"Essex Coda" is a slidecast created for the Essex University PhD seminar September 26-27th, 2013 in Colchester. It concerns a number of artists' collectives, mainly from NYC and USA. Some are mainly involved with the art market, others with institutions. Collectivity is also part of art education.

1. Essex coda –
a short tour
through things that relate
to artists' collaborations
(and I like)
by Alan W. Moore
for Essex University seminar on artists' collectives
September 2013
see:
http://collectiva.wikispaces.com/artcollectivesworkshop
for readings and further information

2. Colin Deland pictured among other East Village art gallery dealers, mid-80s,
Lower East Side, NYC (he ran Vox Populi)
Liza Kirwin called this the “East Village gallery movement”

3. Colin Deland, proprietor American Fine Arts, 1980s & '90s, Soho NYC
He and partner Pat Hearn started the Armory Show art fair as a festival of
independent galleries. (Heh heh.)

4. Art Club 2000 in the early '90s – with Cooper Union professor Doug Ashford,
ex-Group Material member

5. Joseph Kosuth, mentor to students who formed Group Material members in the
late '70s at School of Visual Arts
(site of AWC “Speak Out” in 1969)

8. Bernadette Corporation, this year with retrospectives in two venues, Artists
Space NYC, and ICA London

10. Bruce High Quality Foundation – (also a group of students from Cooper Union)
– this year with a retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum of Art

11. Bruce High Quality Foundation “Brucennial”, exhibition held simultaneously with
the Whitney Biennial

12. Jeffrey Deitch, proprietor of Deitch Projects, wrote about Colab's “Times Square
Show” for Art in America in 1980. He was then an art investment advisor for
Chase Manhattan bank.
http://www.deitch.com/projects/sub.php

13. “Give me product!” Nothing wrong wiith that.
In addition to artists from the “Beautiful Losers” team, Deitch liked production
oriented artists' groups like Dearraindrop

14. Dearraindrop re-created in the Soho NYC gallery space something like what
they had done around Fort Thunder, the legendary artists' factory residence in
Providence, Rhode Island, full of RISDI students

15. something about taking lots of acid... which is often cut with speed...

16. Philadelphia's ICA let their interns play with artists' groups too, in “Locally
Localized Gravity,” the show about collectives –
local stars from space 1026 (the address of a collective studio space of some 30
artists), built an “Ewok-like” structure covered with prints

17. Let's make something! (Production imperative.)
A hallmark of “Locally” was the extensive schedule of workshops, giving artists'
collectives something to do – share their creative processes with visitors to the
museum. The needs of museums' education programs is often driving the
interest in collectives.

18. Red 76 was imported from Portland, Oregon, to add some political flavor to the
“Locally” show. Sam Gould flew in, and had people dress up in funny colonial-
era costumes and declaim 18th century revolutionary homilies around
Philadelphia town...

19. No dish, though, the catalogue PDF online is
pretty good, with lots of participants' statements
– many interesting groups, e.g., the gay
publishing collective LTTR.

20. I was there as an invitee of Basekamp (hyperlinked above), which had earlier on
organized a convention of artists' collectives in their downtown space – their
international networking definitely drove the ICA to do the “Locally” show.

21. "Descent to Revolution" was a curatorial project of James Voorhies, which
involved numerous artists' collectives gathered for some while in Columbus
College of Art & Design in Ohio, in 2009 (Link to many pics in pic above.)

22. Red 76 participated in “Descent,” producing a first iteration of their “Pop Up
Book Academy.” Sam Gould continued his bookish ways last week at the New
York Art Book Fair, making a kind of factory play room in the basement of P.S. 1.
The NYABF was started by AA Bronson when he was director of Printed Matter.

23. Department of Space and Land
Reclamation (DSLR) was a
weekend campaign in 2001 led by
Nato Thompson and Josh Macphee
which “sought to reclaim all the
space, land, and visual culture of
Chicago back to its public citizens.”
Thompson became a curator, first at
Mass MOCA, then at Creative Time;
Macphee founded JustSeeds
graphic artists' cooperative, and
Interference Archive

24. Nato Thompson worked with Gregory Sholette to produce this show at Mass
MOCA in 2003 concentrating on politicized collectives and artists working with
collective formations – the catalogue is online as a color PDF; google: “The
Interventionists - Gregory Sholette”

25. The Interference Archive in Brooklyn hosts many film screenings, talks, and
exhibitions. (Josh McPhee is in the center.)

26. a collaborator with Just Seeds and Toyshop collective, Swoon
produced a sensational collective project for the Venice Biennial in
2009 – “The Swimming Cities of Serenissima"

27. Bureau de recherches surréalistes (Octobre 1924 - Avril 1925)

28. Mark Dion reconstructs the Bureau for
Manchester University exhibition in 2005

29. work by the group Claire Fontaine

31. Chto Delat? group in 2005

32. Chto Delat showing in “Collective Creativity,” Friedrichianum, 2005

33. Chto Delat showing in “Collective Creativity,” Friedrichianum, 2005

34. Chto Delat were an active
presence in the Hamburg
“Subvision” festival in 2009; the
“Activist Club” project is discussed
by Dmitri Vilensky at EIPCP's
“Transversal” website, 2007.

35. Teaching collectivity – “37 Manifestos” show at a Berlin art academy, 2011

36. The influential
Chicago group “
Temporary Services
” put out a book

37. Robby Herbst, one-
time editor of the
“Journal of
Aesthetics and
Protest” (Los
Angeles) produces
a workshop on
collective
movement in NYC
in 2013.

38. video artist Paul
Ryan elaborated
his triadic “yoga of
collaboration”
based on the
theories of
Charles Sanders
Peirce

39. puppets, the classic
collaborative form
of spectacular
protest... at the
“RADICAL
LUNCH”
anti-cuts
demo at
CUNY,
NYC, 2013