Collabarts.org

Collabarts.org was established in December 2005 as a resource and platform for artists, theorists and art students setting out to offer a source of information, dissemination and discussion about collaborative art practice. The site hosts a number of commissioned essays and interviews including some important published and as yet unpublished essays on collaboration that have been generously contributed to the site by their writers. There are also a large number of links to relevant articles and artists’ websites. In addition the timeline for collaborative art practice sets out to place artistic collaboration in a historical perspective in relation to cultural and political events.

Site

Experimental pedagogy and art practice in Mexico

By Sofía Olascoaga
Published February 1, 2010

This DISPATCH addresses the case of a growing scene at the intersection of education, pedagogy and art in Mexico.

At this particular time there seems to be a collective, urgent demand for alternative strategies that provide new relationships of knowledge production and spaces for dialogue and encounter.

In recent years, artist-led, self-organized, institutional and private educational initiatives in the contemporary art scene have opened up an active debate on the intersections of education and art. A number of artist-instigated educational projects have emerged, many of which are independently staged, while others are institutionally framed, and some privately funded.

Within the contemporary art circuit, through many differences regarding perspectives, positions and objectives, universities, museums, and independent spaces in Mexico openly address questions and activate speculation on the relationship between education and art. As yet, there is no consensus on the concepts (and specific uses) of education and pedagogy, but proposals from artists and scholars test various ideas and approaches. Keep Reading…

school for non-productive learning

school for non-productive learning is a 3-day school project in rum46. We have lectures, workshops, and dinners in the program. The school hours are from 3 – 10 pm with critical and artistic exchange between academics, artists and the audience.

By this project rum46 hope to discuss what it means to be an educated citizen in today’s society. The organization of schools and educational institutions has during the years been associated with the idea of productivity and curriculum. The project examines new ways of educational practices.

The school will be followed by an exhibition presenting works by the participants. The Canadian collective Instant Coffee will alter the premesis of rum46 for school for non-productive learning.

Instant Coffee

rum46

The Community Museum Project

groups_and_spaces_librarcardgroups_and_spaces_librarcard

A museum needs not be an intimidating and elitist institution. The Community Museum Project believes that a museum can be a means to represent everyday living and values. Through the collection and interpretation of artifacts and visual evidence, indigenous creativity, visual culture and public culture can be explored.
The Community Museum Project focuses not on establishing conventional “musum” hardware but carrying out flexible exhibition and public programs, often within specific community settings.

Through this process the Community Museum Project aims to nurture a platform to articulate personal experiences and under-represented histories. It can also be an occasion to facilitate the participation of the public and cross-disciplinary collaboration. To us, the word “Community”has three connotations: subject matter, settings and creative public interface.
Community Museum Project was founded in 2002 in Hong Kong by Howard Chan (art curator), Siu King-chung (design educator), Tse Pak-chai and Phoebe Wong (cultural researchers).

Site

The Bronx Blue Bedroom Project

BBBP is an artist-run project located in the bedroom of the artist Blanka Amezkua in Mott Haven, South Bronx. Her intention is to create an intimate art space where contemporary artists can exhibit their work in a setting that differs radically from the already established art venues. Artists have the opportunity to participate in BBBP for the duration of one month. Blanka asks that the participating artists commit to offering a workshop in the local community, or by preparing a dinner to be shared with other artists and individuals interested in the arts, during their show.

BBBP encourages the participating artists to use this exchange as an asset for their continued artistic growth. Artist eligibility is based on the quality of the work and the individual’s commitment to the local community.

Site

municipalWORKSHOP

The municipalWORKSHOP is grassroots creative laboratory and a division of M12. We are dedicated to the creation and facilitation of contemporary public art projects, which cover a wide spectrum of disciplines, configurations, and locales. We work in collaboration with municipalities, community groups, and community members in hopes of creating more creative and dynamic cities and townships.

Site

Peter Walsh

In September of 2003 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, English-speaking U.S. artists Deidre Hoguet and Peter Walsh created a series of street actions that focused on the relationship between languages and power. The project featured 13 separate performances, with each artist interacting directly with hundreds of people, a gallery exhibition at P74, artist lectures and two public discussions (one at the 16 Beaver Group in Manhattan and a second in Ljubljana). The English word “tongue” and the Slovenian word “jezik” can both – with slightly different connotations – mean either language or the actual tongue in your mouth.
With the collective help of the citizens of Ljubljana, Peter Walsh attempted the impossible: learning to speak and write Slovene in just three weeks (photo gallery).

Site

Kits for an Encounter

Kits for an Encounter is an exhibition that examines artists’ kits that instigate or trouble the notion of a (social) encounter. Providing the equipment needed to initiate a situation, kits can be characterized by their promissory quality, embodying potential and containing the possibility for transformation. ‘Wearable Mosque’ by Azra Aksamija unfolds from a fashionable women’s semi-formal wear into a minimal mosque which the artist-architect spatio-temporally demarcates as a prayer rug for two, head covering, compass, and prayer beads. Aksamija, born in Sarajevo and living between Austria, Bosnia, and the United States, comments that the wearable mosque “explores various ways of negotiating spatial relationships between Islamic traditions and modernity in the US and Western Europe.” An allegory about the impossible fulfillment of an imagined identity, Noam Toran’s ‘Objects for Lonely Men’ is a film that depicts a male protagonist vaguely resembling Jean Paul Belmondo’s character in Godard’s 196o film classic “Breathless (Au bout de Souffle).” Both likeness and difference is heightened as the protagonist interacts with a kit whose components, a steering wheel, mannequin head, dinner, cigarettes, allow him to simulate the filmic narrative from the comfort of his living room.

Many kits provide the sculptural and performative components needed to frame a social encounter, functioning as the control to unforeseen variables. Lize Mogel’s ‘Public Park: Personal Planning Kit’ contains instructions and signage so that any denizen can turn their private property (from a parking space to a front lawn) into public space. Judi Werthein’s ‘Brinco’ is an athletic sneaker equipped with a flashlight, compass, painkillers to enable those illegally crossing the US-Mexico border. Sold at a hop boutique shoe store or to art collectors, the proceeds support the free distribution of the ‘crossing trainers’ to border crossers.

By implying a situation, many kits either invite, enable, question, or obviate the future. Limor Fried’s ‘Minty MP3′, a portable listening device made from simple electronic parts and an empty Altoid mint case, presents a $50 do-it-yourself alternative to an iPod that questions the relationship between fetish and access. Janice Kerbel’s Deadstar (2006) is a city plan for a ghost town with all the necessary information for its realisation. Replete with topographic and geological data, water, vegetation and buildings, the city plans prominently feature the graveyard. With neither roads nor hospitals, the city is an area so poorly planned for human living that it is doomed to die before it’s been built. Vahida Ramujkic’s ‘Assimil’ is a text book whose exercises and lesson plans ‘teach’ non-European Union citizens how to properly enter and assimilate into the EU.

Site

Provisions Learning Project

Provisions Learning Project is a social change learning resource that amplifies compelling voices that challenge and redefine the mainstream. Its library and online services are a trusted source for alternative perspectives on a wide range of social change topics and its innovative exhibitions and public projects strongly engage the arts as a powerful means of exploring social issues.

Site

byproducts: On the Excess of Embedded Art Practices

byproduct examines artist’s projects whose artfulness lies in building micro-worlds within other non- artworld systems. While parasitically reliant on the socioeconomic structure and symbolic order of other dominant systems, these artworks or “byproducts” — exploit loopholes, surpluses, and exceptions in order to affirm individual agency and complicate the mechanisms of their dominant “host.” As pivots or turning points between art and other sectors, these works function as carriers for meaning across disciplines.

While responding to 20th century precedents that investigate the relationship between artists and industry, ‘Byproducts’ suggests these outlines and vocabulary for evaluating relevant analytic criteria such as the outcome, duration, retention of a critical voice, assimilation or reconciliation, etc. As a book responding to the emergent genre of ‘interventionism’ in contemporary artists’ practices, byproducts shifts focus away from the artist’s singular, anarchic gesture and instead towards the integration of art into everyday life.

Site