Exit Art

Exit Artis an intimate portrait of an institution that from 1982 to 2012 challenged social, political, aesthetic and curatorial norms. Committed to experimenting at the intersection of disciplines, publications and design, the gallery Exit Art remained steadfast in its mission to provide new possibilities and opportunities for artists, curators and viewers through its expansive historical shows, exhibitions of emerging and under-recognized artists, experimental theater and performance works, as well as national and international film and video programs. Artists who exhibited at Exit Art include Chakaia Booker, Jimmie Durham, Nicole Eisenman, Jane Hammond, David Hammons, Tehching Hsieh, Julie Mehretu, Shirin Neshat, Roxy Paine, Adrian Piper, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Fred Tomaselli, Cecilia Vicuña, Krzysztof Wodiczko, David Wojnarowicz and Martin Wong. "Something disruptive and transformative happened to art in New York in the early 1980s," writes Holland Cotter. "What exactly that something was has yet to be identified, but it involved a chemical reaction between a new political conservatism and a nascent multiculturalism ... One thing is certain: however the historical picture gets sorted out, Exit Art will figure into it." Conceived by Exit Art's founders, Papo Colo and the late Jeanette Ingberman, this volume is a resource on more than 200 exhibitions, events, festivals and programs featuring more than 2,500 artists, presented within the larger context of the art world. More than 70 eyewitness accounts and idiosyncratic recollections from artists, curators, critics and friends create a vivid sense of the exhibitions, performances, screenings, discussions, ideas and people that were part of Exit Art during its three-decade run.

A groundbreaking history of pioneering alternative art venues in New York where artists experimented, exhibited, and performed outside the white cube and the commercial mainstream. This groundbreaking book—part exhibition catalogue, part cultural history—chronicles alternative art spaces in New York City since the 1960s. Developed from an exhibition of the same name at Exit Art, Alternative Histories documents more than 130 alternative spaces, groups, and projects, and the significant contributions these organizations have made to the aesthetic and social fabric of New York City. Alternative art spaces offer sites for experimentation for artists to innovate, perform, and exhibit outside the commercial gallery-and-museum circuit. In New York City, the development of alternative spaces was almost synonymous with the rise of the contemporary art scene. Beginning in the 1960s and early 1970s, it was within a network of alternative sites—including 112 Greene Street, The Kitchen, P.S.1, FOOD, and many others—that the work of young artists like Yvonne Rainer, Vito Acconci, Gordon Matta-Clark, Ana Mendieta, David Wojnarowicz, David Hammons, Adrian Piper, Martin Wong, Jimmie Durham, and dozens of other now familiar names first circulated. Through interviews, photographs, essays, and archival material, Alternative Histories tells the story of such famous sites and organizations as Judson Memorial Church, Anthology Film Archives, A.I.R. Gallery, El Museo del Barrio, Franklin Furnace, and Eyebeam, as well as many less well-known sites and organizations. Essays by the exhibition curators and scholars, and excerpts of interviews with alternative space founders and staff, provide cultural and historical context. Contributors Jacki Apple, Papo Colo, Jeanette Ingberman, Melissa Rachleff, Lauren Rosati, Mary Anne Staniszewski, Herb Tam Interviewees Steve Cannon, Rhys Chatham, Peter Cramer and Jack Waters, Carol Goodden, Alanna Heiss, Bob Lee, Joe Lewis, Inverna Lockpez, Ann Philbin, Anne Sherwood Pundyk and Karen Yama, Irving Sandler, Adam Simon, Martha Wilson

Praise for Jamaal May: "Linguistically acrobatic [and] beautifully crafted. . . . [Jamaal May's] poems, exquisitely balanced by a sharp intelligence mixed with earnestness, makes his debut a marvel."—Publishers Weekly Following Jamaal May's award-winning debut collection, Hum (2013), these new poems explore parallel landscapes of the poet's interior and an insidious American condition. Using dark humor that helps illuminate the pains of maturity and loss of imagination, May uncovers language like a skilled architect—digging up bones of the past to expose what lies beneath the surface of the fragile human condition. From: "Ask Where I've Been": Ask about the tornado of fists. The blows landed. If you can watch it all—the spit and blood frozen against snow, you can probably tell I am the too-narrow road winding out of a crooked city built of laughter, abandon, feathers and drums. Ask only if you can watch streetlights bow, bridges arc, and power lines sag, and still believe what matters most is not where I bend but where I am growing. Jamaal May is a poet, editor, and filmmaker from Detroit, Michigan, where he taught poetry in public schools and worked as a freelance audio engineer and touring performer. His poetry won the 2013 Indiana Review Poetry Prize and appears in journals such as Poetry, Ploughshares, the Believer, NER, and the Kenyon Review. May has earned an MFA from Warren Wilson College as well as fellowships from Cave Canem and The Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University. He founded the Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook Press.

Raymond Depardon in conversation with philosopher Paul Virilio about the notions of homeland and rootedness Filmmaker Raymond Depardon and eminent philosopher Paul Virilio discuss the relationship between ideas of homeland and rootedness, at a time when human migration has reached an unprecedented scale. Illustrating their dialogue, the artists and architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Mark Hansen, Laura Kurgan and Ben Rubin have devised a cartographic collaboration that tracks environmental, political and economic migrations around the world.

Founded in 1982 by Jeanette Ingberman and Papo Colo, Exit Art was an interdisciplinary cultural center that presented innovative exhibitions, films and performances that reflected a commitment to contemporary issues and ideas. It supported emerging, under-recognized, mid-career and international artists, emphasizing new and experimental forms of expression, and was interested in art that explored environmental, political and cultural issues as a means of initiating or instigating social change. The diversity of Exit Art's programmes reflected the multiplicity of its audience, which included artists, activists, scholars, scientists, students, cultural critics, educators, collectors, and the New York community at large. After thirty years, the gallery closed at the end of May 2012, and Exit Art 's extensive archives have been transferred to the Downtown Collection at Fales Library & Special Collections at New York University, where they are currently being processed, and will eventually be available to scholars and students for research. Steidl publishes this final document of Exit Art on the occasion of the closing of the gallery. It is directed at the preservation of the work of Exit Art and will illustrate in text and images--many published here for the first time--the history of Exit Art exhibitions and events. It is hoped that it will provide a scholarly resource focused on experimental American artworks linked to the creative, social, and political dimensions of American culture. This major monograph will serve as a lasting record of the unique collaborative achievement of Jeanette Ingberman and Papo Colo in the creation of Exit Art.

In modern-day Tel Aviv, a young man, Koby Franco, receives an urgent phone call from a female soldier. Learning that his estranged father may have been a victim of a suicide bombing in Hadera, Koby reluctantly joins the soldier in searching for clues. His death would certainly explain his empty apartment and disconnected phone line. As Koby tries to unravel the mystery of his father's death, he finds himself not only piecing together the last few months of his father's life, but his entire identity. With thin, precise lines and luscious watercolors, Modan creates a portrait of modern Israel, a place where sudden death mingles with the slow dissolution of family ties. Exit Wounds is the North American graphic novel debut from one of Israel's best-known cartoonists, Rutu Modan. She has received several awards in Israel and abroad, including the Best Illustrated Children's Book Award from the Israel Museum in Jerusalem four times, Young Artist of the Year by the Israel Ministry of Culture and is a chosen artist of the Israel Cultural Excellence Foundation. Exit Wounds was the winner of the 2008 Eisner award for Best Graphic Album -New and was nominated for the televised 2007 Quill Awards in the graphic novel category.

Key debates of contemporary cultural sociology – the rise of the ‘cultural omnivore’, the fate of classical ‘highbrow’ culture, the popularization, commercialization and globalization of culture – deal with temporal changes. Yet, systematic research about these processes is scarce due to the lack of suitable longitudinal data. This book explores these questions through the lens of a crucial institution of cultural mediation – the culture sections in quality European newspapers – from 1960 to 2010. Starting from the framework of cultural stratification and employing systematic content analysis both quantitative and qualitative of more than 13,000 newspaper articles, Enter Culture, Exit Arts? presents a synthetic yet empirically rich and detailed account of cultural transformation in Europe over the last five decades. It shows how classifications and hierarchies of culture have changed in course of the process towards increased cultural heterogeneity. Furthermore, it conceptualizes the key trends of rising popular culture and declining highbrow arts as two simultaneous processes: the one of legitimization of popular culture and the other of popularization of traditional legitimate culture, both important for the loosening of the boundary between ‘highbrow’ and ‘popular’. Through careful comparative analysis and illustrative snapshots into the specific socio-historical contexts in which the newspapers and their representations of culture are embedded – in Finland, France, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the UK – the book reveals the key patterns and diversity of European variations in the transformation of cultural hierarchies since the 1960s. The book is a collective endeavour of a large-scale international research project active between 2013 and 2018.

Winner of CLR James Book Prize from the Working Class Studies Association and 2nd Place for the Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing. In 1980, Christine J. Walley’s world was turned upside down when the steel mill in Southeast Chicago where her father worked abruptly closed. In the ensuing years, ninety thousand other area residents would also lose their jobs in the mills—just one example of the vast scale of deindustrialization occurring across the United States. The disruption of this event propelled Walley into a career as a cultural anthropologist, and now, in Exit Zero, she brings her anthropological perspective home, examining the fate of her family and that of blue-collar America at large. Interweaving personal narratives and family photos with a nuanced assessment of the social impacts of deindustrialization, Exit Zero is one part memoir and one part ethnography— providing a much-needed female and familial perspective on cultures of labor and their decline. Through vivid accounts of her family’s struggles and her own upward mobility, Walley reveals the social landscapes of America’s industrial fallout, navigating complex tensions among class, labor, economy, and environment. Unsatisfied with the notion that her family’s turmoil was inevitable in the ever-forward progress of the United States, she provides a fresh and important counternarrative that gives a new voice to the many Americans whose distress resulting from deindustrialization has too often been ignored. This book is part of a project that also includes a documentary film.