Art Spaces Archives Project

Announces a Panel Discussion

"Activist Arts Organizations of the 1970s and 1980s:

Research Opportunities for Scholars"

to be held at the

College Art Association's 94th Annual Conference

Hynes Convention Center, Plaza Level, Room 112

Boston, Massachusetts

February 23, 2006, 5:30 to 7:00 PM



The Art Spaces Archives Project [AS-AP] is pleased to announce a  
panel discussion entitled "Activist Arts Organizations of the 1970s  
and 1980s: Research Opportunities for Scholars," to be held at the  
College Art Association's 94th Annual Conference on February 23,  
2006, from 5:30 to 7:00 PM in Boston at the Hynes Convention Center,  
Plaza Level, Room 112.

The panel will feature Linda Frye Burnham, Dr. Margo Machida, and  
Steven Englander. Moderating the panel will be David Platzker, the  
Project Director of AS-AP, a non-profit initiative founded in 2003 to  
assess and survey the state of the archives of art spaces throughout  
the United States.

The presenters will investigate the history of three formative  
organizations: High Performance Magazine, Godzilla: The Asian  
American Art Network, and ABC No Rio, and discuss what each of these  
organizations prompted, how they interacted within a community, how  
they co-existed, melded into, or changed a broader constituency.  
Additionally, the panel will discuss the role their archival  
materials play in telegraphing, or revealing, underlying historic  
information about these organizations and the state of these archives.

The goal of the panel is two fold: first to encourage emerging  
scholars to engage with the avant-garde / alternative organizations  
of the period, and secondly to highlight three selected organizations  
and to pair an emerging scholar with each. Ultimately, each scholar  
will conduct research using an organization's physical archival  
materials; perform oral histories with founders of the organization,  
and publish, on AS-AP's website, the conclusion of the research and  
oral histories.

In Spring 2006, AS-AP will invite proposals from emerging scholars to  
conduct the research with High Performance, Godzilla, and ABC No Rio.  
The three chosen individuals will conduct on-site work in 2007 with  
the edited oral history to be published by the close of that year.  
Each AS-AP Scholar will be provided with a $2,500 stipend as well as  
costs associated with travel, editing and publishing of the work.

AS-AP is using the panel as a template for emerging scholars to  
engage with the rich history of the avant-garde / alternative arts  
movement. Central to this investigation is the utilization of  
archival materials; the identification and preservation of which is  
fundamental to AS-AP's mission.

Linda Frye Burnham will reflect on the history of High Performance  
magazine (1978-1998) and the changes it tracked in the alternative  
arts movement during those years. High Performance followed the  
cutting edge from performance art through feminism, multiculturalism,  
activism and community-based art. High Performance was also closely  
engaged in the so-called Culture Wars of the early 1990s. After the  
demise of High Performance, Burnham and her co-editor, Steven  
Durland, wrote about these changes in The Citizen Artist: 20 Years of  
Art in the Public Arena (New York: Critical Press, 1998), and they  
have carried on their investigations at the Community Arts Network on  
the Web: www.communityarts.net. A traveling exhibition about the  
first five years of High Performance -- along with an award-winning  
essay in College Art Association's Art Journal -- were created by  
historian Jenni Sorkin in 2003 [Art Journal, vol. 62, no. 2 (Summer  
2003), pp. 36-51. High Performance's archive resides at the Getty  
Research Institute in Los Angeles.

Margo Machida will discuss the formative years of Godzilla: The Asian  
American Art Network, from her perspective as a co-founder of this  
collectively-run group of New York City-based artists, writers, and  
curators. She will examine the period in which it arose, and what  
distinguishes Godzilla from groups that emerged in the context of  
1970s Asian American arts activism. Founded in 1990 and active for  
over a decade, Godzilla was conceived as a pan-ethnic, cross- 
disciplinary, and multigenerational forum aimed at fomenting a wide- 
ranging dialogue in Asian American visual art. Over its "lifetime" it  
sponsored art exhibitions, public symposia, and open slide viewings  
for new artists; published a newsletter that featured emerging  
critical writing and news from artists across the country; and also  
served as a platform for arts advocacy. Godzilla's archive is housed  
at New York University's Fales Library, www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/ 
research/fales/

Steven Englander will discuss the history of the Lower East Side arts  
center ABC No Rio founded on New Year's Day, 1980, in New York City.  
He'll address the changes the organization has undergone over the  
years, and how the spirit and values that animated its early days  
continue to inform No Rio as its facilities, projects and programs  
have expanded and evolved. Since its founding No Rio has been host to  
a wide range of artistic expression dealing with war, homelessness,  
drugs, punk rock, performance art, spoken word and poetry, sex,  
violence, and the politics of housing and real estate, among much else.


About Art Spaces Archives Project

Art Spaces Archives Project [AS-AP] is a non-profit initiative  
founded by a consortium of alternative art organizations, including  
Bomb Magazine, College Art Association, Franklin Furnace Archive, New  
York State Council on the Arts [NYSCA], New York State Artist  
Workspace Consortium, and The Skowhegan School of Painting and  
Sculpture, with a mandate to help preserve, present, and protect the  
archival heritage of living and defunct for- and not-for-profit  
spaces of the "alternative" or "avant-garde" movement of the 1950s to  
the present throughout the United States.

With funding provided by NYSCA, The National Endowment for the Arts,  
and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, AS-AP has a  
mandate to begin the documenting process by rooting out both a  
national index of the avant-garde-assessing the needs for archiving  
and preservation-and helping to establish universal standards for  
archiving the avant-garde.

AS-AP's belief is beyond simply identifying the whereabouts of  
centers of activity. There is an underlying need to assess,  
catalogue, and preserve important formative materials for study by  
historians with a critical distance from the creation of the material  
itself.

AS-AP's website -- www.as-ap.org -- is a virtual resource and finding  
aid for locating the places and spaces of alternative and avant-garde  
activity. A central location for information pertaining to reservoirs  
of archives, tools to assist in archiving, and other aids for  
scholars interested in the alternative or avant-garde movement in the  
United States as well as for the locations of activity themselves.


About the Panelists

Linda Frye Burnham is a writer who founded High Performance in 1978  
in Los Angeles and served as its editor through 1985 and its co- 
editor 1995-1998. She holds an MFA in Writing from University of  
California at Irvine. Burnham also co-founded the 18th Street Arts  
Complex and Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, California;  
Art in the Public Interest in Saxapahaw, North Carolina; and the  
Community Arts Network on the World Wide Web. She has served as a  
staff writer for Artforum, contributing editor for The Drama Review  
and arts editor for the Independent Weekly of North Carolina. High  
Performance's website is: www.apionline.org/hp.html

Margo Machida is an educator, independent curator, researcher, and  
writer specializing in Asian American art and visual culture. She  
holds a Ph.D. in American Studies, and has a joint appointment in Art  
History and Asian American Studies at the University of Connecticut.  
Most recently she co-edited a major anthology of new critical writing  
entitled Fresh Talk / Daring Gazes: Conversations on Asian American  
Art (University of California Press, 2003). Dr. Machida has recently  
completed a book for Duke University Press, Art, Asian America, and  
the Social Imaginary: A Poetics of Positionality.

Beginning in 1995 Steven Englander has led the campaign to resist New  
York City's effort to evict ABC No Rio. Using the courts, public and  
political support, and finally direct action, the eviction was  
prevented, and the City, surprisingly, then offered the building to  
ABC No Rio for acquisition and renovation. Englander was hired as  
Director in 1999, and has overseen No Rio's transformation from  
storefront gallery / performance space to arts center with four  
floors of resources and facilities for area artists and activists. No  
Rio anticipates taking title to the building this winter, and  
renovation construction is expected to begin towards the end of 2006.  
ABC No Rio's website is www.abcnorio.org

David Platzker is the Project Director of Art Spaces Archives  
Project. From 1998 through 2004 he was the Executive Director of the  
non-profit institution Printed Matter, Inc. He is also the co-author,  
and co-curator -- with Elizabeth Wyckoff -- of Hard Pressed: 600  
Years of Prints and Process (New York: International Print Center New  
York & Hudson Hills Press, 2000); and -- with Richard H. Axsom -- the  
book and exhibition entitled Printed Stuff: Prints, Posters, and  
Ephemera by Claes Oldenburg: A Catalogue Raisonné 1958-1996 (Madison,  
Wisconsin: Madison Art Center & New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1997),  
which was awarded the George Wittenborn Award for Best Art  
Publication of 1997 by the Art Libraries Society of North America.  
Platzker is also the president of Specific Object, an on-line arts  
bookstore.

For additional information regarding the panel or AS-AP please  
contact David Platzker at [log in to unmask] or at (212) 330-7688.

For additional information regarding the College Art Association's  
2006 Annual Conference please visit CAA's website: http:// 
conference.collegeart.org/2006/

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