NY and the new transience of art spaces
X-initiative Space.
Until 2004, 548 West 22nd street in New York was the home of the Dia Art Foundation, one of the main institutions in the city. Founded in 1974 to support the new needs of the artists of the time, it required large-scale and technically complex or long-lasting projects, which could not be conducted in traditional institutions –as is the case of the 7000 Oak Trees by Joseph Beuys, Broken Kilometer by Walter de María, or his Field of Lightning–, it closed its doors in the city in order to install its spectacular collection upstate –with artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Michael Heizer, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, Bruce Nauman, Richard Serra and Robert Smithson. The reason for the closure: the space no longer fulfilled the needs of the institution(1).
Five years later, the same building hosted X-Initiative, one of the interesting, non-profit, proposals to emerge in the city in the last year. With a duration of 12 months and a programme which covers the exhibition, performative, educational and production realms, X-Initiative has emphasised the need to find new models for production and experimentation amid the changing landscape of contemporary art. In this sense, the debate about time would be one of the keys with which to deal with the multifaceted and malleable cultural scene in our global world, directing the discussion on space and conservation within institutions toward notions of impermanence.
In this way, X-Initiative was connected to temporal principles, both with regards to its duration and to its interest in showing artists working with temporal media (film, video, audio, performance or action pieces), or in presenting ephemeral works and situations. In the one year it has been in place, it has housed the work of artists such as Hans Haacke and Artur Zmijewski; it has organised a continuous programme of presentations and performances by collectives such as The Bruce High Quality Foundation and artists such as Liam Gillick, as well as screenings of the archive of Electronic Arts Intermix; it has conducted an analysis of publications by artists such as Semina (launched by Wallace Berman, with the collaboration of Artaud, Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, Jean Cocteau and Allen Ginsberg, among others) and Tripping Corpse by Raymond Pettibon, as well as hosting the “Independent Fair” No Soul For Sale. Although the initiative reached its end in February, it will certainly give us a lot to talk about for quite some time.
At the same time that Dia began its work, Creative Time also emerged, another of the big proposals to come out of New York in the last few years. Since then, it has focused on presenting, proposing and producing “bold” initiatives in the field of public art, in all disciplines. Creative Time rapidly spread throughout the city, carrying out projects on advertising spaces, buses, legendary buildings, ATM machines and Times Square screens, as well as using formats such as comics and the internet. In this way, the notions of art and public space became wider, affecting spaces which had had limited and devalued use, and emphasising a free-flowing time defined by transient events. At the time of writing, its activity is as vibrant as ever.
No Longer Empty, for its part, emerged just under a year ago, with the aim of taking over –in the artistic sense– spaces in the city which had been closed down. It offered a solution to the precarious economic situation in New York, where many business premises have closed as a result of the financial crisis. Its objective is to revitalise these areas with interesting proposals and public programmes which suit the nature of the spaces.
Since it was first set up, No Longer has presented ephemeral interventions in the public space, at places such as the High Line Park or the Williamsburg Bridge; it has intervened on the windows of the Chelsea Hotel(2) ; it has reopened the legendary Tower Records stores with a multimedia art show; it has occupied an old belt factory in Brooklyn and it has collaborated with numerous emerging artists, as well as renowned figures such as Yoko Ono, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Cao Fei and Tracey Moffatt.
In this way, these proposals, as well as many others, seem to reveal that the economic crisis, the lack of spaces and their prohibitive costs are giving rise to innovative projects which do without the permanence offered by conventional artistic containers, replacing them with fluidity and hybridisation. This has brought about a return to the effervescence of New York in the 1970s, although at that point it was more closely linked to the counter-culture movement and to guerrilla actions.
In contrast, today the focus lies on models which have been entirely absorbed by the economic and cultural industry, as revealed by initiatives such as LentSpace –an open-air sculpture park set in a building lot belonging to the Trinity Real Estate company, which has been coordinated by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC)–, which involves an activity forming part of the “meanwhile” spirit which defines the wait for economic recovery. It seems that our best hope is that this wait is long and creative.
1. In 2009 it was announced, however, that a new space will be built on the same street, hosting long-lasting installations, ambitious projects and public programmes such as readings, conferences, symposia, performances and presentations.
2. In this same line, another initiative, Smartspaces, centres its activity on artistic interventions on the windows of unused premises throughout the city.
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