[artinfo] call: 90s history of alternative art practices

[Andreas Broeckmann]

From: "Dave Beech" <dave.beech at clara.co.uk>
Subject: call for contributions
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2005 09:21:57 +0100


THERE IS ALWAYS AN ALTERNATIVE

A call for submissions for a publication charting the emergence of 
alternatives within contemporary art in the 90s. The publication will 
consist of essays, anecdotes, statements, documents and works both from the 
period and in response to it. The publication is produced to accompany an 
exhibition, also called There Is Always an Alternative, which will be at 
temporarycontemporary gallery in London, in June, and travel to The 
International 3 gallery in Manchester, in September.

There Is Always an Alternative will articulate an alternative history of 
art practice and a history of alternative art practices around the early 
1990s based on a political understanding of the position of the artist. The 
title derives from an inversion of one of Margaret Thatcherâs favourite 
ideological phrases, ãthere is no alternativeä. This is a phrase used by 
people attempting to undermine whatever alternative there is and in that 
sense is always false and falsifying. On the contrary, there is always an 
alternative.

One of the techniques available to the status quo is to minimize or 
eliminate the sense of any alternative in the present or immediate future 
by obliterating the alternatives that existed in the past. The market is a 
very good mechanism for this sort of institutionalised selectivity. It is 
through recovering alternatives in the past, therefore, that we will inform 
and spur on alternatives in the future. There is Always an Alternative 
documents an under-represented array of radical practices from the 
early-90s in order to provide potential models of radical individual and 
collective art practice now and to come.

Exploring models and possibilities for artistic practice that resist, 
undermine or otherwise oppose the closures, absences and exclusions in 
dominant art discourse and practice, There is Always an Alternative will 
raise awareness of an alternative history of art in the early 1990s and in 
so doing, provide a resource for all those practices seeking to confront 
the limitations, both arbitrary and ideological, upon what can be done now.

Send submissions to dave.beech at clara.co.uk or post them to 108 Slade Lane, 
Levenhsulme, Manchester M19 2BA.

Deadline for submissions 25/04/05