SHOW REVIEWED: The DAA at the Art Gallery in City Hall

The Department of Alternative Affairs

The Department of Alternative Affairs (DAA) is the brainchild of artists representative of three collectives or alternative spaces or artist-run organizations located in North Philadelphia. These spaces are Little Berlin, extra extra, and FLUXspace. The DAA existed physically for roughly one month (June 24th-July 29th) as an office space inside the Art Gallery at City Hall, Philadelphia (Room 116, East Portal, Market St. entrance). The exhibition in form of department, takes place in three places; In the physical Art Gallery (office), on the internet (website, ustream, and twitter feed) and in the minds of the people who stop to think about it.

The three artist-organizations were contacted by Tu Huynh, City Hall Exhibitions Manager for the Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy (OACCE) in April of 2011 and asked to collaborate on an exhibition for June of the same year. The three groups viewed the space at City Hall and found it more fit for an office space then an art gallery and judging by the standards set up by each organization in their own respective spaces they felt uncomfortable displaying artwork in the Art Gallery at City Hall. The DAA was created by the three groups as a way of collaborating without having to reach a consensus and the result is three different projects housed under one name. Reviewing each project serves as an overview for the way art collectives function in society and echoes the trials and tribulations of alternative art organizations both past and present.

The Art Gallery at City Hall (Room 116, East Portal, Market St. Entrance)

Walking through the dark tunnel of the Market St entrance running east to west you will spy a sandwich sign in bad repair about mid-way through. The sandwich sign points out the Art Gallery in City Hall and states that it is free to enter during office hours (M-F, 10am-4pm and these hours were extended to 8pm on 7/6, 7/13, 7/20, and 7/27 to accommodate the DAA). The double doors to the hallway that connects to the Art Gallery are always open during these hours and no security will hassle you when you enter, the Art Gallery itself is the first door on the right as you enter and it is clearly marked with a little sign above the doorway.

As an example of how you can mess up these simple directions I will share with you an instance of my own stupidity–next to the double doors to the hallway that connects to the Art Gallery is a stand on which is mounted a card access entry lock thingie. Automatically assuming that this meant that the gallery was locked I turned to a security guard behind me to ask how I gained passage to the Art Gallery. Appropriately, he looked at me like I was stupid and simply opened the door by hand. This story serves to prove one thing outside of my own dumbness–and that is that the entrance to the Art Gallery seems wrong and intimidating. The only other way one can gain entry to City Hall is through the Visitor’s Entrance where you have to give your name and ID and are issued a name badge.

The Art Gallery itself is a smallish rectangle surrounded by cubicles that are mostly hidden behind walls that don’t extend all the way to the drop ceiling. The feeling is of a converted office space and it is a difficult feeling to push aside. Most galleries exude on overwhelming gleaming whiteness on the verge of blue (and this is certainly the standard to which extra extra, Little Berlin and Fluxspace adhere to in order of most white) but City Hall’s whites feel as though they may turn a gray-yellow. This may be due to lighting. The floor is carpeted. It is not a neutral exhibition space.

The DAA took an art gallery that used to be an office space and turned it back into an office space. An office space is what you would expect to find in City Hall but most visitors coming to see the Art Gallery at City Hall expect to see some art–what they got was an office space which prompted most visitors to exclaim “Where is the Art Gallery?”. One response by artist Beth Heinly, with the group Little Berlin was to create on office-desk sign (expertly crafted to look official and in gold letters on a black back-ground) replying “This is the Art Gallery”.

Little Berlin

Hand-written, on a dry-erase board that looks like it has always been just inside the door and to the left is some text describing what is going on inside the room. Against the north-est wall of the gallery is a collection of artist books and two desks complete with computers and printers. In the corner, between the dry erase board and the desks is a display marking Clear as the internet provider and sponsor of the DAA exhibition. This, along with the DAA website, ustream, twitter feed, and the Author-LESS-ity project is Little Berlin’s contribution to the DAA and the most literal translation of the concept of a department. At the desks, Beth Heinly, Public Outreach Inspector and Kelani Nichole, Deputy Affairs Officer kept office hours and converted Little Berlin’s artist-book collection to digital files while interacting with the public.

Physically at the space or on the web it was (and is?) possible  to register your alternative affairs or apply to work at the office. Out of this project came a delightful piece of text entitled “The Department of Alternative Affairs Orientation Package” written by Kelani Nichole and reading like a cross between an actual orientation and “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. My favorite passage might be the one on visitors to the office:

“The DAA is located in an art gallery. There are a number of tourists and local visitors who frequent this gallery and are accustomed to seeing traditional shows. Conceptual artwork is oftentimes uninteresting or inaccessible to these visitors.

It is each coworker’s discretion as to the level with which they interact with visitors to the office. . . ”

Little Berlin’s additions to the department were a cross between relational aesthetics and institutional critique, though in some cases collective members were grudgingly relational and the actual critique is as yet undefined. Perhaps institutional research is a better term.

FLUXspace

Diagonally across the room from Little Berlin’s office and taking up the southeast corner of the space was a microfilm reader and several large cabinets containing a collection of microfilm documenting every issue of the New York Times, from its inception in 1851 to the year 2008. Visitors to the DAA were invited to peruse the microfilm on the reader as a part of FLUXspace’s offerings to the exhibition. The real “piece” however came by contemplating how FLUXspace attained the microfilm and why they were interested in keeping it.

FLUX acquired the collection for their Museum of Contemporary Culture from the Montgomery Community College in the winter of 2010, “acquired” here means took it off the hands of an institution that needed to get rid of it. The collection weighs 1,500 lbs. and is not an easy thing to store or drag from one location to the other, this physical weight is a good metaphor for why one might be interested in keeping this dinosaur of analog information in a digital age–especially considering that everything on the microfilm has already been digitized. The microfilm is symbolic of 1,500 lbs. worth of hesitation in a world that has run without thinking into the depths of digital. Who knows what information will be lost and forgotten as we move forward?

The weight of that microfilm becomes even more poignant with the information that FLUX is losing its space in North Philadelphia and the reason the microfilm is on display is vastly because it had nowhere else to be. The problem of the microfilm being unable to return to it’s storage at FLUX was solved when The Internet Archive accepted the donation of the microfilm to its physical archive in San Francisco, California (thoughts of the shipping costs are making me dizzy). The New York Times will be remembered and its legacy doubly assured but what of an alternative space that functioned for six years in Philadelphia and once housed this collection? Who is going to keep that information?

extra extra

Nestled between the office and the albatross of microfilm was perhaps the most perplexing gifts to the department; a video on an in-the-process-of collapsing desk that also displayed some pens and marbles, an object that resembled a crumbled black oil drum in a blue “kiddie” pool, and two costumes; one a tie-dyed hooded cloak that hung upon a peg and the other a beige sort of armor type thing on the floor. Extra extra’s objects were tied with performance in at least one instance as Dan Wallace, Child of the Sun (official DAA title according to the website) came into the office and meditated–or otherwise sat with his eyes closed, wearing the cloak.

As there wasn’t much in explanation for anything near these objects I would have to conclude that of the three organizations extra extra was least interested in interacting with the public and more involved in invoking an atmosphere of ritual. Their project brought to mind The Center for Tactical Magic.

When “We Do What we Want” Encounters Red Tape

I’d like to begin my conclusion with the conclusion to “General Introduction to Collectivity in Modern Art” a paper written for the “Critical Mass” exhibition at the Smart Museum at the University of Chicago in April of 2002 by Alan Moore:

“Collectives do not supply generous quantities of the things we delight in, the idols through which we express our love of art. Artists’ collectives do not make objects – they make changes. They make situations, opportunities, realizations, understandings. They work with our desires, and these have profound implications for the objects of art. Collectives work on the public relation to art. They work on the problem of the audience. They work to keep the experience of art collective, rather than ceding all territory to solipsistic reverie and the reification of investment capital.”

Extra extra, FLUXspace and Little Berlin though really very different in their make-up as organizations all express by their very existence (and reaffirmed by their actions within City Hall) a disinterest in doing things by following the rules. Each member of each collective decided that instead of joining or trying to join an already existing institution that they would start their own. The reason they wanted to start their own is they wanted to do what they wanted regardless of market or public opinion.

When these groups were asked to collaborate together at City Hall they came together under a superficial link (The Department of Alternative Affairs) in order to do their own projects instead of coming to true consensus. Consensus and compromise are very difficult things to reach and often the effects of these ideals are nothing that anybody truly wants. Small alternative spaces are able to operate quicker and often times put up better or more interesting exhibitions then their larger counterparts because they function on a smaller scale and come up with ways to make decisions without a large group dynamic (for instance; it is a regularly employed tactic to divide up the months of the year between members of the collective and to regularly switch job titles).

City Hall has lots of rules and must operate under the bureaucracy of compromise. It is no surprise that during the run of the DAA actual office workers of the OACCE and the artists butted heads at times. It was acknowledged by most of the artists that City Hall was as supportive as it could be but that the way the artists usually worked and the way the office worked reacted like oil and water trying to mix. To the office, it was a job, to the artists, it was a way of life.

As collectives themselves are an objects of interest it has become a thing to invite them into the big box museum space and showcase the collective as a sort of living-object on view. Here in Philadelphia we saw this with “Locally Localized Gravity” at the ICA in 2007, in New York we saw it at X Initiative with “No Soul for Sale” and then at the Tate Modern in London in 2010 with the second incarnation of the same show.

Each of these shows took a similar look to the DAA at City Hall; a collection of information or objects divided by organization that is nearly impossible for the viewer to take in or decipher unless they wish to commit hours to the study of it (the DAA is less so then these shows, being much smaller in scale). It is interesting that there are so many artist-run alternative spaces and that more seem to be created everyday, and I understand that big institutions at least want to give lip-service to supporting these outgrowths of creativity (they never seem to have the money or time to plan things properly–and I do believe that most big organizations believe small spaces will work for free because they ALWAYS work for free) but lumping them all-together does them no justice. It only serves to prove that art is a living thing that thrives on its own without the help of institutions.

What we can gather from the DAA at the Art Gallery at City Hall is that government is interested in supporting what the artists in Philadelphia have to offer the city but they have little idea how this is to be done. It is not to their credit that large artistic institutions have come across some of the same problems when trying to display the workings of the contemporary art collective.

Other Conclusions that are Perhaps not as Harsh

I have had a really good time at both of the art exhibitions I have recently seen at City Hall and would in no way wish to discourage them. I also think that museums and other institutions should keep seeking new ways to collaborate with the smaller artist-run types.