You can download it here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?gzjemo3nozo
FIRST ISSUE HERE
In art, artist, interview, review, revolution, sheffield on February 11, 2009 at 6:26 pmHOST: Artist Talk
In art, artist, sheffield on February 8, 2009 at 3:58 pmThe complete reviews will be on here soon.
Keep checking back.
Informal Interview with artist Gregory Sholette
In art, artist, collective, interview, revolution on February 8, 2009 at 3:54 pmThis is the full interview from the Artist/Thinker Column.
EDITOR A NOTES: Greg Sholette is an artist and founding member of PADD (Political Art Documentation and Distribution) and the influencial artist collective REPO History. In addition to his work with collectives, Sholette is a curator, writer and commentator on topics of activist art and art theory. Currently he is Assistant Professor at Queens College [CUNY] NYC.
We chose Greg for our first issue because he, and artists working in collectives, represents the possibilities for ways and forms of prompting the revolution as creative practitioners. In addition to this, we’d like to flesh out the history of collective groups which seem to be undermined and missed out of the bigger picture of modern/contemporary art history and academia.
EA: Dear Greg! Thank you for getting back in touch and giving me the opportunity to ask you a few questions!
GS: Hi Editor A - just back in town and here are some short responses for you (thanks for more infor on your work and on Space – next time I am in UK I will have to visit it!)
EA: Would I be correct in saying that PAD/D thought that it would be good to have a separate reading group along side the political active side of the group? If so, when was the reading group introduced – near the beginning of PAD/D, the middle or close to the end of PAD/D?
GS: Actually no, the reading group was generated by a few of the younger members of PAD/D who felt that there was not enough discussion of theory in the group. Initially we met at Jim Murray’s apartment on Upper West Side of Manhattan (were I now live) and then moved to my apartment on Lower East Side (7th and ave B). So there was honestly some inside tension about the Reading Group for a while – even one more senior member of PAD/D suggesting it was a “breakaway” faction at one point! The group began early, in 81, shortly after I circulated a “critical” paper about the lack of theory in the group entitled “Fear of Formalism, or if I see one more image of Ronald Regan dressed as a vampire I will go back to painting landscapes.” Or something provocative to that effect (I was of course much younger then).
EA: In your reading group, was it a small amount of members? – so like a core PAD/D group member count?
GS: There was about eight to twelve members at any one time and it ranged from active members of PAD/D as well as people not involved in the group at all – exactly how we ––and yes, we were an official committee of PAD/D–– were supposed to relate to the larger group was never really worked out – either by us in the Reading Group or PAD/D itself (this of course underscored the tension – but in the end we all got along pretty well)
EA: In PAD/D what theorists where you all interested in (apart from the obvious such as Marx, Debord, Theodor etc) , that helped you develop and helped inspire/ produce the ‘events’ that PAD/D created.
GS: well, in fact we did not read much situationist theory (except debord’s society of the spectacle) we read Marx first book of capital, much of the Frankfurt School including Marcuse, Adorno, as well as Benjamin and Brecht – we read Tony Negri’s first book in english Marx Beyond Marx and a huge range of things from texts on art and science, Freud and Lacan, Derrida (I was very interested in him beginning in 84 when grammatology was translated into english), somewhere I am sure I have a list of the books and essays (or most of them at least)
EA: In the c-m-l [ Caramel ]interview (read it here: http://www.c-m-l.org/?q=node/40) , you mentioned that there is a “growing interest in Situationism and interventionist art by mainstream cultural institutions and academia”, why do you think this is? This is to say, why now, why not the 80’s and 90’s?
GS: that is a very good question Editor A – why now ? – the best answer I can give you is in this text
http://magazines.documenta.de/frontend/article.php?IdLanguage=1&NrArticle=643
in brief, I think the connection has to do with the ideology of the free market enterprise culture – but I would be curious what your take is on your question.
EA: Do you think this is at the detriment to collective activist artist groups and interventionist artists – or more of an opportunity?
GS: I am not sure how you mean detriment and opportunity in this context – both always seem to exist in different measures under particular historical/political/economic circumstances – but if you mean situationist thinking is most adapted to our moment then yes, I would say it is a close fit – the detriment might come in if people just assume that this is natural somehow, as opposed to the product of actual forces in society…
EA: In the 1980’s, the whole unemployment from the loss of manufacturing and a swift change to a service sector encouraged the process of gentrification in NYC was one of the main contexts by which PAD/D came together – along side many many other collective groups around a similar time.
GS: hmmm – those changes – global shifts in employment and the speculation on housing - might have fueled some of PAD/D and other groups like COLAB (ABC No Rio) or Fashion MOda or Group Material – but there was no real knowledge of this in any profound way – at least not until maybe the mid 1980s – but your right it was the context in which these groups developed
EA: Since we are in a similar situation with the economic recession credit crunch world wide, with the service sector going under and arts councils and funding bodies cutting their funding – do you think that there maybe a somewhat nostalgic, yet crucial, increase in collective artist groups with political and social ideals?
GS: from my limited research artists (and activists and cultural people) appear to “collectivize” all the time – whether to promote a particular kind of art (the SPIRAL group in the US were African American and mostly abstract artists in the 60s for example) but I would agree that he shape such group work takes on at any time is shaped in response to these broader socio-economic forces – I think before I would use the term nostalgic therefore, I would try to separate which groups/artists are recycling the past for its own sake (if that works as a very short definition of nostalgia), and those genuinely looking to the past for answers to present day problems
GS: [.....] two other texts fyi:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2479/is_3_27/ai_58470201
the second essay – which is one of my first in fact – seeks to use the inner tensions of the collective as a window onto the broader social situation the group forms within, as well as the creative engine of sorts that drives the groups work (and often ends up consuming it, the group, at some point)
EA: Thank you so much for this Greg! Thanks for all your time so far. I hope that this email finds you well.
GS: thanks, yes, well Editor A – all the best back – greg
(This interview was conducted on 24th Jan 2009)
