University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

The multivalent platforms of alternative art publications as agents of authentic cultural change

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The multivalent platforms of alternative art publications as agents of authentic cultural change

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THE MULTIVALENT PLATFORMS OF ALTERNATIVE ART PUBLICATIONS AS
AGENTS OF AUTHENTIC CULTURAL CHANGE

by

Molly Erin Sullivan

__________________________________________________________________

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSKI SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF PUBLIC ART STUDIES

May 2010

Copyright 2010 Molly Erin Sullivan
ii
EPIGRAPH

“Important artworks constantly divulge new layers: they age, grow cold, and die. It is a
tautology to point out that as humanly manufactured artifacts they do not live as do people.
But the emphasis on the artifactual element in art concerns less the fact that it is
manufactured than its own inner constitution, regardless of how it came to be. Artworks are
alive in that they speak in a fashion that is denied to natural objects and the subjects whom
make them. They speak by virtue of the communication of everything particular in them.
Thus they come into contrast with the arbitrariness of what simply exists. Yet it is precisely
as artifacts, as products of social labor, that they also communicate with the empirical
experience that they reject and from which they draw their content.”
—Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of
Minnesota Press, 1997), 4–5.

iii
DEDICATION
For my mother, who among many things, highly valued education and consistently placed
the needs of others well above her own.

iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I must express sincere gratitude to a few individuals who have aided me throughout this
process. I want to thank my thesis committee: Rhea Anastas for her consistent reassurance,
feedback, input and support and Thomas Lawson for his invaluable insight. I also want to
thank my editor, Byron Kahr, both for his grammatical expertise and interminable patience.
I want to acknowledge Joshua Decter for guiding the Master of Public Art Studies program
in a direction that has best enabled me to execute this thesis in a cooperative and critical
environment. I would also like to thank the bright and encouraging cohort of women I will
be graduating alongside this spring. Lastly, I must thank my friends and family for
understanding this process and accepting my prolonged absence from social interaction.

v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Epigraph ii
Dedication iii
Acknowledgements iv
List of Figures vi
Abstract vii
Introduction 1
Chapter One 9
Chapter Two 22
Chapter Three 33
Conclusion 46
Bibliography 48
Appendix 53

vi
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Image of Yes Men public intervention 53
Figure 2: Cover Image of Avalanche no. 1 53
Figure 3: Cover Image of Avalanche no. 13 54
Figure 4: Cover Image of Art-Rite no. 14 54
Figure 5: Cover Image of Art-Rite no. 14 55
Figure 6: Cover Image of REAL LIFE Magazine no. 2 55
Figure 7: Cover Image of LTTR no. 1 56
Figure 8: Cover Image of LTTR no. 4 56
Figure 9: Cover Image of LTTR no. 5 57
Figure 10: LTTR editor K8 Hardy participating in the Radical Read-In 57
Figure 11: Screen Shot of Chto delat? “Homepage” 58
Figure 12: Screen Shot of Chto delat? “Newspapers” 58
Figure 13: Screen Shot of Chto delat? “# 7: Drift: Narvskaya Zastava” 59
Figure 14: Cover Image of Chto delat? no. 7 59
Figure 15: Screen Shot of Pages “Homepage” 60
Figure 16: Screen Shot of Pages “Homepage,” 2 60
Figure 17: Screen Shot of Pages “Magazine” 61
Figure 18: Screen Shot of Pages “Pages no. 1” 61

vii
ABSTRACT
In this thesis I will examine multivalent platforms and discursive spaces embodied by
contemporary art publications through the analysis of recent publications that are produced
in conjunction with a broader initiative. Through artists’ interviews, artists’ writing, and the
opinions of young marginalized artists, 1970s alternative publications Avalanche, Art-Rite,
and REAL LIFE Magazine advocated for social critique from a stance within art criticism.
Following this historical trajectory, I will evaluate the critical programs of contemporary
alternative publications that utilize feminist and political theoretical frameworks as well as
original editorial modes to provoke authentic cultural change. LTTR, Chto delat?, and
Pages exemplify an evolved sense of social responsibility within artist-run culture and
positive instances of collaboration across a diverse range of communities. Within a focus
on visual art practice, these publications highlight contemporary critical debates and aim to
evoke a genuine response through the raising of intellectual consciousness.
1
INTRODUCTION

The lights at 3219 S. Morgan Street were dim. A YouTube projection enveloped
the vast north wall, accompanied by imperfect, though decipherable, audio. The video clip
mesmerizing a crowd of nearly one hundred had been extracted from a BBC World News
live broadcast during which Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum assumed the identity of a fictitious
spokesperson—Jude Finisterra—from Dow Chemical Company. With unflinching poise,
Bichlbaum relayed Dow Chemical’s complete acceptance of responsibility for the Union
Carbide Pesticide Plant disaster unleashed on the city of Bhopal in 1984, and revealed the
company’s sincere intent to compensate the inhabitants of the region, disclose the chemical
breakdown of harmful substances released during the disaster and swiftly remediate the
Union Carbide site. In this performative intervention, Bichlbaum crafted a brief statement
that exposed Dow Chemical through the detailed listing of Union Carbide’s grievous
offenses.
1
The BBC admitted their error upon Dow Chemical’s denial of the statement, and
though one cannot view the live BBC broadcast of the work, it can be viewed on YouTube
quite easily. Yes Man Mike Bonanno, perched on a modest stool aside the ephemeral
screen, accessed and presented a number of other clips housed on the YouTube archive,
while interjecting supplementary comments and brief narratives. The program concluded
with a request for inquiries from the diverse audience comprised of students, artists,
activists, educators, and other interested members of the community.
After the question and answer segment, the crowd eagerly participated in the
formulation of a public intervention, to take place the following evening. The Co-Prosperity
Sphere—an experimental cultural center located in the Bridgeport community on Chicago’s

1
Approximately 500,000 people were exposed to methyl isocyanate gas during the disaster
and many died upon exposure. Many survivors suffer from long-term effects of chemical
exposure. The monetary compensation thus far provided to the inhabitants of Bhopal is
insufficient to cover one year of medical care.
2
south side—regularly hosts collaborative efforts and projects, including the instance
described in the preceding narrative. The physical structure houses a gallery, artists’
residency quarters, an event space, the headquarters of a non-profit organization (Public
Media Institute or PMI), and offices for multiple periodical publications. By merging the
social with the cerebral,
2
the PMI seeks to marry the collective missions of all functioning
armatures of the non-profit “whose mission is to promote art, technology and social
activism in order to transform people—socially and intellectually.”
3
A primary site of the
critical activity in which PMI is entrenched is Proximity Magazine, one of many
contemporary titles linked to a parent non-profit organization, artist collective, alternative art
space, gallery or other social project.
This thesis seeks to examine multivalent platforms and discursive spaces embodied
by contemporary art publications through the analysis of recent publications produced in
conjunction with a broader initiative. This text will analyze titles whose mobile discourse
empowers readers to become “part of a significant dialogue and social movement.”
4
I will
examine publications that have evolved into a “compact unified articulation with an internal
artistic logic and balance that [go] beyond”
5
a supplementary role. Scrutiny will be placed
on publications that examine “the possibilities of interaction and reflection between various
local discourses and condition[s] that may generate spaces of critique or instances of critical

2
Ed Marszewski, interview by author, Chicago, IL, October 30, 2009.

3
Public Media Institute, “Our Mission,” http://www.publicmediainstitute.org/ (accessed
December 3, 2009).

4
Emily Roysdon, e-mail interview by author, December 3, 2009.

5
David Riff, e-mail interview by author, January 4, 2010.
3
practices.”
6
These multivalent platforms support hegemonic warfare amongst communities,
institutions and individuals in the form of biting texts and vivid images. The importance and
force of the pluralistic criticism and variant writings cultivated within their pages and
produced through conjoined initiatives is the subject of this thesis.
Contemporary art publishing has been the subject of growing curatorial interest in
the form of both institutionalized projects and nascent underground book fairs. When
invited to work for documenta 12, Austrian curator Georg Schöllhammer posed the
question “how does documenta obtain knowledge and specific insight on the world? And
how can it convey this knowledge to others?”
7
In a direct analysis of these questions, the
curator developed the documenta 12 magazine project, an effort including 90 publications
within the international community wherein projects were invited to reflect on themes and
motifs of documenta 12. Participating editorial collectives were likened to “small
academies” that work within and focus on specific publics with intentions of reaching a
broader public sphere. “Magazines are places where formulations are set and conveyed,
things are formed and at the same time form is mediated. Art and cultural magazines are
forums in which the relational structures of art, audience, and theory are constantly re-
negotiated.”
8

Publish and Be Damned, an effort started by Emily Pethick and Kit Hammonds and
now continued by Sarah McCrory and Joe Scotland, views publishing as both a creative
and critical space to present artists’ work, and collects publications that utilize experimental

6
Pages, “About Pages,” http://www.pagesmagazine.net/2006/en-ab.php#index (accessed
January 3, 2010).

7
Georg Schöllhammer, “Editorial” In Documenta 12 Magazine no 1-3 Reader, eds. Roger
M. Buergel, Ruth Noack, and Georg Schöllhammer (Cologne: Taschen, 2007), 5.

8
Ibid.
4
editorial approaches and alternative distribution networks. The sixth annual Published and
Be Damned fair took place in September of 2009 in London. The fair exhibited a diverse
range of independent local, national and international publishers, resulting in the addition of
numerous titles to the Publish and Be Damned Archive. Through the implementation of a
membership network, the initiative is both able to generate funds and to foster a community
among participating publishers that encourages the ongoing exchange of media produced
outside of the commercial mainstream.
9
The types of publications exhibited in the
aforementioned contexts—unique within the vast scope of contemporary art publications
because they function in a very specific and layered way—will be approached and
unpacked in this text.
The functioning tiers of the contemporary publications treated in this thesis inhabit
physical and virtual spaces, and exist both as ephemeral projects and tangible objects.
Alternative publications produced in this manner share distinct similarities to Maciunas’s
early Fluxkit, Fluxus I, which included primary information such as artists’ essays, visual
projects and physical objects, to generate a multisensory experience for the observer.
10

However, the critical histories of publications discussed in this thesis are tightly bonded to
the birth of alternative art publications during the 1970s, and the mainstream magazines and
established art market that those publications challenged. Clement Greenberg, a leading
proponent of the modernist school of art criticism, argued that a work of art is “constantly
bound to its own formally reductive system” and believed that the existing terms of artistic

9
Publish and Be Damned, http://www.publishandbedamned.org/ (accessed December 3,
2009).

10
Hannah Higgins, Fluxus Experience (Berkeley, CA: Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2002), 34.
5
production formed the limits of its critique.
11
In the first chapter, I will discuss publications
that held the institution of modernism in esteem—illustrated by the wide inclusion of
modernist-influenced texts. Subsequently, I will investigate the dominant strategies of
alternative ‘70s publications that, mirroring concurrent artistic production, “defiantly
deviated from the clearly defined aesthetic categories of modernism.”
12
The aggressive
break from traditional forms of art making and critique—motivated by the growth of artists’
writing in critical contexts—supports the heightened social responsibility and possibility of
social critique evident within a number of ‘70s alternative publications.
The discursive potential of current publications engaged in active theoretical
practice—a lasting impact of earlier efforts—will be assessed through a strict analysis of
the corresponding critical discursive programs of select recent titles. A detailed evaluation
of editorial modes and frameworks and project methodologies and strategies informed by
textual analysis, visual choices and physical form, interviews, and distribution practice will
comprise the remaining chapters. Early progressive art publications, situated outside and
marginalized by mainstream art press, covered artists, performances and spaces in the
SoHo community—a Lower Manhattan community close in spatial proximity to the
uptown gallery scene.
13
The contemporary titles, unlike those discussed in the first chapter
are broad in geographic scope in regards to both their site of production and the contents
they encompass. Special attention is given to the relationship between the local and the
global, as contemporary titles strive to address social issues that affect individuals on an

11
Brian Wallis, Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation (New York, NY: New
Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984), xiii.

12
Ibid.

13
Gwen Allen, “In On the Ground Floor: Avalanche and the SoHo Art Scene, 1970–
1976,” Artforum International 44, no. 3 (November 2005): 216.
6
international scale. The three contemporary publications, discussed in the second and third
chapters of the text, allow a mediated form of international distribution through the
implementation of a straightforward, though multifaceted, online counterpart and archive.
The titles utilize a virtual platform but are purposefully designed for a print format—
affirming the argument that the objectives generating these various projects value the
capabilities of the object and the artifact.
In the preceding paragraph I began to discuss my methodology—carefully chosen
to sort through an overwhelming array of current art and culture publications. The three
contemporary titles discussed in this text share vital qualities gleaned from both editorial
and project modes that posit the publications as highly evolved efforts of criticism and
discourse. One quality, the employment of a strong theoretical framework, is supported by
the editorial process, design process and within both the textual and visual output. LTTR,
discussed in chapter two, adopts tactics and strategies inherent to feminist theory by
seeking to “create and build a context for a culture of critical thinkers whose work not only
speaks in dialogue with one another, but consistently challenges its own form by shifting
shape and design to best respond to contemporary concerns.”
14
Pages, a Rotterdam-based
effort with a specific focus on Iran, is similarly flexible because of the “constant rethinking
of [its] disposition in regard to the social and political contexts to which [it] refer[s].”
15

Despite affinities between the contemporary publications, the third chapter looks at titles
vested in a political framework—coupled with Pages, a St. Petersburg-based effort, Chto
delat? “addresses a theme or problem central to the search for new political subjectivities,

14
LTTR, “About LTTR,” http://www.lttr.org/about-lttr (accessed December 3, 2009).

15
See note 6 above.
7
and their impact on art, activism, philosophy, and cultural theory.”
16
Adaptable to their
varying contexts, the titles in this thesis are not organized in traditional hierarchical
structures—they are instead organized in divergent manners through the employment of
alternative editorial models. The models that these contemporary publications exemplify
carefully shape the content through collaborative production and experimentation.
The last quality, and arguably the most unique to the contemporary alternative
publications dissected in this text, is the coupling or connection between the title and an
additional project. These linked initiatives encompass the spread of art projects, galleries,
artist collectives, curatorial teams, additional publications, lecture series, events and
alternatives spaces with which the publications are conjoined. This criteria has a growing
prominence in arts and culture publishing, and locates its footing in New Institutionalism,
characterized by Claire Bishop to demarcate “organizations that place as much emphasis on
publications, residencies, archives, and symposia as on temporary displays of visual art.”
17

The objectives of the contemporary publications also place priority on ideas
surrounding community—the titles in the third chapter are bilingual, thus reaching specific
communities while welcoming additional publics and navigating boundaries on both a
linguistic and theoretical level. The publications and projects discussed in the remainder of
this text are founded on a series of theoretical claims in the realm of contemporary art. One
prominent and overarching claim is the notion that binary systems and relationships found
in culture cyclically assign precedence to one element over the other. The contention that
representational systems cannot be unifying is not new, nor is the inference that we can

16
Chto delat?, “Newspapers,” http://www.chtodelat.org/index.php?option=com_content
&view=article&id=409&Itemid=198&lang=en (accessed January 3, 2010).

17
Claire Bishop, “In What Ways Have Artists, Academics, and Cultural Institutions
Responded to the U.S.-Led Invasion and Occupation of Iraq?,” October, no. 123 (Winter
2008): 26.
8
locate “within any system not only margins which may serve as sites for resistance, but
also whole fields or communities of interest which might be inhabited and invigorated.”
18
A
recent development is, however, the active pursuit of these possibilities by the organizations
discussed in this text, depicted by the specific activities in which they are engaged and by
the periodicals they produce. In the following chapters, I will decipher the intentions of
each project, and identify the ways that types of resistance in which they are immersed
foster the possibility of authentic change and progress.

18
See note 11 above, xvi.
9
CHAPTER ONE
The 1970s represent an important crossroads in the timeline of art criticism.
Artforum’s singular mode and the variant range of coverage provided by Arts Magazine
was met with opposition from alternative critical and editorial modes embodied by several
new art publications. The formalist criticism of the ‘60s and prior—defined by Greenberg
earlier in his career—anticipates that new art works acknowledge problems inherent to their
respective media “posed by previous avant-gardes.”
19
The critic argued that it was
necessary for art to remain autonomous from the aggressor—mass culture—and that
differing forms of art practice must remain distinctly separate.
20
Michael Fried adhered to
Greenberg’s methodologies and helped solidify critical parameters legitimating Post-
Painterly Abstraction
21
while frequently contributing to both Artforum and Arts Magazine.
Art publications—primary venues for art criticism—operated as spaces where individual
critics could share their voice. Philip Leider, editor-in-chief of Artforum from 1962–1971,
recalls “I was always conscious at the time that it was a huge part of my job to keep the
magazine from being simply the vehicle for Michael and Clem.”
22
During Lieder’s tenure
as editor, ever-present formalist criticism preserved the title’s importance
23
and the

19
David Hopkins, After Modern Art: 1945–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2000), 25.

20
Ibid.

21
Ibid., 30.

22
Amy Newman, Challenging Art: Artforum, 1962-1974 (New York, NY: Soho Press,
2000), 222.

23
Ibid., 216.
10
publication remained a widely recognized force in art criticism due to the theoretical nature
of the dense texts it published.
24

By 1970, Artforum had been settled at 667 Madison Avenue, New York for a few
years. From its offices, the formulaic and consistent contents of the square-format 10 ½ x
10 ½ inch magazine were disseminated to the public in ten issues per year. As described
above, the majority of the periodical’s texts were critical pieces that ranged in length and
subject matter. The remaining elements included full-color image reproductions, city-based
exhibition reviews, letters to the editor and a plethora of advertisements—largely,
internationally recognized galleries endorsing the artists they represented. Arts Magazine,
similarly, held an abundance of advertisements—but unlike Artforum, the review segment
was generous. Located at the Art Digest, Inc. offices, due southeast of Artforum, at 23 East
26
th
Street—Arts diligently covered galleries both in New York and elsewhere—the
numerous reviews easily blanketed twenty pages per issue with generally positive reports
of contemporary art exhibitions. The “Arts Market” segment of the June 1974 issue of Arts
closes with a general examination of buying trends during an economic slump and energy
crisis. It reports that while prospective buyers are hesitant to purchase contemporary works
from lesser-known galleries, they will eagerly pour money into procuring a Warhol or a de
Kooning—stressing that art remains a dependable investment.
25
Arts Magazine held reports
on the divergent fields of graphic art, fashion design and interior design in addition to
documenting contemporary art practice. The articles were genuine and significant, but they
were not regarded with the same esteem as the theoretical texts published in Artforum.
Despite the two publications’ disparate programs, Arts and Artforum shared more than

24
Ibid., 213.

25
David Shirey, “Arts Market,” Arts Magazine 48, no. 9 (June 1974): 75.
11
near-adjacent postal codes. The publications relied intensely on the mainstream art market
on which they reported—and subsequently reproduced—both for textual content and
advertising revenue.
The release of the first issue of Avalanche marks the beginning of the decade.
Released in the fall of 1970, the cover features a headshot of Joseph Beuys (see Figure 1).
The title page of the inaugural effort labels Willoughby Sharp as the publisher, Elizabeth
Béar as the editor and 204 East 20
th
St., N.Y.C. 10003 as the location of the editorial
office.
26
Oriented in Lower Manhattan, this alternative publication collected and published
information directly from the artists the publication featured, championing the perspective
of the artist over that of the critic. Through the elimination of “art criticism and exhibition
reviews in favor of process documents and interviews, the publication fostered a direct
channel for the artist’s voice.”
27
The square-format of the publication, and the placement of
advertisements on the opening and closing spreads of the title represent the few similarities
between Avalanche and Artforum—the remaining qualities of the alternative title are in
strong contrast with its predecessors. Unlike the publications described in the preceding
paragraphs, this publication is much less concerned with individual authorship. Articles in
the premiere effort are not written by separate critical writers, some segments have no
identifiable contributor and others are authored by ‘Avalanche.’ For example Avalanche
interviewed artist Carl Andre in 1968. The transcribed recording reveals an organic
dialogue between the two parties—evident due to both the contents of the interview as well

26
“Title Page,” Avalanche, no. 1 (Fall 1970): 11.

27
Allen, “In On the Ground Floor,” 214.
12
as the atypical typographic choices.
28
The questions and responses fluidly inform each
other, and the piece accurately captures a genuine conversation.
In the dialogue, the artist clarifies some of Avalanche’s assumptions regarding
Andre’s past exhibitions, thought process and sources of influence. The interview closes
with the a discussion focused on ownership, political connotations and ideas of subversion.
When asked if he considers the potential of his work to embody political implications,
Andre responds, “Well of course I do, being not even a vulgar Marxist—a gossip Marxist,
I suppose. But of course politics is all tied up in economics and my works reflect economic
conditions. And I sometimes DESPAIR at being the kept artist of an imperialist class,
but…”
29
The artist next confirms the prompt—“But you don’t take yourself seriously as a
subversive” with the following:
No, no, of course I don’t. I have a scientific view of the future but a poetic view
of the present. This is not true of a revolutionary: a revolutionary has a scientific
view of the present and a poetic view of the future. Most of us are interested in the
present and beautifully disinterested in the future. But I’m afraid it has to be the
other way round. We have to be scientists of the present if we’re to be poets and
revolutionaries of the future. I would like to think that my work is in the tradition
of the Russian revolutionary artists, Tatlin and Rodchenko.
30

An artist would not have the opportunity to voice such strong and important opinions on
not only their own work, but on ideas surrounding the production and consumption of
contemporary art works in the mainstream publications of the 1970s. Avalanche provided
outlets to artists—like Carl Andre—to share their thoughts on art criticism, discourse and
the social implications of their work. The title’s direct approach to exhibiting artists and

28
Interviews in early issues of Avalanche seldom employed traditional typography. The
conversations were depicted with questions and responses—respectively left-justified or
right-justified and rows of type were organized in an unregimented way compared to the
remaining textual components of the publication.

29
Avalanche, “Interview: Carl Andre,” Avalanche, no. 1 (Fall 1970): 26.

30
Ibid.
13
their thoughts within its pages was fundamental “to the politicization of the alternative art
scene in the ‘70s.”
31
In an Artforum interview, conducted in June of 1970, Andre responds
to interviewer Phyllis Tuchman in a manner unlike the aforementioned. He focuses on his
wish to separate himself from “conceptual art or even with ideas in art.”
32
In this highly
mediated piece, the artist clarifies his position in relationship to broader contemporary art
practice—he is unable to escape the discourse of Artforum to speak freely regarding his
work, or anything else.
Midway through the publication’s complete run, some drastic changes were made
to the format of Avalanche. The title transformed from a 9 3/8 x 9 3/8 inch square magazine
printed on glossy high-quality paper to an 11 ½ x 16 ½ inch newspaper. The degree of
polish provided by the earlier mode of production was absent from the newspaper format,
but aesthetic aspects of the publication remained unchanged—the font and design elements,
including the layout and the number of columns per page were consistent with earlier
issues. Artists continued to document process-oriented works in innovative ways in
Avalanche—they reinvented the usage of fixed mediums allowing photography to
accurately record time-based work.
33
The cover of the final issue (see Figure 2), published
in summer 1976, displays a balance sheet, magnified well above its original size, listing the
presumed production costs of the publication. The title Avalanche: Newspaper is printed in
bright red—the solitary appearance of color ink marks the end of the publication’s run as
well as a strong final effort. One interview segment of the last issue titled “Diego Cortez an
Obvious Kind of Eyesore, taped by Liza Béar,” begins with the following text “Saturday

31
See note 27 above, 215.

32
See note 22 above, 501.

33
See note 27 above, 218.
14
April 3, 1976, 308 Mott Street, New York City. The day after Diego’s film program at
Artists Space. Diego is packing to go to Europe. I thumb through his books and find a
place for the microphone.”
34
This excerpt exhibits how Avalanche develops the
publication’s content. The interviewer briefly shares an intimate space with her subject,
provides prying inquiries and gets strong results. Upon viewing the issues in sequence, one
can appreciate strict promotion of the perspective of the artist through inclusion of extensive
artists’ perspectives in varied forms.
Edit deAk, Walter Robinson, and Joshua Cohn—the editors of Art-Rite—met in
1972 while enrolled in an art criticism class at Barnard College.
35
One year later the title
began production in New York at 149 Wooster Street 10012. Numerous issues focused on
a specific art medium or form, such as video, performance or painting—however, I would
like to focus on an issue that both deAk and Robinson identified as a standout example of
the publication
36
—issue no. 14, Artists’ Books (see Figure 3). This example, nearly
identical in form to most other incarnations of the publication, is a small rectangular 7 ½ x
10 ½ inch newsprint booklet printed in black and white. The cover of the issue features a
work by Carl Andre, and the table of contents lists Walter Robinson and Edit deAk as the
editors. The issue is partitioned into three segments. When one turns to the page associated
with the “Idea Poll” section, they encounter a full-bleed image coating the page and the
words ‘Market Research.’ This segment is prefaced with an explanation stating that fifty

34
“Diego Cortez an Obvious Kind of Eyesore, taped by Liza Béar,” Avalanche:
Newspaper, no. 13 (Summer 1976): 35.

35
David Frankel, “The Rite Stuff. (on Art-Rite),” Artforum International 41, no. 5
(January 2003): 114.

36
Ibid., 117.
15
unedited texts were submitted by both artists and art professionals, diversely tied to artists’
books as a medium. The responses were prompted by the following text:
If you feel inspired to write something informal, but brief and concentrated, about
your views on any of the issues related to artists’ books, please do so. Why are
you attracted to artists’ books? What are the best potentials and also the basic
difficulties concerning this form of art (either innate to the medium itself or to its
superstructure/or lack of it?)
37

The following nine pages are separated into three columns each and contain all fifty
responses. Each response contains the name of the contributor, and images reproduced
from a multitude of artists’ books are interspersed throughout the section.
John Baldessari likens the production of artists’ books to having a “cheap line” of
work, and believes that the book is a form in which art can be somewhat separate from
money.
38
Sol LeWitt focuses on the ease of conveying information, the low cost of the
medium, and the idea that a specific venue is not required for the reception of a book. Art
exhibitions are ephemeral whereas books remain in one’s possession infinitely, where they
can be viewed under “less intimidating conditions.”
39
Adrian Piper titles her contribution
‘Cheap Art Utopia,’ compares art to comic books, and evaluates the multiple layers of
change that would happen within the art market if art were available to everyone. In her
contribution, Piper does not comment on the problems inherent to distributing art in a new
form. Instead she skillfully crafts her text into a forum that points out the inconsistencies
and problems within contemporary arts and their greater function in society. In the utopia
she invents, art critics would have a greater social responsibility—she states, they “would

37
“Idea Poll,” Art-Rite, no.14 Artists’ Books (Winter 1976–1977): 5.

38
Ibid., 6.

39
Ibid., 10.
16
be legislating aesthetic standards (as they always do in fact) for a much larger audience.”
40

Later in the piece she writes, “it would be easier for more artists to publicize their work
without going through the political process of selection now required (i.e. where you went
to art school, who you know, where you live, whether you’ve gotten ‘written up’ and by
whom and where, who you’ve slept with, where you hang out, etc.).”
41
The open-ended
questionnaire attracts a flood of articulate responses, many of which are critical of the core
characteristics of the art market and gallery system. The tone of the segment may be
initiated by a lighthearted humorous prompt, but it begets very serious responses that are
untouched by the editorial staff. Art-Rite goes a step further than Avalanche by allowing
artists to generate texts for publication with minimal mediation, allowing the artists
unaltered voices to be heard.
The final segment of the issue, entitled ‘Features and Reviews,’ houses a number of
pieces commenting on artists’ books, written from a multitude of perspectives. In “Between
Covers,” by David Salle, the author writes about Printed Matter—a non-profit organization
and store devoted to the publication and distribution of artists’ books—questioning the
employment of the same hierarchy of styles that is utilized within the gallery context. He
also forcefully states “concept artist says I won’t add to proliferation of objects in [the]
world then makes an edition of a thousand books in three languages.”
42
Later in the text,
Salle cites a recently published piece in Artforum. In the piece, the Institute for Art and
Urban Resources purchased seven pages on which artists could create a work for the
magazine that was to utilize the lithographic process as well as the formal constraints of the

40
Ibid., 12.

41
Ibid., 12.

42
David Salle, “Between Covers,” Art-Rite, no.14 Artists’ Books (Winter 1976–1977): 37.

17
magazine. One artist, Robert Ryman, did not elect to create a small drawing, “when Ryman
indulges his sense of humor and tries to do something for the magazine the piece is coy,
ineffectual, and a bit nasty and the ironic thing is how his piece gets sucked right into the
vacuum of the magazine’s attitude like a spaceman into a black hole; he goes into the space
of nastiness the magazine provides for anyone who tries to get nasty with it.”
43
Conflicting
opinions and interesting debates carry a reader through the fourteenth issue of Art-Rite.
Though it’s full of clashing viewpoints, the issue is a collaborative effort between all of the
contributors—molded and shaped for consumption by deAk and Robinson. The issue
systematically locates artists’ writing to question critical institutions in the art world—
questioning the position of mainstream periodicals and the systematic ordering system used
in contemporary galleries.
Disinterested in power, the editors’ “stance was a demilitarized opposition to what
they saw as the establishment.”
44
They didn’t revel in their critical authority—instead, they
opened up the publication to variant levels of artist contribution and shared in the labor-
intensive efforts initiated by artists. The winter 1975 issue, no. 8, featured a cover by Pat
Steir—three, colored flowers (one red, one yellow, and one blue) line the bottom margin of
the cover (see Figure 4). Each individual cover was hand stamped three times (one for each
color) to create the effect on the newsprint publication.
45
Starting as an eight-page simple
newspaper format title, Art-Rite has since seen more elaborate longer issues infused with
advertisements. But, the periodical differs greatly from the other titles discussed in this
chapter because of its lack of aesthetic continuity and wide-range of writing styles

43
Ibid.

44
See note 35 above, 162.

45
See note 35 above, 117.
18
published from issue to issue. It is the type of publication that contradicts the Adornian
thought, “all efforts to restore art by giving it a social function—of which art is itself
uncertain and by which it expresses its own uncertainty—are doomed.”
46
The title
functioned as a publication, as an artwork and as a bearer of social criticism—both
regarding the arts and the broader contemporary culture.
Correspondence for REAL LIFE Magazine was to be sent to 41 John Street, New
York 10038—the first issue, published in March of 1979, was edited by Thomas Lawson,
contributed to by Susan Morgan and features Untitled, by Sherrie Levine (1978) on the
cover. The magazine, printed in black and white on matte uncoated paper, is wrapped with a
staple-bound cover and has a footprint of 8 1/8 x 10 ½ inches. Rejecting the aesthetic of
glossy art magazines, the issue begins with a segment focused on younger artists who
“look to the publically funded spaces for support, or improvise and find their own means
for getting the work out into some kind of public space.”
47
The spread functions as both an
archive of exhibitions held in a number of non-commercial spaces, and as a promotion for
upcoming lesser-publicized shows in New York.
48
In the introduction to a collective
volume of articles from REAL LIFE Magazine—published in 2006 by Primary
Information—Lawson and Morgan explain that during the late ‘70s both commercial
galleries and established art publications failed to support young artists. They write, “our
idea was to provide a forum for our generation to speculate on the general culture, a place
for artists to talk about and with artists, discuss each other’s work and consider the work

46
Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of
Minnesota Press, 1997), 1.

47
Thomas Lawson, “New York,” REAL LIFE Magazine, no. 1 (March 1979): 2.

48
Ibid., 2–3.
19
that had influenced us.”
49
At this point, artists could speak and write freely in alternative
publications—intrinsically linked to the contemporary art culture, but REAL LIFE went
beyond the art world to discuss general culture and its influence.
Valentin Tatransky contributes a short essay on Sherrie Levine’s new work titled
“Collage And The Problem Of Representation.” In this piece, the author does not praise the
artist, but rather discusses a progression in her practice that he observes over multiple
exhibitions and draws comparisons between her earlier collage work and more recent
efforts. He discusses the use of montage and the problem of using juxtaposition to create
tension within an image without creating a unified work. The author states, “powerful as
they are, Levine’s more traditional collages (which include elements cut out of context and
pasted together) share this weakness in a way her newest and more sophisticated collage-
based work does not.”
50
Tatransky next encounters Levine’s work during a new
representational art exhibition at Artists Space—the location of Lawson’s critic residency
where REAL LIFE Magazine was first developed. In the exhibition, entitled Pictures,
Levine outlines the inherent differences between illustration and representation—her works
carry the emotions of a representational image though her drawings are literally informed
by a how-to illustration book.
51
The critically charged texts within the magazine recall early
Artforum theoretical articles, but they reside in a wholly different framework and serve

49
Thomas Lawson, and Susan Morgan, “Various Histories of REAL LIFE Magazine,” In
REAL LIFE Magazine: Selected Writings and Projects 1979–1994, eds. Miriam Katzeff,
Thomas Lawson, and Susan Morgan (New York, NY: Primary Information, 2006), x.

50
Valentin Tatransky, “Collage And The Problem Of Representation: Sherrie Levine's new
work,” REAL LIFE Magazine, no. 1 (March 1979): 9.

51
Ibid.
20
wholly different purposes. Within the first issue of REAL LIFE, the publication’s goal—to
focus on non-commercial art spaces and young artists
52
—had been achieved.
The second issue of REAL LIFE Magazine was released prior to the close of the
decade, in October 1979. With a slightly larger footprint,
53
the cover of the second issue
features a work titled How to Murder Your Seeing-Eye Dog, by Steve Gianakos (see
Figure 5). Morgan interviews the artist in the opening pages of the issue and the absence of
her questions causes the piece to read as a monologue. The stripping of Morgan’s prompts
from the interview allow Gianakos freedom to reveal himself through a quick paced speech
regarding how he came to be an artist, his practice and his thoughts on the art market. In the
article, the artist discusses his series How to Murder Your Pet, and recites the fact that
viewers were unhappy with one specific piece involving a goat. “Obviously the best way to
murder something is to tie a rock around it’s neck and throw it off a bridge, but since I’m
so arty and these are all very visual, I make my idea a pretty picture.”
54
On the preceding
page of the text, the artist states “I try to take things I know exist and make them prettier,
rather than try to make pretty things more ugly.”
55
The artist acknowledges the vulgarity of
everyday life, and relies on stereotypes and clichés to illustrate obscenities.
56
The text is
straightforward, honest, and revealing—qualities that are absent, or heavily edited before
inclusion in mainstream art publications. REAL LIFE provided serious criticism for a new

52
Levine was in her early 30’s when the first issue was published.

53
The second issues footprint measured 8 ½ x 11 inches and defined the format for the
remaining issues of the publication.

54
Susan Morgan, “an interview with Steve Gianakos,” REAL LIFE Magazine, no. 2
(October 1979): 4.

55
Ibid., 3.

56
Ibid., 3–4.
21
generation of artists outside of commercial galleries and absent from mainstream
publications, giving them a platform as well as positioning their work within a historical
critical discourse.
57
The publication seamlessly merges the importance of artists’ writing
with the reinvigoration of critical discourse in alternative publications.
The alternative titles discussed in the preceding paragraphs were collectively
initiated over the course of a decade in Lower Manhattan—where the overlapping
contributors, constituents, and readers comprised the marginalized audience that the
publications targeted. In the decade prior “the various loft areas in Lower Manhattan that
attracted artists in the early 1960’s, SoHo became the major center for artist converting
manufacturing lofts to work/residence spaces.”
58
This ideal neighborhood provided
extremely large accommodations for a relatively low price, and the industrial structure of
the lofts were conducive to large-scale experimental art projects. Artists did not move into a
space that resembled a traditional neighborhood or community, but over time the general
infrastructure of the community modified itself and galleries—distinct from the uptown
galleries—as well as specialty shops opened in the neighborhood.
59
Displaced from the
mainstream art world, the residents of Lower Manhattan formed a unique residential and
artistic community bound through feelings of marginality and otherness.

57
See note 48 above, xi-xii.

58
James R. Hudson, The Unanticipated City: Loft Conversions in Lower Manhattan
(Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1987), 30.

59
Ibid., 31–33.
22
CHAPTER TWO
The alternative publications discussed in the previous chapter emerged in tandem
with the development of the SoHo neighborhood, and coupled the appearance of alternative
spaces such as the Kitchen, Artists Space, and 112 Greene Street. The decades following
saw the emergence of a plethora of artist-run alternative spaces, Group Material had a short
run as a physical exhibition space eventually resolving to “occupy the ultimate alternative
space—that wall-less expanse that bars artists and their work from the crucial social
concerns of the American Public.”
60
In a 1985 statement, the group explains that they wish
their practice to take a broader role within cultural activism, and that their exhibitions seek
to reveal “the multiplicity of meanings that surround any vital social issue.”
61
The
contemporary titles that will be discussed in the remainder of this thesis are not an imitation
of the previous efforts, nor is their progression modeled after the development of the SoHo
and Lower Manhattan communities.
In the recent titles it is evident that artists’ writing is a core component to the textual
contents of the publications, though, I will illustrate that the titles have evolved beyond
earlier efforts through placing strong emphasis on artist-based production, projects, and
organizing. These contemporary titles and corresponding projects are in some ways similar
to spaces like Orchard—“geared more toward the politics of representation and
historicization and less toward practical politics like the projects by Group Material.”
62
Like
the publications analyzed in the remaining chapters, Orchard “linked discourse to the spatial

60
Group Material, “Caution! Alternative Space!,” In Theories and Documents of
Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings, eds. Kristine Stiles, and Peter
Howard Selz (Berkeley, CA: Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 895.

61
Ibid.

62
Andrea Geyer, and Ulrike Müller, “An Idea-Driven Social Space,” Grey Room, no. 35
(Spring 2009): 121.
23
and the social,”
63
and functioned as a social space with representational and performative
aspects.
64
Though it was not a queer project, in an interview published in Grey Room in
2009, Ulrike Müller asserts that she thought about Orchard in terms of her “work with the
feminist collective LTTR, those kinds of temporary alliances, and making room together for
difference.”
65

To best understand the project-oriented practice of LTTR, a feminist genderqueer
collective based in New York, I will examine how different theoretical approaches within
Feminism are utilized in the structuring of the annual journal—LTTR. Feminist theory does
not have crisply defined boundaries, but it nonetheless has sought over time, and through a
multitude of self-critical analyses, to convey a series of categorized ideas of Feminism.
Through its study, one will glean that gender is a social construction and a system of power
that is reproduced by cultural, economic and political institutions. To collect submissions
from artists and other members of the genderqueer community, LTTR utilizes an open call
for submissions, and the works selected for the publications are decided upon through
rigorous conversation and deliberation between the collective editors.
66
The journal acts as
“an archive, an object, a record, a site that formalizes, materializes, and insists on the
contributions of queer genderqueer feminist artists and strategies.”
67
The five issues of
LTTR are named and structured in a manner that partially unveils the theme of a particular
issue and their form is determined by the chosen content.

63
Ibid., 117.

64
Ibid., 122.

65
Ibid., 124.

66
Emily Roysdon, e-mail interview by author, December 3, 2009.

67
Emily Roysdon, e-mail interview by author, December 3, 2009.
24
The first issue (see Figure 6), a 32 page 9 x 8 ½ inch booklet was released in an
impressive edition of 1000—as were all subsequent LTTR publications. The first three
hundred of the edition included an artist made bookmark and hand-printed door hanger, and
all issues included both color and black and white artists’ reproductions, photographs,
interviews and articles. The second issue, 12 ½ x 12 ½ inches when folded—accurately
mimics a vinyl album cover both in size and due to the inclusion of audio materials. The
piece, produced in 2003, includes a series of posters with texts, photographs and a CD with
songs, interviews and other audio-based works. The third issue emphasizes “process and
practice over product.”
68
A manila envelope, folded in half—and bound shut with a
lavender-colored ribbon—serves as the cover of this 10 x 7 ½ inch, 32 page issue unveiling
a sewn booklet of images and projects, among other contributions when opened. LTTR no.
4, an 80 page 5 ½ x 8 ½ inch perfect bound book was released in 2005, and was funded by
the nonprofit organization Printed Matter—an initiative discussed briefly in the first
chapter. A reader could easily access the book’s contents from either side of the cover (see
Figure 7)—the front and back are identically titled and embossed, and portions of the book
are paginated from opposite sides. Reading the book can be disorienting, but the design
meticulously serves as a reinforcement of the theoretical framework—the lack of an
adequate feminist epistemology. The most recent incarnation of LTTR is a 68 page 9 x 12
inch metallic embossed, cardboard covered, spiral-bound book (see Figure 8). This issue
includes a clear vinyl plastic pocket that houses six artist-multiples and a number of essays,
interviews, reproduced artworks and photographs.
This archive of LTTR-produced publications may not have an obvious strong
visual or structural thread that ties the titles together, however, the works are linked because

68
LTTR, “LTTR no. 3 – Practice More Failure,” http://www.lttr.org/journal/3 (accessed
December 3, 2009).
25
a coherent theoretical framework informs their conceptual and physical structure. LTTR
issues do not adhere to the traditional notions of a book, a periodical, or other types of
publications. They disrupt and deconstruct the category of publication, similarly to the logic
of queer activism which takes “apart the identity categories and blur[s] group
boundaries.”
69
Despite the presumed freedom and power attained by ascribing to fixed
identity categories—in this case gay and lesbian—Joshua Gamson argues that the refusal to
identify with such succinct categories and the employment of a deconstructionist politic is
in fact the way to liberation.
70
K8 Hardy’s sardonic prose in the fifth journal’s editorial
confirms the rejection of identity categories—particularly flawed ones— “it’s so easy to
party, the heteronormal.”
71
Specific textual examples that I selected from the LTTR
publications to analyze can be found in the first, fourth and fifth incarnations of the
journal.
72

In the premiere journal, released in September of 2002, the acronym LTTR was
understood to represent ‘Lesbians To The Rescue.’ This issue, like LTTR’s subsequent
journals, is deeply rooted in queer theory. Judith Butler writes at length about the perpetual
inscription of culture onto the sexed body and invites readers to question the idea of the

69
Joshua Gamson, “Must Identity Movements Self-Destruct?: A Queer Dilemma,” In
Queer Theory/Sociology, ed. Steven Seidman (Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell, 1996), 396.

70
Ibid.

71
K8 Hardy, “Editorial: Amifesto,” LTTR, no. 5 Positively Nasty (October 2006): 45.

72
I neglected to choose selections from the second and third publication projects to craft my
argument because a larger percentage of the contributions to those issues were strictly audio
and image based. The remaining publications explored in this thesis are more traditional in
form, hence I’ve chosen to focus on the iterations of LTTR that aesthetically resemble a
traditional publication for cohesion and continuity.
26
body—as it is constructed from external forces instead of being a passive original form.
73

In the editor’s letter of the inaugural journal, two founding members of the collective
address the idea of bodies. Emily Roysdon writes “to embrace our historical birth into
feminist sexes and to move with the brilliant bodies languages identities and arts that this
long walk has produced,”
74
thus acknowledging the historical and continuing struggle of
Feminism while recognizing the problematic significance of the culturally constructed body.
Equally effective is K8 Hardy’s insertion “moving bodies in performance making daily
manifestos,”
75
referencing the constant practice of gender performance. Dean Spade further
explores ideas concerning body and gender and practices of aesthetic resistance in his
contribution entitled Dress To Kill Fight To Win. He writes, “when we appeal to some
notion of an unmodified or undecorated body, we participate in the adoption of a false
neutrality.”
76
The false neutrality he speaks of is allowed due to constant citation and
repetition of the idea of a natural body. The original however, does not exist.
Contributors were asked about their wish to direct (the journal) in the submission
proposal for the fourth issue of LTTR, in response to select entries, the editor’s letter states
“sometimes, when you ask a question and you get a question back, that’s better than any
answer.”
77
“Who Do You Think You LTTR?” —from N. Eiseman and A.L Steiner better

73
Judith Butler, “Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions,” In Gender Trouble:
Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York, NY: Routledge, 1990), 129.

74
Emily Roysdon, “Editorial,” LTTR, no. 1 Lesbians to the Rescue (September 2002): 2.

75
K8 Hardy, “Editorial,” LTTR, no. 1 Lesbians to the Rescue (September 2002): 2.

76
Dean Spade, “Dress to Kill Fight to Win,” LTTR, no. 1 Lesbians to the Rescue
(September 2002): 17.

77
K8 Hardy, Ulrike Müller, Emily Roysdon, Ginger Brooks Takahashi, and Lanka
Tattersall, “Pants Down At Noon,” LTTR, no. 4 Do You Wish to Direct Me? (September
2005): 1.
27
know as Ridykeulous, is comprised of questions, criticisms and reprimands. “You must
disclose the basis on which aesthetic works are praised or condemned. We insist on
guaranteed equal access entry to the deep dark hole you call a project.”
78
This request
recalls the feminist epistemic desire for a proper form of objectivity. Donna Haraway
explains that “we need the power of modern critical theories of how meanings and bodies
get made, not in order to deny meanings and bodies, but in order to build meanings bodies
that have a chance for life.”
79
In “Situated Knowledges,” she recognizes the problematic
nature of feminist identification with masculinized traditions that determine the hierarchical
order of what is perceived as knowledge.
80
The text asks that the editors of LTTR recognize
their own participation in a process of systematic judgment that is performed within an
imperfect hetero-normative structure.
Gregg Bordowitz contributes a poem entitled “More or Less” to the fourth issue of
the publication. In the poem he states what the subject ‘one’ prefers by setting up a list of
binaries, and giving precedence to one preference over another. This poem directly
references work in psychoanalytical feminism; a study conducted by Lawrence Kohlberg is
criticized in Carol Gilligan’s prolific book titled In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory
and Women's Development. In Kohlberg’s study, two eleven-year-old children—with
similar levels of intelligence, education and social class—see separate moral problems arise
in an identical dilemma. In the dilemma, the children are told that a man’s wife will die if he
does not obtain a drug that he cannot afford. They are then asked; should the man steal the

78
Ridykeulous, “Who Do You Think You LTTR?,” LTTR, no. 4 Do You Wish to Direct
Me? (September 2005): 5.

79
Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the
Privilege of Partial Perspective,” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (Autumn 1988): 580.

80
Ibid., 579–580.
28
drug? The boy responds that he should steal the drug because a monetary value cannot be
placed on a life. The girl believes that stealing is not the only option, and she is concerned
for the potential repercussions of theft. In the study, Kohlberg’s conclusion is that the
development of formal logic in boys causes advancement to their moral development.
Gilligan explains that the female child sees the dilemma not as a matter of simple logic, but
rather as a narrative based on human relationships.
81
In Bordowitz’s poem, priority is given
not to the logical or rational, “one prefers the fierce attachment over the security of
marriage. Attachments can last while marriages do not.”
82
Each segment of the poem
reiterates that the responsible and logical are not primary, and the passionate, caring and
creative are in fact ideal. The subject in the poem, one, is un-gendered—one could be male,
female, transgender or transsexual.
The fifth LTTR journal’s editorial is accented with undertones of radical feminism.
“No gratitude to those who hide in the safety of heterosexual language,”
83
and the use of
heteronormal are present in K8 Hardy’s articulation. Radical feminists recognize the
overarching societal structure as a problem, it is formed on traditions of patriarchy and the
practice of heterosexuality, thus lasting change cannot be sought from within the current
structure. Adrienne Rich examines compulsory heterosexuality as an institution that affects
and reinforces male dominance, lesbian invisibility and the presumption of heterosexual

81
Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development
(Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1982), 25–28.

82
Gregg Bordowitz, “More or Less,” LTTR, no. 4 Do You Wish to Direct Me?
(September 2005): 36.

83
See note 70 above.

29
sexual preference.
84
Hardy argues that to function outside of the comfort zone of
heterosexuality—the assumed norm—is an ongoing struggle.
85
The postcard work, entitled
I Want a President, inserted into the clear vinyl pouch at the fore of the issue is particularly
gripping. In the piece, the artist lists presidential qualities and traits that she desires, the
series asks for someone who is a dyke, a person with AIDS and someone with no health
insurance, who had an abortion at 16, who does drugs and who has been in therapy.
86
The
work closes with a quote reflecting on the traits of former and existing presidents, “always
a boss and never a worker, always a liar, always a thief and never caught.”
87
There is
absolute recognition of privilege, unfair and unjust standards and a request for
restructuring. The flawed society and political structure is discussed by Charlotte Bunch
“men who rule, and male leftists who seek to rule, try to depoliticize sex and the relations
between men and women in order to prevent us from acting to end our oppression and
challenging their power.”
88
An oppression that is pointedly highlighted with Leonard’s
work, I Want A President.
I previously made the claim that a primary force connecting LTTR’s publications is
the use of a clear theoretical foundation. However, it is important to address the persistent
role of the title as an assemblage of contemporary art works. Leonard, like other
contributors listed in the previous paragraphs, has been able to utilize LTTR as a platform

84
Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” Signs 5, no. 4
Women: Sex and Sexuality (Summer 1980): 632–34.

85
See note 70 above.

86
Zoe Leonard, I Want A President, 2006, New York, NY: LTTR.

87
Ibid.

88
Charlotte Bunch, “Lesbians in Revolt,” In Feminist Frameworks: Alternative Theoretical
Accounts of the Relations Between Women and Men, eds. Alison M. Jaggar, and Paula S.
Rothenberg (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1984), 145.
30
and an exhibition space for her art practice. Drawings, prints, posters, photographs, video
stills and project multiples have found their way into the pages of the journal. Roysdon
explains “in LTTR it was more about building relationships within the journal and events
between many kinds of strategies and practices; dance, video, lecture, poetry, photography
all next to each other.”
89
Contemporary art practices grounded in the tradition of writing,
formal letter writing, poetry, and text-based imagery, are analyzed in this chapter. Though,
strictly visual art practices are also fostered in the journal, and in actuality they make up a
large percentage of the publication’s components.
Queer theory in the context of LTTR is simultaneously a compilation of feminist
theories that prefigured it and a series of rejections to the insufficient feminisms that it was
born out of. It is inclusive of different identities or the lack of identity and welcomes
criticism from members of the decentralized queer community. Applied to both the contents
and form of the periodical, the theory strengthens the discursive space of the publication
across a plethora of communities. The space encompasses the numerous initiatives in which
LTTR engages; event organization, performance series and collaborations and is
supplemented by these linked efforts. Initially developed to accommodate works [in the
journal] that required “more than the page,”
90
LTTR linked events began in 2003. I will
briefly discuss one specific event that I believe exemplifies LTTR’s discursive framework
and critical program. On August 19, 2005, LTTR held a Radical Read-In at Printed Matter
in New York, an event designed to gather community members into the Chelsea-based
space and to encourage individuals to share their favorite texts or portions of books.
Readers could write specific thoughts or notations on bookmarks and place them within

89
Emily Roysdon, e-mail interview by author, December 3, 2009.

90
Emily Roysdon, e-mail interview by author, December 3, 2009.
31
titles at Printed Matter with their name and contact information to possibly foster future
dialogue about the texts.
91
Through this event, the collective “promotes reading as an
activist undertaking, one that can band people together, revolutionize thinking, mobilize
groups, or just expand a single person’s view of the world or the self.”
92
LTTR events are
an incarnation of the collectives’ investment in the queer community, where the artistic
practices that compose the journal are animated. Co-Editor Emily Roysdon views the
discourse evident within the events and the journal as “interchangeable, totally integrated
and crucial.”
93
The journal functions in a way that allows readers to potentially meet
contributing practitioners at events, individual components of the journal can be removed
and re-contextualized, and because there is a limited number in circulation, the books
encourage the act of sharing.
LTTR is not an academic journal or book, it is a limited-run publication that likely
perpetuates feminist and queer theory discourse and the art practices of collective advocates
for those theories to a small, decentralized population. But, that population is ever growing,
and the renegotiation and reinvention of feminist theories and ideas within the community is
the type of practice that can give birth to new theories or responses to existing outdated
forms of feminist thought. The reformation of theories is less directly accomplished
through the production of titles that utilize feminist frame-based editorial modes and are
engaged in the act of raising awareness. The project reaches a broad audience; through the
online archive of published content, the circulating issues distributed both freely and at low-

91
LTTR, “Radical Read In :::: A Wave of New Rage Thinking Residency at Printed
Matter,” http://www.lttr.org/events/radical-read-in-a-wave-of-new-rage-thinking-residency-
at-printed-matter (accessed December 3, 2009).

92
Ibid.

93
Emily Roysdon, e-mail interview by author, December 3, 2009.
32
cost, borrowed and repurposed issues that exist in the lives of individuals and through
event attendance and participation. Above I was speaking about the likelihood that LTTR
reaches an ever-growing decentralized population—this is also perhaps aided because when
an initiative has a devout audience or public it both carries itself and is carried by those who
deem the initiative as an important platform for discourse.

33
CHAPTER THREE
The publications discussed in this chapter share a history with 1970s alternative
publications as well as an affinity for historic revolutionary press and journals. In “The
Transformation of the Public Sphere’s Political Function,” the philosopher Jürgen
Habermas writes:
As long as the mere existence of a press that critically-rationally debates political
matters remained problematic, it was compelled to engage in continuous self-
thematization: before the permanent legalization of the political public sphere, the
appearance of a political journal and its survival was equivalent to involvement in
the struggle over the range of freedom to be granted to the public opinion and
over publicity as a principle.
94

These conflicts continue today, and are demonstrated in the periodicals analyzed in this
chapter. These titles exist at the juncture between aesthetic and political practices and serve
an outwardly political function. Chto delat?—suggestive of early self-organization of
socialist workers in Russia—formed in Petersburg amidst an action called The
Refoundation of Petersburg, when a collective of scholars, critics, and artists led a march to
found a new city center during the grandiose 300
th
anniversary celebration of the city.
95
In
the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s dissolution, the group seeks “to trigger a prototypical
social model of participatory democracy, translating an open system for the generation of
new forms of solidarity into the realm of contemporary cultural work.”
96
Following the
Islamic Revolution—beginning in 1978, Iran has had a tumultuous succession of political
leadership, in its debut issue, Pages explores Iran “as a public domain where news,

94
Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry Into
a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1991), 184.

95
Chto delat?, “Chto delat?,” http://www.chtodelat.org/index.php?option=com_content&
view=article&id=192%3Achto-delat&catid=91%3Afront&lang=en (accessed January 3,
2010).

96
Ibid.
34
opinions and dialogues are circulated, the press has led a turbulent and fragmentary life.”
97

Focusing primarily on the Iranian context, Pages enunciates artistic practices that reveal “the
specific conditions in which they are produced, those socio-political circumstances against
which an artistic production is inevitably read as a discourse.”
98

A large quantity of periodicals were produced by the two aforementioned efforts,
therefore, I will allocate less focus on the design, layout, and other tangible qualities of the
publications—as individual efforts or artifacts. Instead, these qualities will be addressed
regarding the entire body of published periodicals of each title. In addition, greater focus
will be placed on the online correlate of the titles in discussion. This concentration is
necessary because I have encountered the two titles discussed in this chapter most
extensively in electronic form. My examination has occurred through scrutinizing online
archives as well as through downloading PDF documents identical to the printed
periodicals. I do not wish to diminish the importance of the tangible publication format, but
in regards to the titles discussed in this chapter, I believe that the reliance on multivalent
platforms is best illustrated through the online spaces the projects inhabit. Similar to
practices associated with relational aesthetics, the periodicals discussed in this chapter
employ interactivity, user-friendliness and relational concepts, and emphasize the communal
reception and formation of their content, much of which resides online.
The newspaper Chto delat? or What is to be Done? shares its name with the
workgroup that produces the publication. The bilingual Russian/English publication, in
irregular circulation since 2003, is edited by Dmitry Vilensky and David Riff as well as

97
Babak Afrassiabi & Nasrin Tabatabai, “Foreword,” Pages: Public & Private, no. 1
(February 2004), http://www.pagesmagazine.net/2006/article.php?ma_id=6603242#58
63532 (accessed January 3, 2010).

98
Pages, “About Pages,” (see introduction, n. 6).
35
other members of the workgroup. The 11 x 16 inch newspaper is produced in editions of
3000–9000 copies with an average length of 16–24 pages allowing for a substantial
number of facing-page spreads. Printed in black and white, the pages are mirrored for a
cohesive layout, employing varying implements to demarcate segments written in the two
disparate languages. The thematic issues examine the Russian situation in an international
context and much of the content is focused on art, activism, philosophy and cultural theory.
Long texts are absent from the newspaper, due to the limited word count and the desire to
convey a sense of urgency by publishing texts that afford both quick ingestion and
immediate reaction.
99
The publication is made freely available to readers at local cultural
events, exhibitions produced by the workgroup and on the project’s corresponding website.
Contributors located in Russia, Western Europe, and The United States communicate from
the respective viewpoints of artists, art theorists, philosophers, and activists. These writers
are a reflection of networks of solidarity created on both a global and local scale by the
publication—the newspaper is viewed “as a way of organizing solidarities and drawing
people into a relevant debate.”
100

The newspaper format as a class of publication demands clarity and inherently has
both spatial and temporal limitations. While wordy texts published exclusively online can
remain un-edited, the newspaper format limits the length, but not the impact of printed
texts.
101
Through the use of a one-color ink process and the cost of newsprint, Chto delat?
can be produced at relatively low expense thus allowing the ability to publish “quite heavy

99
Dmitry Vilensky, email interview by author, January 3, 2010.

100
David Riff, email interview by author, January 4, 2010.

101
David Riff, email interview by author, January 4, 2010.
36
texts in a most democratic and accessible form”
102
—which was a goal of the workgroup
when production of the newspaper commenced. I have briefly discussed the newspaper
Chto delat? as a physical object, but I must also touch on alternate, electronic ways to
encounter the publication. To fully understand the divergent ways of accessing the
newspaper digitally, one must classify the corresponding website as an interface and a place
for interactivity. The project’s homepage (see Figure 9), located at www.chtodelat.org,
bears a headline with the bilingual title and subtitle of the project—which in English
translates to ‘What is to be Done?’ and ‘A Newspaper for Engaged Creativity.’ The black
typeface plastered across the top of the page is identical to the printed version and is one of
many visually continuous forms that bridges the website and the newspaper. Underlining
the page’s title is a row of quick links to multiple sections of the site: Events, Newspapers,
Art Projects, Films, Magazine, Library, Blog, LJ,
103
Links and Donation and Fund. The
balance of the opening page, and the remaining pages of the site, are separated into three
columns. The two grey columns that frame the central content of the page recall the text-
boxes in the print version. The columns’ primary function is to set apart information, the far
left of the website links to the latest issues of the newspaper and news while the far right
allows users to toggle between English and Russian and provides search and registration
boxes. The center column of the page—twice as wide as those on either side—contains
recent video postings of Chto delat? projects and a brief description of the group’s
inception and mission.

102
Dmitry Vilensky, email interview by author, January 3, 2010.

103
Live Journal (LJ) is a web community where internet users can utilize free open source
server software to keep a blog or journal online. In 2007 LJ was purchased by a Russian
media company—where product development and design functions are now based.
37
Accessing the newspaper section of the site refreshes to an identical layout with
newspaper specific content (see Figure 10). The left hand column includes links to all of the
newspaper issues, the center bears an image of the publication at the printers as well as
information about the newspaper and the right hand column remains unchanged. Readers
are beckoned to “choose a newspaper from the menu on the lefthand side,”
104
and the center
column transforms into the cover image of the respective selection (see Figure 11). From
this position, the reader can download a PDF of the issue, or view its contents online. My
research was conducted through reading the full issues in digital format. Neither the tactile
nor the auditory qualities of paging through a newsprint publication are inherent to the
reading of the virtual publication, but the design, layout and size of the periodicals single
sheet are accurately represented.
Through the prompting of co-editor David Riff, as well as my own examination of
the contents of individual issues of Chto delat?, I have determined that issue no. 7, Drift:
Narvskaya Zastava (see Figure 12), is a prime example of an instance when the newspaper
is “most directly linked”
105
to a number of the group’s other efforts. This issue functions as
a type of exhibition catalog or chronicle of a multi-layered art project that can best be
described as “an artistic inquiry into one of Petersburg’s most fascinating and contradictory
neighbourhoods—Narvskaya Zastava.”
106
This vicinity, considered proletarian prior to the
revolution—consequently became the developmental center for a “new, socialist
Leningrad,” today the neighborhood contains surviving constructionist architecture and
illustrates the problematic nature of the transformation from a socialist community model to

104
Chto delat?, “Newspapers,” (see introduction, n. 16).

105
David Riff, email interview by author, January 4, 2010.

106
“Drifting Through Incomplete Utopia,” Chto delat?, no. 7 Drift: Narvskaya Zastava
(September 2004): 1.
38
a capitalist class-based system.
107
The project documented in this issue of the newspaper is
a depiction of the workgroup’s analysis of the everyday life of the inhabitants of Narvskaya
Zastava. To gather data on the individuals and the neighborhoods’ collective memory, the
group created a ‘mobile sociological center’ which was stationed in several places within
the community over the course of the project. The data, consisting of written
questionnaires, audio-interviews, video-documentation and photo-documentation was
translated into a number of art projects including videos, graphic diagrams, installation
works and audio pieces (in addition to the newspaper).
108

“Today, no one is concerned with developing it; there’s little to no construction; the
developers haven’t come here yet and chances are they won’t in the future.”
109
The
preceding quote is an excerpt from a transcription—titled “Fragments from Video
Interview”—resting on the bottom of the third page where an image of constructivist
architecture defines the text boxes’ parameters. Later in this segment an interviewee states:
To be honest, there are hardly any example[s] of good constructivism in this
entire city, but here, there are all these great buildings: the City Council building
with its genius tower by the architect Trotsky, Nokolysky’s school, Traktornaya
Street, and the Gorky House of Culture, the Communal Kitchen, and of course,
the Institute of Professional-Technical Education, another brilliant building, which
is—unfortunately—in a sorry state of disrepair.
110

The neighborhood is caught in stasis—the tangible changes that accompany the emergence
of capitalism have yet to appear. However, the scars inflicted by the uprooting of the Soviet

107
Ibid.

108
Ibid.

109
Alexei Lepork, “Fragments From Video Interview,” Chto delat?, no. 7 Drift: Narvskaya
Zastava (September 2004): 3.

110
Ibid.
39
community have yet to heal, and that loss is more apparent to the region’s inhabitants.
111

Unrequited yearning for the past is identified here:
We remember the pleasure of Soviet life, the simplicity with which we lived back
then, when a cone of ice-cream cost no more than 7 kopeks. On Nevsky Prospect,
it’s hard to remember any of this, but in Narvskaya Zastava, on Stachek Prospect,
on Traktornaya Street, at the Baltic Station, in all of those alleys with their worn,
beaten-up benches, you remember the way things used to be.
112

The precise illustration of fond memories and the distinct sense of longing provide a subtle
criticism of the governmental shortcomings in St. Petersburg—and Russia. The excerpts
remind readers that the promises of modern capitalism are not an antidote to political
discord. However, in giving the community voice to compile a historic memory,
“Situationist Sociology in Narvskaya Zastava” reveals that the inhabitants do not want a
history of the region’s “memory of a proletarian area, of social projects, or of the
unsuccessful attempts to build communism and to accommodate the disenfranchised.”
113

Rather, the population awaits the assumed triumph of capitalism “having armed themselves
with extremely liberal consciousness, with the lack of empathy for their neighbors.”
114
The
texts present two realities, one in which inhabitants feel a loss for the unrealized soviet
utopia, and one where residents are consistently aggravated by the present situation—
defined by latent capitalism and the diaspora of the Russian population.
The issue includes an excerpt from Guy Debord’s “Theory of the Dérive,” citing
that “dérives involve playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical

111
Sofia Tchouikina, “Situationist Sociology in Narvskaya Zastava,” Chto delat?, no. 7
Drift: Narvskaya Zastava (September 2004): 7.

112
See note 108 above.

113
See note 110 above.

114
Ibid.
40
effects, and are thus quite different from the classic notions of a journey or stroll.”
115
A two
day dérive, executed by the workgroup is among the project components—listed on the
ninth page of the newspaper. However, this incarnation couples the Situationist practice
with that of Leningrad-Petersburg, where unfamiliar places are encountered on cultured
strolls.
116
Group member Alexander Skidan reproduces time-stamped notes from the first
page of the stroll and general comments on the second; “constructivist buildings, crumbling
before our eyes, corresponded to the dissolution of the social body, turning people into
flotsam and jetsam, emanating a miasma of hollow despair, giving rise to the involuntary
though that these ruins were an unbearably material monument to the frozen petrified
revolution.”
117
In the seventh issue, the group penetrates a community to gain a better
understanding of how the neighborhood functions—exemplifying a small cross-section
they communicate the reality for much of the working class in Petersburg. The periodical
continuously brings forth relevant contemporary debates with an emphasis on art practice
coupled with writing—beyond “perpetuating legitimizing discourse,”
118
in this specific
issue focusing on ways Russia is “between ‘already’ and ‘not yet.’”
119

Pages, an ongoing effort—begun in 2004 by Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak
Afrassiabi—consists of a multitude of projects including the publication of a bilingual
Farsi/English magazine entitled Pages. Since the premiere issue’s release, the irregular

115
Guy-Ernest Debord, “Theory of the Dérive,” Chto delat?, no. 7 Drift: Narvskaya
Zastava (September 2004): 4

116
See note 105 above.

117
Alexander Skidan, “Derive Protocol,” Chto Delat?, no. 7 Drift: Narvskaja Zastava
(September 2004): 13.

118
David Riff, email interview by author, January 4, 2010.

119
See note 116 above.
41
production of the 32-page, 24 x 33 cm folded newspaper format magazine has transitioned
to a smaller—20 x 26 cm—lengthier paperback version. Though the editors aim to produce
approximately eighty percent of the publication’s contents in Iran,
120
the title is designed in
the Netherlands, and until recently, was published and distributed by Episode Publishers—
also located in the Netherlands. The moderately available publication is sold in Europe and
is also represented by select distributors and fine bookstores in the United States and
China. The first issue, suitably themed ‘Public & Private,’ examines the circulation of
public domain dialogue in Iran. The project responds to the simultaneous antagonistic and
temporal discourses that unfold in Iran’s daily reality while accentuating the widely
misrepresented homogeneous sociopolitical culture of Iran to outside onlookers.
121
The
exchanges within the publication are grounded in visual arts, and contributions—originally
supplied by Iranian writers and artists—have since grown to include internationally based
individual and collective correspondents.
Similar to the title discussed in the first portion of this chapter, Pages has—since
2006—existed as an interactive online project located at www.pagesmagazine.net (see
Figure 13). Pages co-creator Nasrim Tabatabai states that the space stands alone as a project
that visually clarifies the “relation and connectivity among all our projects and the
magazine.” Intricately designed, the site is formed by two adjacent screens with identical
textual content that is reflected over a moveable central dividing bar that separates the page.
Afforded by the conventions of the Farsi and English languages, the left half of the screen
contains content written in Farsi, radiating outward from the central divider, while the right
side houses English content. Viewers can click and drag the dividing bar to the right or the

120
Nasrin Tabatabai, email interview by author, February 23, 2010.

121
Ibid.
42
left to enlarge one side of the page for easier viewing (see Figure 14). The floating menus,
oriented perpendicular to the top of the screen, list the sites components and reassert
themselves according to the placement of the dividing line. While on the main page, the
backgrounds of the opposite sides intermittently change—a new image accessed from a
seemingly infinite databank every few minutes. Each individual title in the top menu is
displayed in a different bold color, containing; magazine, projects, supplements, daily
pages, forum and archive. The sky blue type forming the menu at the bottom of the page
lists: about pages, mailing list, contact and links. To understand the layered function of the
publication, I will primarily discuss three of the site’s segments commonly cross-
referenced; magazine, projects, and supplements.
Upon clicking on the magazine section, the viewer observes a row of thumbnail
images of the different covers and the titles of the issues themes above their corresponding
icon (see Figure 15). Clicking on a specific iteration of the title reorganizes the page
expanding the image to reveal both the front and back—the English and Farsi sides—of the
cover alongside secondary information regarding projects and supplementary publications
made in tandem with a particular issue. A lengthy textual column sits beneath the cover
image providing the issues unaltered introductory text and links to varying articles within
the issue, which one can easily scroll downward to access (see Figure 16). The first issue,
‘Public & Private,’ incorporates a number of texts dealing with political and religious
influences on culture and the relationships between interior and exterior spaces. In a piece
by Masserat Amir Ebrahimi, titled “Public Space in Enclosure,” the author discusses the
transformative roles of power and authority over public space—specifically in reference to
women’s role in the public sphere. The author reflects on the reigning authority—which
has distinct control over individual behavior and presence in public places—explaining that
43
while there was a tendency toward globalization and modernization, large public squares in
Tehran “were capable of suddenly transforming into large enclosed spaces under the
traditional rules and regulations of enclosed interior/exterior spaces, despite being spatially
open and extensive and belonging to today’s world.”
122
Later in the text, the role of hijab is
discussed—minimizing the visibility of women in public and creating homogeneity in their
presence. However, “many women wear it in urban spaces as a strategy for concealing
themselves from the others’ looks and to increase their quiet but active presence in
masculine society.”
123
These contradictions help to illustrate the complexity of the Iranian
socio-political and cultural situation as well as inherently entangled incarnations of identity.
Babak Afrassiabi, co-editor of Pages, analyzes the film Sagkoshi by Bahram Byzai
in his contribution to the premiere issue in “The Split Narrative of Privacy.” In a post
Iran/Iraq war Tehran while the city undergoes severe reconstruction and soldiers occupy
the streets the story’s female protagonist returns to the city and takes residence in a hotel
room—because her home had been confiscated.
124
In his essay, the author discusses the
representation of private space within the film, explaining that there is no acknowledgement
that the portrayal of private space in the film is fictive, and that the representation is
modeled after the modest norms encouraged in public. Later, Afrassiabi comments on the
additional role played by actors in the film—one readily identified by viewers—that
“communicates those codes that are imposed onto appearances and mannerisms in the

122
Masserat Amir Ebrahimi, “Public Space in Enclosure,” Pages: Public & Private, no. 1
(February 2004), http://www.pagesmagazine.net/2006/article.php?ma_id=6603242#58
63532 (accessed January 3, 2010).

123
Ibid.

124
Afrassiabi, Babak Afrassiabi, “Split Narrative of Privacy,” Pages: Public & Private, no.
1 (February 2004), http://www.pagesmagazine.net/2006/article.php?ma_id=6603242#58
63532 (accessed January 3, 2010).
44
public space, those we are implying onto ourselves even while we are watching the film in
a cinema theatre.”
125
The issues brought forth in this text address the ongoing debates
surrounding Iranian and ‘other’ types of art practices inadequately depicted in western art
discourse. There is a lack of “immediacy of reference to the very conditions that make these
other practices a fact,” and is a primary reason that debates from varying contexts are
included in Pages,”
126
states Tabatabia. Pages linked events further make visible this
debate—in News From Tehran, an exhibition and film program held at the Witte de With in
Rotterdam works with a variety of collaborators engaged in different modes of artistic
production. “It can be seen as part of the broader concern with investigating how artistic
practice in Iran are constituted by and seek to address in the specific socio-political
condition.”
127
The types of projects that Pages are engaged with allow a fairly broad
reception of their core goals and ideas. Though in some ways they cater to a global
marginalized community—of both Iranian artists and cultural producers invested in specific
socio-political situations—it is important to think about how these ideas are disseminated.
Though Pages particularly references the Iranian context, the title is published and
the website’s content is hosted in the Netherlands. The artists behind the project are based
in the Netherlands, but regardless of their location a sequence of government bans would
prevent this project from existing in Iran. According to Access Denied: The Practice and
Policy of Global Internet Filtering—published in 2008 by the MIT Press—since the
beginning of the century “the Islamic Republic of Iran has installed one of the most

125
Ibid.

126
Nasrin Tabatabia, email interview by author, February 23, 2010.

127
Pages, “News From Tehran,” http://www.pagesmagazine.net/2006/project.php#54
32192 (accessed January 3, 2010).
45
extensive technical filtering systems in the world.”
128
In a region where radio, television
and print media are strictly state controlled, the once relative freedom in cyberspace is
quickly disappearing due to pervasive filtering and implementation of new legislation.
129

When the sharing of information and the option of publishing individual opinions and other
freedoms of expression are heavily censored, the activities of a project like Pages become
very important. As a forum unbound to the regulatory state agencies of Iran, the printed
publication cannot be distributed within the country, but could through alternate routes
reach an Iranian citizen. The site and project exist as archives of a marginalized community
with common experiences with which to identify. Iran is a country with tumultuous
conflicting patterns in daily life—a discursive publication that recognizes the multifaceted
identities of its inhabitants and constituents is extremely beneficial.

128
Ronald Deibert, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Johnathan Zittrain, eds., “Internet
Filtering in Iran in 2006–2007,” In Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global
Internet Filtering (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2008), http://opennet.net/studies/iran2007
(accessed February 15, 2010).

129
Ibid.
46
CONCLUSION
In 2001, the Weserburg—Museum für moderne Kunst, Studienzentrum für
Künstler-publikationen, held a conference directed at contemporary research in the field of
artists’ publications. The lectures were partially focused on specific “characteristics of the
published artworks, such as internationality, trans-disciplinarity, [and] the employment of
communicative strategies.”
130
Anne Moglin-Delcroix observes the artistic value of artists’
publications and states that it is illogical to rely on formalist criteria to access this value,
discusses publications as documentation of ephemeral projects and presents the inherent
problems of classifying and archiving artists’ publications.
131
The findings emphasized in
this conference, coalesced with increasing curatorial interest—discussed in the introduction
of this text—in artists’ publications, establish their significance in contemporary art
practice.
The 1970s alternative art publications discussed in this thesis exhibit strong
evidence of an increase in social critique in the form of varying titles disseminated amid the
decade. Following a trajectory that first advocated artists’ interviews, then artists’ writing,
and finally the opinions of young artists regarding broader culture, through the study of
disparate contemporary art publications, I have illustrated how the existing social
responsibility has evolved and progressed. Without denying the validity of the artifact,
existing collaborative efforts have elevated the discursive role of contemporary publications
to the equivalent of more commonly accepted forms of artistic output. I’ve shown how

130
Sigrid Schade, and Anne Thurmann-Jajes, eds, Artists' Publications: Schriftenreihe für
Künstlerpublikationen (Köln, Germany: Salon Verlag, 2009), 14.

131
Anne Moeglin-Delcroix, “Documentation as Art in Artists’ Books and Other Artists’
Publications: Art versus Documentation? Terms of a Paradox,” In Artists' Publications:
Schriftenreihe für Künstlerpublikationen, 34–44, eds. Sigrid Schade, and Anne Thurmann-
Jajes (Köln, Germany: Salon Verlag, 2009), 33–34.
47
pluralistic criticism, artist organizing, and the emphasis on collaborative projects have
allowed for authentic change both in and outside of artistic culture.
Throughout this text, we have seen the formation of varying peripheral communities
and the resulting collaborative 1970s projects. The identities of members of this now
defunct community strongly correlated with the differing programs of the earlier efforts.
The contemporary publications—though they occupy and share characteristics of marginal
populations—do not focus on this reality; they instead presume the possibility of reaching
an audience broader than their readership, and successfully band individuals together across
distinct communities. Their politically charged initiatives strive to evoke genuine response
through avenues of art, activism and culture and through critical debates raise intellectual
consciousness. Unanimously in constant renegotiation, contemporary art publications have
an unsure future; my thoughts on the matter are in unison with ideas posed by Editor David
Riff. “We have to self-organize contexts in which writers, composers, and
cinematographers don’t simply serve the privileged figure of the “contemporary artist,” but
actually collaborate on works of art. We (and I don’t just mean Chto delat[?]) have a long
way to go in overcoming and superceding the division of labor that make[s] people so one
sided, don’t you agree?”
132

132
David Riff, e-mail interview by author, January 4, 2010.
48
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52
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Wallis, Brian. Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation. New York, NY: New
Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984.

53
APPENDIX

Fig. 1. Image of Yes Men public intervention, following Co-prosperity Sphere event,
October 30, 2009. Photo Source: http://coprosperity.org/past/page/3/

Fig. 2. Cover Image of Avalanche, no. 1 (Fall 1970). Photo Source:
http://www.arcanabooks.com/bookimages/015340.jpg
54

Figure 3. Cover Image of Avalanche: Newspaper, no. 13 (Summer 1976). Photographed
by Molly Sullivan, January 6, 2010.

Figure 4. Cover Image of Art-Rite, no.14 Artists’ Books (Winter 1976–1977).
Photographed by Molly Sullivan, January 6, 2010.
55

Figure 5. Cover Image of Art-Rite, no.8 (Winter 1975). Photographed by Molly Sullivan,
January 6, 2010.

Figure 6. Cover Image of REAL LIFE Magazine, no. 2 (October 1979). Photographed by
Molly Sullivan, January 13, 2010.

56

Fig. 7. Emily Roysdon, Untitled (David Wojnarowicz project), Cover Illus. of LTTR, no.
1 Lesbians to the Rescue (September 2002). Photo Source: http://www.lttr.org/journal
/1/untitled-david-wojnarowicz-project.

Fig. 8. Cover Image of LTTR, no. 4 Do You Wish to Direct Me? (September 2005).
Photographed by Molly Sullivan, January 13, 2010.

57

Fig. 9. Cover Image of LTTR, no. 5 Positively Nasty (October 2006). Photographed by
Molly Sullivan, January 22, 2010.

Fig. 10. LTTR editor K8 Hardy participating in the Radical Read-In at The Generali
Foundation, January 19, 2007. Photo Source: http://www.lttr.org/events/exile-of-the-
imaginary-radical-read-in-at-the-generali-foundation
58

Fig. 11. Screen shot of Chto delat?. “What is to be done?” http://www.chtodelat.org/
(accessed January 3, 2010).

Figure 12. Screen shot of Chto delat?. “Newspapers.” http://www.chtodelat.org/index.php?
option=com_content&view=article&id=409&Itemid=198&lang=en (accessed January 3,
2010).

59

Figure 13. Screen shot of Chto delat?. “#7: Drift: Narvskaya Zastava.”
http://www.chtodelat.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=131&Itemid
=121&lang=en (accessed January 3, 2010).

Figure 14. Cover Image of Chto delat?, no. 7 Drift: Narvskaya Zastava (September 2004).
60

Figure 15. Screen shot of Pages http://www.pagesmagazine.net/ (accessed January 3,
2010).

Figure 16. Screen shot of Pages http://www.pagesmagazine.net/ (accessed January 3,
2010).
61

Figure 17. Screen shot of Pages http://www.pagesmagazine.net/ (accessed January 3,
2010).

Figure 18. Screen shot of Pages http://www.pagesmagazine.net/ (accessed January 3,
2010).

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Asset Metadata

Creator Sullivan, Molly Erin (author)

Core Title The multivalent platforms of alternative art publications as agents of authentic cultural change

School School of Fine Arts

Degree Master of Public Art Studies

Degree Program Public Art Studies

Publication Date 05/07/2010

Defense Date 03/05/2010

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag alternative,collaboration,culture,feminist,OAI-PMH Harvest,political,Publications

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Anastas, Rhea (committee chair), Decter, Joshua (committee member), Lawson, Thomas (committee member)

Creator Email mesulli1@gmail.com,mollysul@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m3036

Unique identifier UC186922

Identifier etd-Sullivan-3556 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-331334 (legacy record id),usctheses-m3036 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Sullivan-3556.pdf

Dmrecord 331334

Document Type Thesis

Rights Sullivan, Molly Erin

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu