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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