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

[Andreas Broeckmann]

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


THERE IS ALWAYS AN ALTERNATIVE

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

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

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

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

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

Deadline for submissions 25/04/05