Voorhies, which involved numerous artists' collectives gathered for some while in Columbus College of Art & Design in Ohio, in 2009 (Link to many pics in pic above.)

Red 76 participated in “Descent,” producing a first iteration of their “Pop Up Book Academy.” Sam Gould continued his bookish ways last week at the New

York Art Book Fair, making a kind of factory play room in the basement of P.S. 1. The NYABF was started by AA Bronson when he was director of Printed Matter.

Department of Space and Land Reclamation (DSLR) was a

weekend campaign in 2001 led by Nato Thompson and Josh Macphee

which “sought to reclaim all the space, land, and visual culture of

Chicago back to its public citizens.”

Thompson became a curator, first at Mass MOCA, then at Creative Time;

Macphee founded JustSeeds graphic artists' cooperative, and

Interference Archive

Nato Thompson worked with Gregory Sholette to produce this show at Mass MOCA in 2003 concentrating on politicized collectives and artists working with

collective formations – the catalogue is online as a color PDF; google: “The Interventionists - Gregory Sholette”

The Interference Archive in Brooklyn hosts many film screenings, talks, and exhibitions. (Josh McPhee is in the center.)

a collaborator with Just Seeds and Toyshop collective, Swoon produced a sensational collective project for the Venice Biennial in

2009 – “The Swimming Cities of Serenissima"

Bureau de recherches surréalistes (Octobre 1924 - Avril 1925)

Mark Dion reconstructs the Bureau for Manchester University exhibition in 2005

work by the group Claire Fontaine

Chto Delat? group in 2005

Chto Delat showing in “Collective Creativity,” Friedrichianum, 2005

Chto Delat showing in “Collective Creativity,” Friedrichianum, 2005

Chto Delat were an active presence in the Hamburg

“Subvision” festival in 2009; the “Activist Club” project is discussed

by Dmitri Vilensky at EIPCP's “Transversal” website, 2007.

Teaching collectivity – “37 Manifestos” show at a Berlin art academy, 2011

The influential Chicago group “

Temporary Services” put out a book

Robby Herbst, one-time editor of the

“Journal of Aesthetics and Protest” (Los

Angeles) produces a workshop on

collective movement in NYC

in 2013.

video artist Paul Ryan elaborated

his triadic “yoga of collaboration” based on the theories of

Charles Sanders Peirce

puppets, the classic collaborative form

of spectacular protest... at the

“RADICAL LUNCH” anti-cuts demo at CUNY,

NYC, 2013