Telic Arts Exchange

Show & Tell: A Chronicle of Group Material
Edited by Julie Ault. Essays by Doug Ashford, Julie Ault, Sabrina Locks, Tim Rollins.
Published by Four Corners Books, London, 2010

In 1980, the artist collaborative Group Material opened a storefront at East 13th Street on New York's Lower East Side, from which they launched a program of socially engaged exhibitions and events. Group Material's original members—which include Julie Ault, Patrick Brennan, Tim Rollins, Beth Jaker, Mundy McLaughlin, and Marybeth Nelson —came from backgrounds in feminism, Marxist theory, design and popular culture, and curated exhibits reflecting this eclecticism, such as It's a Gender Show and The People's Choice—a collection of everyday objects (wedding photos, dolls, even a cigarette-pack collage) gathered from people living on their block. Subsequently deciding not to maintain a space, from 1982 on, the group organized projects in existing alternative and mainstream art institutions and utilized distribution forms such as billboards, newspapers, and public transit advertising. Group Material's projects radically overhauled curatorial thought, setting art alongside artifacts, documentary material and storebought objects, within exhibitions that were oriented around topical social concerns. Projects included Primer (for Raymond Williams), Artists Space, 1982, Subculture, IRT Subway Trains, 1982, Americana, 1985 Whitney Biennial, Inserts, Sunday New York Times, 1987, Democracy, Dia Art Foundation, 1988, and AIDS Timeline, Berkeley University Art Museum, 1989. 

Show & Tell is the first monograph on Group Material. In keeping with the methods and principles used by the collaborative, the book charts the group's  activities, drawing heavily from Group Material’s archive, including original documents, photographs, drawings, correspondence, artifacts, anecdotal information and texts. It includes essays by three long-term members.

Julie Ault is an artist and writer who often assumes curatorial and editorial roles as forms of artistic practice. Ault is one of the cofounders of the artists collaborative Group Material (1979–1996), which explored the relationships between art, activism, and politics. Ault’s exhibitions include: No-Stop City High-Rise: a conceptual equation, in collaboration with Martin Beck, for the 29th Bienal de São Paulo; the exhibition design for Changing Channels: Artists and Television, 1963–1985, Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, 2010, also with Beck; and Wet and Wild: The Spirit of Sister Corita, Signal, Malmö, 2007. Her edited and authored publications include: Show and Tell: A Chronicle of Group Material (2010); Where the Lions Are (2009), in collaboration with Danh Vo; Felix Gonzalez-Torres, (2006); Come Alive: The Spirited Art of Sister Corita (2006); and Alternative Art New York 1965–1985 (2002). Ault has taught at numerous institutions including: Ecole supérieure d’art visuel, Geneva; University of California at Los Angeles; Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson; and Malmö Art Academy; and is currently a PhD candidate in Visual Art at Malmö Art Academy, Lund University.

You are invited to a class at The Public School this weekend:

How to be in a group

facilitated by Geoff Lowe from A Constructed World

Saturday at 5pm

http://la.thepublicschool.org/class/2856

Afterwards, we'll have a small opening reception for the new

show at Distributed Gallery:

A Constructed World

present

One monkey don't stop no show

opening at 7pm

A Constructed World, Geoff Lowe and Jacqueline Riva, say the reason they began working together was to overcome the cultural loneliness of working as an isolated artist. They have been using not-knowing, uncertainty, absences. text and speech, in the company of others, to make a civic work of collection. These attitudes are reflected in events and performative works that include people from diverse backgrounds and levels of experience. A Constructed World's is a shapeshifting practice that is organized from Paris where they live.

The Public School is organizing a 13-day seminar, meeting each day at a different location in Berlin. This seminar takes the form of an open reading group, where the texts discussed each day resonate with the site selected. On 18 July The Public School and The Office will host an event to be held at Salon Populaire. The day will unfold as a series of participatory conversations and workshops.

The first meeting will be Sunday, July 4, with a discussion of the Tiqqun publication, Introduction to Civil War (sections 3 and 4) at the Island of Youth in Treptower Park.

If you aren't in Berlin but would still like to join the reading group, just reply to this email and we'll add you to the email discussion list (but be prepared for as many messages about logistics and weather as about the topics of the day!).

Deadlock: perpetual war, failing economies, the crumbling of education, capitalist realism, our environment in ruin, hostility everywhere.

Resistance? Confrontation? Insurrection?

Exodus: silence, autonomy, occupation, withdrawl, invisibility, friendship.

Organized by Sean Dockray, Caleb Waldorf and Fiona Whitton

day 1 (INSEL DER JUGEND IN TREPTOWER PARK)

INTRODUCTION TO CIVIL WAR [EXCERPTS]
TIQQUN

day 2 (LEIPZIGER PLATZ)

SPECULATIONS ON THE STATIONARY STATE
GOPAL BALAKRISHNAN

day 3 (THIS IS A SECRET)

THE FRIEND
GEORGIO AGAMBEN

day 4 (TRAFFIC ISLAND AT TU ON ERNST REUTER PLATZ)

SUPPORT, PARTICIPATION, AND RELATIONSHIPS TO EQUITY
CELINE CONDORELLI + EYAL WEIZMAN
THEORY OF THE QUASI-OBJECT
MICHEL SERRES

day 5 (TEMPELHOF AIRPORT)

POLITICS OF THE COMMON
MICHAEL HARDT
LIFE IN LIMBO
TURBULENCE EDITORS

day 6 (FUNKHAUS NALEPASTRASSE)

ANIMAL SPIRITS: A BESTIARY OF THE COMMONS [EXCERPT]
MATTEO PASQUINELLI

day 7 (RATHAUS SCHÖNEBERG)

COMMUNIQUE FROM AN ABSENT FUTURE
RESEARCH AND DESTROY
PROLEGOMENA TO ANY FUTURE PHILOSOPHY
NATHAN BROWN, MARIJA CETINIĆ, GOPAL BALAKRISHNAN, AARON BENANAV, JASPER BERNES, CHRIS CHEN, JOSHUA CLOVER, MAYA GONZALEZ, TIMOTHY KREINER, LAURA MARTIN, JASON SMITH, EVAN CALDER WILLIAMS
INTELLECTUALS AND POWER
MICHEL FOUCAULT + GILLES DELUEZE

day 8 (THE END OF THE A102)

VIRTUOSITY AND REVOLUTION: THE POLITICAL THEORY OF EXODUS
PAULO VIRNO

day 9 (ROUSSEAU-INSEL IN THE TIERGARTEN)

SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM
JOAN DIDION
ANALYTICON (FROM SEMINAR XVII)
JACQUES LACAN
THE NEUTRAL (EXCERPT)
ROLAND BARTHES

day 10 (BUS 200)

QUITTING: A CONVERSATION WITH ALEX KOCH ON THE PARADOXES OF DROPPING OUT
STEPHEN WRIGHT + ALEX KOCH WITH A RESPONSE BY BRIAN HOLMES
THE SCENE OF A FLIGHT*
GEORGES PEREC
BOREDOM
SIGFRIED KRACAUER

day 11 (STRANDBAD WANNSEE)

TO HAVE DONE WITH THE MASSACRE OF THE BODY
FELIX GUATTARI
THE AFFECTIVIST MANIFESTO: ARTISTIC CRITIQUE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
BRIAN HOLMES
THE CITY IN THE FEMALE GENDER
LIA MAGALE

day 12 (TEUFELSBERG LISTENING STATION)

READY-MADE ARTIST AND HUMAN STRIKE: A FEW CLARIFICATIONS
CLAIRE FONTAINE
INVISIBLE MAN (PROLOGUE)
RALPH ELLISON

day 13 (APPARTEMENT)

WHO CARES (EXCERPT)
CREATIVE TIME, DOUG ASHFORD, MODERATOR

18 JULY, EVENT AT SALON POPULAIRE: THERE IS NO NOW, NOW
HOSTED BY THE PUBLIC SCHOOL & THE OFFICE

In conjunction with Brian Holmes' participation in "Continental Drift / Control Society / Metamorphosis" on February 27- 28, the Distributed Gallery will be showing videos from the March 4th protests centered on public education.  At each one of the four video locations, one sees footage from near one of the University of California campuses, where students, faculty, and staff have spilled out onto the roads, highways, and other transportation infrastructure.  By walking between Distributed Gallery locations, one walks across the state of California - from Berkeley to Irvine, for instance - to see this simultaneous expression of a growing movement against the privatization of education.

UC Davis at Via Cafe

UC Santa Cruz at Ooga Booga

UC Berkeley at The Public School

UC Irvine at Fong's