Fillip: Contemporary Art and Criticism

In the context of decreased public funding for the arts in North America and Europe as well as the nearly non-existent financial support elsewhere for the arts, ad hoc, small-scale, temporary, and often nomadic institutions created by artists have taken root in unanticipated sites, appearing in domestic or appropriated spaces that rely upon the collected resources and relationships of artist networks for their survival.

In the context of decreased public funding for the arts in North America and Europe as well as the nearly non-existent financial support elsewhere for the arts, ad hoc, small-scale, temporary, and often nomadic institutions created by artists have taken root in unanticipated sites, appearing in domestic or appropriated spaces that rely upon the collected resources and relationships of artist networks for their survival.

During its co-emergence with countercultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s, artist-run initiatives in North America provided a space for the presentation and legitimization of experimental work and for the assertion of socially progressive and politically radical ideas and questions.

The histories of artist-run initiatives inextricably belong to the sociopolitical contexts in which they develop, but a purely historical review of these initiatives and contexts elides their critical significance to artistic production, presentation, and discourse even while these histories are yet to be written, revised, and completed.

In 1986, Walter Benjamin delivered a lecture on Piet Mondrian at the Marxist Center in Ljubljana.

As artists have taken on the creation of artist-run organizations or have turned themselves or their practices into institutions, their roles have expanded, taking on the work of curator, administrator, critic, educator, publicist, and so forth.

Artist-run culture has emerged in part as an alternative to the market and the limitations market-driven priorities have placed on the artist in terms of creative autonomy.

Melanie Gilligan presents a talk that that explores the potential agency of affect within a capitalist system in crisis.

Hadley+Maxwell present It seemed like a good idea at the time, a performative lecture.

Antonia Hirsch introduces Intangible Economies, a forum that speculatively investigates the interrelated nature of economy and affect.

Tania Bruguera presents her past work within the context of a discussion of the creation of civic space through art. This talk was originally presented on March 27, 2010, as part of Making Space, a conference on art, culture, and publics organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery. Tania Bruguera is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in behavior art, performance, installation and video.

Tamsin Dillon presents the history and recent work of the Art on the Underground programme, an art series produced by the London Underground.

Barbara Cole presents four projects for public space that resinate beyond the remnants of their physical presence.

Dear Silvia… July 2009 consists of all e-mail messages received by artist Silvia Kolbowski during July 2009 from many non-profit political organizations, exhorting her to attend to a wide variety of urgent issues.

Deep in the idea of value—before it can become use or exchange—is a notion of delay that supports classical object-oriented art production.