Lee Tusman
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Contest: Help Me Replace This Image!
I’ve had this collage image on the front page of the Public Collectors website forever and I’m tired of it. I’d like to replace it with a new graphic that draws from various images from all over the website (including the Public Collectors Flickr collections). Ideally your creation should be about 650 pixels wide and 500 pixels high - or something larger that would still look good when reduced to this size). Your graphic can be a photocollage that grabs material from the website, or you can do something new like a drawn illustration. Basically, I’m looking for something that captures the spirit of Public Collectors. Use your imagination! Entries are due by January 31, 2012.
Email your submission to: marc@publiccollectors.org
Be sure to include your name and postal mailing address. I will pick a winner at the beginning of February, 2012. Everyone who submits an entry will get a Public Collectors booklet and some ephemera. The winner will have their graphic used on the front page (I’ll credit you) and will get a much bigger package of Public Collectors booklets, as well as other printed materials from projects I have worked on. Trust me - it will be a nice haul of stuff!
I hope you’ll participate. Reblog widely!
Today whilst downtown I happened upon what I initially thought was a bit of street art randomly placed on the street, a lone piece of plywood with some really great faces painted on it. I snapped the pic below and went back around the block for another look and realized it was part of an…
“Doin’ Cell Time” - a column by Thomas E. Skolimowski scanned from The Messenger, Summer 1972.
The Messenger was a quarterly periodical published by and for the men of the South Dakota State Penitentiary, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, with the permission of the warden. “The purpose of this magazine is to give the inmates an opportunity for self expression, to provide them a medium of discussion of public problems, to foster better understanding between inmates and the general public, and to be constructively informative.” Click here to download a 75.2 mb PDF of this entire issue of The Messenger.
This is one of the best internet hack art projects I’ve ever seen. Cooked up by FATLab, the Free Art and Technology Lab in NYC. With their browser-based mashery, you can upload a simple script to your own (or other’s…) website for the lulziest internet occupation you’ve ever seen. (Bonus points because it’ll probably crash your browser). There’s even a little free trick so that you don’t really need to even do that. Just point your browser to fffff.at/occupy/<insertWebPageHere>. Here’s a full list of the artists that designed moving gifs for this exhibit, curated by Evan Roth (Parsons, Eyebeam Fellow, Fi5e, Internet Famo and FFFFFatLab.)
- Aram Bartholl
- Brad Downey
- Constant Dullaart
- Olia Lialina & Dragan Espenschied
- Mark Jenkins
- La Quadrature Du Net
- Jonah Peretti & Chelsea Peretti
- Ryder Ripps
- Rafael Rozendaal
- Telecomix
- Charlie Todd
- UBERMORGE
Here’s some fun pages to try or try your own. Be aware this is a bandwidth hog. Go slow and close the windows first:
This is an overdue post about the exhibit “here.” at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Based around the query “What is the role of ‘place’ in art?” the exhibition presents the work of artists (and collectives) that have saturated their practice within 6 semi-distinct regions: Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Phoenix, Raleigh-Durham, Detroit and Kansas City. Based on the premise that these areas are maligned from the main NYC-LA art markets, ‘here.’ presents complex works that deny the falsehood that regionalism breeds provincialism. Rather than attempt to make an overall statement beyond this, the works of the individual artists and collectives are cleanly presented along with additional helpful didactic text accompaniment.
Artists:
Lewis Colburn, Jennifer Levonian, Megawords,Tim Portlock
Michael Krueger, Erika Nelson, Aaron Storck, Whoop Dee Doo
Bunk News, Paul Coors, Terence Hammonds, Katie Parker and Guy Michael Davis
Liz Cohen, Scott Hocking, Chido Johnson, Abigail Newbold
Elsewhere Collaborative, Harrison Haynes, Stacy Lynn Waddell, Glenda Wharton
Sue Chenoweth, Postcommodity, Aaron Rothman, Gregory SaleCurators:
- Julien Robson, Curator of Contemporary Art, PAFA
- Christopher Cook, Director and Curator, Salina Art Center, Salina, Kansas
- Mark Harris, Director of the School of Art at the University of Cincinnati
- Rebecca Hart, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, Detroit Institute of Arts
- Claire Schneider, Independent Curator based in Scottsdale, Arizona
- Teka Selman, Assistant Director of the MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts at Duke University
Below are just a few photos from the exhibit and opening day events. I encourage you to visit in person if you are in the Philadelphia area. The exhibition closes December 31.
- Hi! Just responding to the question about time banking, Here in the San Francisco Bay Area there's an excellent time bank. It's really a way of life for some of us here. If you want to learn more, you can google "sf bace time bank." Peace! -amber
thanks!
Found this photo on the web. It’s a view of the Terrace Annual, a London outdoor art exhibit that leaves the work in situ outdoors to decay over time. “Exposed to the elements the works have shifted, faded, broken,rotted, remained and in some cases, disappeared.” That’s my quilt/install piece hanging on the top. Still looking good!
We decided to approach the label-writing for these boards in a participatory way. We blatantly borrowed the brilliant technique the San Diego Museum of Natural History used to write labels based on visitors’ questions. We put up the following label along with a pedestal with post-its and pencils:
We’re writing a description* for these surfboards and we need your help.
What do the surfboards make you think about?
What do you want to know?
Understanding what you think helps us think about how we display our collections.Museum 2.0: Balancing Engagement: Adventures in Participatory Exhibit Labels
I’ve spent many hours over the years trying to work out the best way to create kickass engaging art exhibits and events. Creating exhibition labels is a glamour-less part of this, and it’s as important as creating a massive participatory installation or performance. I find the (Sante Fe) Museum of Art and History’s usage of participatory post-it notes to be simple and right-on, a great way to sample the interests of their visitors and respond to questions. As a curator, I like to provide direct, easy to understand text that provides good background information on the artwork or artist. As a visitor of art spaces, I like to ignore labels for pieces that don’t hold my interest but to also have the option to read text labels for more information about pieces that pique my curiosity. What do you think about labels? I’m interested in hearing from both “museum people” as well as anyone else that enjoys looking at art. -Lee
Photos from Day 1 of Rogue Print. We had about 150-200 participants in the temporary DIY print shop.
I curated Rogue Print at the Art Gallery of California State University, Northridge. We will continue with a rogue printshop Saturday October 8, 11am-4pm and then a screening of documentary shorts and an artist Q and A with Craig Stecyk Monday at 7PM.
From my press release:
CSUN presents ROGUE PRINT, a solo exhibition by pioneering street artist, photographer and printmaker Craig Stecyk. Throughout his career Stecyk has pursued these media through a combination of guerilla street installation and gallery exhibitions. Recently featured in LA MOCA exhibiton Art In The Streets, Stecyk’s work at CSUN will feature a new installation as well as a participatory campus event.
An alumnus of CSUN’s graduate printmaking department, the artist will collaborate with printmaking and photography students and the wider community for a renegade street art printshop event and gallery exhibition on October 7 and 8. The exhibition includes posters the artist places in public environments as well as video documenting his history and process. Stecyk will work with printmaking students and other visitors to print hundreds of posters to be inserted around campus during a whirlwind weekend event. Photo department students and other participants will document the printshop, installation around campus, and collection of works, and return to the printshop where some of these prints will be exhibited.In late September I attended the Creative Time Summit and Living As Form exhibition (curated by Nato Thompson) in New York City. Creative Time presents groundbreaking adventurous public art projects. The Living As Form exhibition brings together a 25+ year history of socially-engaged art practices and pulls in urban planning, installation, nonprofit organizations, independent presses, street performances, a time bank, many curators and artists and great thinkers. They are not afraid to push the boundaries of “what is art,” nor do they shy away from presenting challenging projects of art and social change. The exhibit contains documentation of about 100 artists or groups, commissions 9 new pieces, and includes dozens of events. There is also an included Market space curated by Half Letter Press / Temporary Services.
Temporary Services has invited organizations and businesses from the Lower East Side to operate stalls in a section of the Essex Street Market building, returning the space to its original function as a marketplace, but one that is free to use, non-competitive, and particularly diverse in its offerings.
In short, I was blown away and inspired by the exhibit. With so many examples of socially-engaged art practice presented in one place it helped me think about effectiveness, inspiration, audiences, tactics, and the many possible pathways forward in this field. The exhibit is presented every Thursday through Sunday at the Old Essex Street Market through October 16. Go!
Philly-ists Megawords presented a space for hanging out, reading zines, listening to or making music, and meeting people. It’s rare to find space for relaxing, particularly a space without advertising. It felt very comfortable.
Marc Fischer with books and zines from Temporary Services / Half Letter Press at their booth in the Market section they curated within the Living As Form exhibit.
From the Time Bank (Would anyone with more experience in Time Banking like to write a little report on this?)
Banned Books Library
In September, Eliza Fernand kicked off a tour of her project Quilt Stories, an “ongoing investigation of quiltmaking from the standpoint of a contemporary practice. ”I give an interactive performance called Quilt Stories where I sit inside of a quilted tent, meeting visitors and recording their stories and anecdotes about my quilts.” She visited Philadelphia and connected with myself and fellow social practice curator/experimental quilter Kate Sclavi. We set up a quilt tent in Rittenhouse Square park and invited the public to hand quilt and tell stories of quilts from their lives. We had only been set up for a short while when NBC/Yahoo.com (yes!) showed up to film the park and then to film us in it. But only a minute later a “concerned citizen” (read: uptight ‘do-gooder’) called the police to report on the inappropriate appearance of a quilt-tent in the park! The police officer was polite though firm that we had to leave the park. I don’t believe what we were doing differed substantially from a picnic in the park, and I can only hope that additional quilt tents sprout like Hoovervilles occupying Philadelphia public space…
Night Market is a working marketplace for small unregulated goods and services which will run from June 17 - September 30th at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, Massachusetts; Minneapolis, Minnesota; rural Wisconsin along the St. Croix River; as well as in print and online. Apart from the selling of goods and services, the market exists to create a platform for discussion regarding the merits of a flattening of our notion of what cultural production is, can mean, and could possibly organize around itself through the power of its shared economic indecipherability.
This video by Friends We Love documents recent artwork and the painting of a mural in NYC by Jeff Soto in conjunction with his 2010 Lifecycle exhibit at Johnathan Levine Gallery exhibition. I co-curated an exhibit of Jeff’s work at the Riverside Art Museum in 2009, and Jeff is a good friend, a really generous artist, and a guy who is really blurring many different backgrounds and styles from both traditional painting (whatever that means anymore!) to graffiti and street art, ‘lowbrow’, comix and science fiction, as well as collage and installation. Jeff also makes really cool zines. Jeff lives in Riverside and has a nice studio there. Looking forward to seeing what comes next from Jeff.
Sunday night I visited the Miss Rockaway Armada docked on the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, PA. There was group singing, musical performances, and signed waivers so that we could board and walk around the junk/utopia barges. I first heard about Miss Rockaway perhaps 5 years ago when they built junk vessels and sailed down the Mississippi river. This was my first time seeing them up close and it didn’t disappoint. The collective organizes workshops and parties and ‘solicit dialogue about constructive and subversive ways of living.’ For this incarnation, they received support from the Pew Center For Arts and Heritage through the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative. The flotilla was built on Broad Street, towed to a location adjacent to a bridge in the center of the city, and will be deconstructed and placed at the Philadelphia Art Alliance for exhibition.
Reminding me quite a bit of the architecture of burning man, I find a lot of beauty in their ephemeral manifestations. Spending time at art squats in Europe I was continually thinking about the difficulty of establishing and maintaining such a space in the rules-following world of the US. Miss Rockaway is one model of how to create space for community and creativity, but I also think about how it differs as an independent group and how it’s affected when partnering with an arts organization and PEW to receive a grant. Certainly this grant helped them get paid so they can spend time on this project, as well as be able to get a larger audience for what they are doing. At the same time, there are always compromises when accepting money.
What does it say that a major grant-making organization is helping to fund this? I read this as an indicator of the interest of government and organizations and those with money to support more creative spaces for public engagement and use of the commons. They certainly see this as a way to increase public satisfaction , which they probably link to economic success (for example, see The High Line project in New York City).
It’s up to us to create more socially engaged creative spaces, and to make them successful. With or without or independent of support.
A good read for kidz/adults on the philosophy and grind of trying to make a living while making arts and culture.
Black Mask & Up Against The Wall Motherfucker
At last, a full length book on these challenging shit-starters…
Founded in New York City in the mid-1960s by self-educated ghetto kid and painter Ben Morea, the Black Mask group melded the ideas and inspiration of Dada and the Surrealists, with the anarchism of the Durruti Column from the Spanish Revolution. With a theory and practice that had much in common with their contemporaries the San Francisco Diggers, Dutch Provos, and the French Situationists—who famously excommunicated 3 of the 4 members of the British section of the Situationist International for associating too closely with Black Mask—the group intervened spectacularly in the art, politics and culture of their times. From shutting down the Museum of Modern Art to protesting Wall Street’s bankrolling of war, from battling with Maoists at SDS conferences to defending the Valerie Solanas shooting of Andy Warhol, Black Mask successfully straddled the counterculture and politics of the 60s, and remained the Joker in the pack of both sides of “The Movement.”
By 1968 Black Mask dissolved into “The Family” (popularly known as Up Against The Wall Motherfucker—the name to which they signed their first leaflet), which combined the confrontational theater and tactics of Black Mask with a much more aggressively “street” approach in dealing with the police, and authorities. Dubbed a “street gang with analysis” they were reputedly the only white grouping taken seriously by the Black Panther Party, and influenced everyone from the Weathermen to the “hippy” communal movements.
This volume collects the complete ten issues of the paper Black Mask (produced from 1966-1967 by Ben Morea and Ron Hahne), together with a generous collection of the leaflets, articles, and flyers generated by Black Mask, and UATW/MF, the UATW/MF Magazine, and both the Free Press and Rolling Stone reports on UATW/MF. A lengthy interview with founder Ben Morea provides context and color to this fascinating documentary legacy of NYC’s now legendary provocateurs.More here.
In February this year I visited Berlin, Germany (see earlier posts about the graff scene there). One of the places I visited was the Kunsthaus Tacheles (Tacheles Art House), an art squat in the Mitte section of Berlin, Germany. Continuously occupied since February 1990, there have been attempts over the years to evict the art squatters. Today, the building is home to art studios (with artists from all over the world), and until recently a cafe and performance spaces inside and out. The building is covered in graffiti inside and out. Out back, mini shack-like studios were erected, and there was space for performance, and a garden as well with gray-zone (read: unsanctioned) bars. Originally a rougher section of the city, Mitte is now decidedly upscale and the Tacheles property is quite valuable.
The properly is legally owned by HSH Nordbank and 2 other banks, who have attempted many times to remove the artists. The bank loaned money to the investor Fundus Group in 2008 to develop the property, and they allowed the artists to stay in the space until construction would begin, but then Fundus group defaulted on the loan, leaving the title to the bank.
In response to the eviction pressures, artists inside and outside the building had formed coalitions, but with competing aims. In early April last month, artists based in back of the building and on the ground floor (including Cafe Zapata) who had banded together reached an agreement with an anoymous buyer; they accepted a one million euro payout (wow!) to leave.
Berlin’s Department of Cultural Affairs is against the eviction of the artists. Last month a 25-foot concrete walls was erected to annoy the artists and probably to prevent new artists from moving into the squat. I visited Tacheles in February this year, about a month before the outdoor/groundfloor artist deal was struck and 2 months before the concrete barrier was put in place. Above you can see a video I shot showing the grounds. I will be very curious to see the future of this space. Although I was not excited by much of the art created onsite, I was inspired by the space itself and the coming together of so many different people.
The eviction of Kaszino Collective in Budapest
In March this year (2011!), I visited Kaszino, a collective based out of the old jewish section of Budapest, Hungary in what was originally a jewish-owned Casino (thus the name). My friend Marton told me about the place so I headed over from the Artpool art library where he works. When I arrived I found the residents were in the process of being evicted, with much of their things being placed out on the street in front. I helped them remove their things as they tried to figure out what to get rid of and how to save the rest, and I shot photos between trips carrying out heavy space heaters, yurts and boxes of albums.
Throughout my trip I have visited art squats and collectives, VoKus and pirate spaces, communes and street kitchens - Some are legal, some are entirely illegal, and others are in various states of the gray zone between unauthorized and permitted. In Caszino, the residents had technically paid rent but got into trouble over use of utilities and were being kicked out. This is a loss to the community; I can’t think of many other places that would be offering yurt-building workshops (see photos below), weekly board game sessions, and experimental concerts. In addition to Caszino I visited Firehouse (not sure of the Hungarian name), located in an old fire station and now housing residents, studios, gallery, concert hall, cafe, theater, and boutique artist shops. They worked out a deal with the government to pay utilities but not rent for this huge old building. In exchange for use of the building they renovated the building inside and outside, although it was still covered in street art (not so much graff). The new right wing government wanted to evict the residents and sell the building. They asked for applications to buy the space, but the only people who offered to buy it were the current artist residents. In March, the government threatened eviction and thousands of people showed up to protest in a huge demonstration with stage set up on the street. This demonstration/massing/pressure seems to have worked and the inhabitants of Fire Storage are able to stay for now, though the future remains uncertain and when I visited many of the studios seemed to be temporarily closed (though the cafe remained open). I’ll be posting a video about Berlin’s long-running art squat Kunsthalle Tacheles soon. Stay tuned.
Firehouse
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- I'm in Kingston, Jamaica. Checking out the dancehall scene all night, every night. Stone Love crew.
- heading up to nyc from philly on megabus. flight to jamaica on saturday! escaping the winter.Jan 19, 12 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- haha, found my Border Security zine inside the Megawords installation at the Phila Museum of Art!!! http://t.co/bhE4zSDW
- Zoe Strauss: 10 Years opens at the Philly Museum of Art tonite w/ a sold out dance party. Been waiting forever for this!
- Circle Thrift in Kenz/Fishtown Philadelphia has the best (worst?) artwork of any thriftstore. I'd love to curate a show of the collection.
- correction: new year's EVE day, Philadelphia #highlyanticipated2012
- New Year's Day, Philadelphia. 2012 http://t.co/T5Zl619o
- scored a Yashica T3 camera on eBay Germany at a low price that I've been hunting. but I want it teleported to me right now.
- Victory! Boycott forces GoDaddy to drop its support for SOPA http://t.co/JHleHDCd via @arstechnica
- Jewbilee night tonight. We're making 2 kinds of latkes. yeah, and strip dreidel.
- Spotted in the wilds of the intertubes, a new @sarahraraspeaks of Lucky Dragons, Sumi Ink Club, A Ray Array y mucho mas. New twitter y'all.Dec 21, 11 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- @djdstyles are you serious?! nuts.
- @woktherock email some to me
- ha “@creativetimenyc: #calledit RT @TIME: The 2011 Person of the Year is The Protester | http://t.co/ZMfVcOFE #POY2011”
- @samharkham I love the riso print. gonna pick up a copy for hannukah.
- at International House in Philly for a performance by Alvin Lucier. 'I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now' #legend
- I won (and paid for!) 2 photos by Ray Potes at the Space1026 auction. Will go next to @zoestrauss print I bought last yr. @HAMBURGER_EYES
- I'm at the space1026 auction and bidding on Clare Rojas painting is nutsssss. Numbers going up dramatically.
- excited about the upcoming Zoe Strauss billboards to be placed around Philly for her upcoming retrospective at the PMA http://t.co/0doOiW9jDec 04, 11 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Space 1026 art auction preview. Auction! Friday night! Philadelphia! 1026 Arch St! http://t.co/icxYCTTs
