AS-AP sponsored 2009 College Art Association Panel

"Mitigating the Obvious Culture and the Search for Broader Humanity:
Bridging the Gap Between Us and Them"

an

Art Spaces Archives Project [AS-AP]

panel to be held at the

College Art Association's 97th Annual Conference

Los Angeles Convention Center

Concourse Meeting Room 405, Level 2

1201 South Figueroa Street

Los Angeles, California



http://www.as-ap.org/newspage.cfm?news_id=52



Art Spaces Archives Project [AS-AP] is pleased to announce a panel
discussion entitled "Mitigating the Obvious Culture and the Search for
Broader Humanity: Bridging the Gap Between Us and Them," to be held at
the College Art Association's 97th Annual Conference on Wednesday,
February 25, 2009, from 12:30 PM to 2:00 PM at the Los Angeles
Convention Center, 1201 South Figueroa Street, Concourse Meeting Room
405, Level 2.

The panel will feature Edgar Arceneaux, Artist / Project Director,
Watts House Project; Cindy Bernard, Artist / Director, The Society for
the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound; Co-Founder, MOCA
Mobilization; Joshua Decter, curator, critic, and Director of the
Master of Public Art Studies: Art in the Public Sphere Program at USC;
and Stephen Saiz, President, Board of Directors, Self Help Graphics and
Art. Moderating the panel will be David Platzker, former Project
Director of AS-AP, a non-profit initiative formed in 2003 to assess and
survey the state of the archives of alternative and avant-garde art
spaces throughout the United States. In 2007, AS-AP partnered with the
Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard (CCS Bard), an exhibition,
education, and research center dedicated to the study of art and
curatorial practices from the 1960s to the present day. David Platkzer
is the president of Specific Object, a New York City gallery and
bookstore.

Over the last five years Art Spaces Archives Project [AS-AP] --
www.as-ap.org -- has presented panels at the annual College Art
Association Conferences that have addressed archives by investigating
institutional holdings, living and defunct alternative arts
organizations, and first hand narratives of creation and secondary
investigations into the alternative / avant-garde movement. The 2009
panel will explore the impact of visual arts groups, programs, and
public installations upon groups not necessarily considered likely
targets by the contemporary art establishment. Transcripts of previous
AS-AP presentations at College Art Association Conferences can be found
at: http://as-ap.org/resource.cfm?resource_id=45

AS-AP has actively spoken about "spaces," or structures of presentation
-- alternative spaces, performance spaces, printed spaces, artistic
collaborations, and arts networks. AS-AP has discussed access,
acquisition, preservation and the use of archival materials as a direct
means of understanding our cultural capital. However, in doing so AS-AP
has also emphasized that the notion of "our" is an endemic issue. That
is while "our" spaces are intended to be some form of alternative to
the status quo of artistic presentation the audience remains a subset
of people already attuned to contemporary art. More specifically, our
audience is comprised of individuals predisposed to alternative modes
of address or presentation.

Within "our" community there have been ongoing dialogs regarding
education and / or outreach to broaden the understanding of alternative
movements, essentially as a means of indoctrination with an underlying
desire to bring new visitors to "our" spaces on an ongoing basis. This
broadening of audiences has multiple goals of increasing understanding,
soliciting new constituencies, and broadening fiscal stability. The
underlying methodology in this endeavor is most often framed as
bringing new people into the spaces themselves, and less frequently
moving beyond the construct, or confines, of "our" spaces.

For this year's CAA panel our panelists will be addressing alternatives
to alternative spaces -- artists, arts organizations, and public
sculpture (or private sculpture in public spaces). The panel will
question how or if "alternative alternative" arts groups can
successfully integrate or infiltrate into society or culture beyond the
confines of museum, gallery, "white cube," or other defining spaces
that have previously been codified as recognized venues for art. How
can arts groups activate society, culture, or individuals who are
either outside the artworld or perhaps antagonistic to the subversive
potential of the arts within their communities? Are there concert
examples of successes and failures? What can be done to bridge the gap
between us and them or should the search for broader humanity be
curtailed and declared a failure?


ABOUT THE PANELISTS

Edgar Arceneaux is the Director of the Watts House Project (WHP) an
artist-driven urban revitalization project centered around the historic
Watts Towers in Watts, California. WHP is a large-scale
artwork-as-urban-development engaging art and architecture as a
catalyst for expanding and enhancing community. The neighborhood
surrounding the Watts Towers presents a stark contrast to the
well-maintained aesthetics of this national monument, and currently the
residents have limited means to capitalize socially or economically on
this cultural currency. WHP operates with the understanding that social
and economic challenges are tied to basic ecological problems and aims
to develop an incremental, nuanced and sustainable model that marries
ecological concerns and practices with social and cultural remedies.
Arceneaux is also an artist living and working in Los Angeles. His
multivalent practice includes drawings, collaborative installations,
community-based social sculpture initiatives and large-scale film
projects. His recent solo shows include "The Agitation of Expansion" at
the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia (2008), "Snake River" at the
REDCAT Gallery in Los Angeles (2006), and "The Alchemy of
Comedy...Stupid" at ArtPace in San Antonio, Texas, Susanne Vielmetter Los
Angeles Projects (2006). Arceneaux is currently included in the 2008
California Biennial and a one-person exhibition at Albion, London. The
Watts House Project website is www.wattshouseproject.org

Cindy Bernard is known for photographs and projections that explore the
relationship between cinema, memory, and landscape including the widely
exhibited series "Ask the Dust." She is a recipient of grants and
fellowships from the J. Paul Getty Trust Fund for the Visual Arts, Art
Matters Inc., California Arts Council, Anonymous Was a Woman, and the
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Bernard is creator of the
experimental music series "sound." as well as the founder and director
of The Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound
(SASSAS). More recently, Bernard co-founded the advocacy group MOCA
Mobilization, which utilized social networking to rally support for the
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. SASSAS' website is
www.sassas.org and Bernard's own site is: www.sound2cb.com

Joshua Decter is a critic, curator, art historian and theorist. He is a
regular contributor to Artforum, and has organized exhibitions at PS1
in New York, The Center for Curatorial Studies Museum at Bard, The
Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Apex Art in New York, The
Kunsthalle Vienna, the Santa Monica Museum of Art, among other
institutions. Decter has been an advisor to the inSite (Art Practices
in the Public Domain San Diego/Tijuana) organization since 2003, and
was a curatorial interlocutor for the inSite_05 San Diego/Tijuana
Interventions exhibition project. He has organized numerous public
conferences, including "The Situational Drive: Complexities of Public
Sphere Engagement," in collaboration with inSite San Diego/Tijuana and
Creative Time, New York, presented at The Cooper Union, NY, in May
2007. From 2003 to 2007, Decter was a member of the graduate faculty
and graduate committee at Bard's Center for Curatorial Studies. He has
also taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York, UCLA, Art Center
College of Design, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As
the Director of the Master of Public Art Studies: Art in the Public
Sphere Program since the fall of 2007, Decter is transforming this
graduate program into a platform for the critical examination of
complexities of community engagement, modes of collaborative and
participatory art production, the historical and contemporary
conditions of site/location-specificity, among other topics. The Master
of Public Art Studies: Art in the Public Sphere Program's website is:
roski.usc.edu/pas/

Stephen Saiz is the president of the Board of Directors for Self Help
Graphics & Art (SHG), a nationally recognized center for Latino arts
that develops and nurtures artists in printmaking. Saiz, a Los Angeles
native, has been a patron of SHG since the early 90's and a Board
member since 2005. Saiz received his Bachelor's Degrees in Psychology
and Mass Communications from the University of California at Berkeley
and holds an MBA from the University of Southern California's Marshall
School of Business. Saiz, who currently works for the Walt Disney
Company, brings more than 10 years of business experience to the SHG
Board. Over the past 30 years, Self Help Graphics and Art has emerged
as the leading visual arts cultural center which serves the
predominantly Chicano/Mexicano community of Los Angeles. In that time,
SHG has earned national acclaim for its programs and services, which
promote the contribution of Chicano/Latino art and culture to the
American landscape. Located in the heart of East Los Angeles, SHG has
been a popular and vital community resource for the creation and
presentation of art and culture. Self Help Graphics and Art's website
is: www.selfhelpgraphics.com

David Platzker is the former Project Director of AS-AP and the
President of Specific Object, a New York City gallery and bookstore.
From 1998 through 2004 Platzker was the Executive Director of the New
York City 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" (International Print Center New York
and 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 Raisonne 1958-1996" (Madison Art
Center & 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 has also curated numerous
contemporary art exhibitions and commissioned works by artists
including Larry Clark, Erin Cosgrove, Meg Cranston, General Idea, Jenny
Holzer, Reverend Jen, Allan Kaprow, among many others. Specific
Object's website is: www.www.specificobject.com


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
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 help
preserve, present, and protect the archival heritage of living and
defunct for- and not-for-profit spaces of the "alternative" or
"avant-garde" movements of the 1950s to the present by compiling a
national index of alternative arts spaces, assessing preservation
needs, and helping to establish best practices for contemporary art
related archives. AS-AP's website, www.as-ap.org, serves as an online
resource for information pertaining to collections and repositories
containing the archives of the avant-garde, tools to assist in
archiving, and other aids for scholars interested in alternative or
avant-garde movements.


About the Center for Curatorial Studies

In January 2007 AS-AP merged with the Center for Curatorial Studies at
Bard. CCS Bard is an exhibition, education, and research center
dedicated to the study of art and curatorial practices from the 1960s
to the present day. In addition to the CCS Bard Galleries and the newly
inaugurated Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard houses the Marieluise Hessel
Collection of more than 2,000 contemporary works, as well as an
extensive library and curatorial archive that are accessible to the
general public. The Center's two-year graduate program in curatorial
studies is specifically designed to deepen students' understanding of
the intellectual and practical tasks of curating contemporary art.
Exhibitions are presented year-round in the CCS Bard Galleries and
Hessel Museum of Art, providing students with the opportunity to work
with world-renowned artists and curators. The exhibition program and
the collection also serve as the basis for a wide-range of public
programs and activities exploring art and its role in contemporary
society.

For more information please contact Ann Butler, Project Director,
AS-AP, [log in to unmask] or call 845.758.7566

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