nonsite

March 3, 2009 1:06 pm

March 3, 2009: Art Spaces Archive Project

David Platzker, the former director of  of Printed Matter who now runs Specific Object organized an great panel: Mitigating the Obvious Culture and the Search for Broader Humanity: Bridging the Gap between Us and Them.  He spoke about the Art Spaces Archive Project which he started and is now housed at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. ASAP archives the history and the best practices of the Alternative Movement from 1950 to the present throughout the United States.

It sounds like a great resource- too bad the focus is so narrow. It would be great to see it expanded to include the rich history of artist run galleries in Canada going back to the mid 1970s like the Western Front in Vancouver, A Space in Toronto and Eye Level Gallery which started in 1974 in Halifax.

eyelevel

March 2, 2009 2:58 pm

March 2, 2009: Social Movement Cultures

Wednesday morning at the CAA was the best of the past three days. Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960 to Now, an exhibition curated by Dara Greenwald and Josh MacPhee that was first shown at Exit Art in fall 2008 and is currently on at the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University.

This exhibition documents the relationship between social chance and cultural production, showing evidence of social movement culture by presenting the ephemera from events, protests, grass roots movements, social projects that are more than often a small scale response to a local situation, and often happen ‘off the grid’.

In a broader sense they were asking how do we engage in the social realities that we live in and arguing for importance of social  protest. They were questioning the relationship between the artworld and the larger forums of social protest and reflecting on the effectiveness of both.

European social movement groups from the late 1960s and early 1970s like Provo and Kabouters who both active in Amsterdam created real social change- like their white bicycle programme which provided for free bicycles throughou the city and were ahead of their time through these and other  social and political activities.

« Next Entries