Franklin Furnace and the Spirit of the Avant-Garde

Toni Sant

Description

Franklin Furnace is a renowned New York–based arts organization whose mission is to preserve, document and present works of avant-garde art by emerging artists – particularly those whose works may be vulnerable due to institutional neglect or politically unpopular content. Over more than thirty years, Franklin Furnace has exhibited works by hundreds of avant-garde artists, some of whom – Laurie Anderson, Vito Acconci, Karen Finley, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Jenny Holzer and the Blue Man Group, to name a few – are now established names in contemporary art.

Here, for the first time, is a comprehensive history of this remarkable organization from its conception to the present. Organized around the major art genres that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century, this book intersperses first-person narratives with readings by artists and scholars on issues critical to the organization's success as well as Franklin Furnace's many contributions to avant-garde art.

Introduction

Chapter 1: Franklin Furnace: A Timeline

Chapter 2: A Long Conversation with Martha Wilson

Chapter 3: Broadcasting Artists’ Ideas

Chapter 4: Virtually Live

Chapter 5: Preserving the Avant-Garde

Chapter 6: Franklin Furnace Publications

Sujets

• Essays
• Artists
• Vanguardismo
• History of art
• Live Art
• Art
• Avant-garde

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 27 mai 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841504438
• Langue: English

Extrait

Franklin Furnace and the Spirit of the Avant-Garde
Visit the New Facility (1983) by William Wegman. (Reproduced by permission; courtesy of Franklin Furnace)
Franklin Furnace and the Spirit of the Avant-Garde
A History of the Future
Toni Sant
First published in the UK in 2011 by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2011 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2011 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover image: Original logo for Franklin Furnace by Pavel B chler
Cover designer: Holly Rose Copy-editor: Ed Hatton Typesetting: Mac Style, Beverley, E. Yorkshire
ISBN 978-1-84150-371-4 /EISBN 978-1-84150-443-8
Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta.
The future is already here, it s just unevenly distributed .
- William Gibson, novelist
We drive into the future using only our rear-view mirror .
- Marshall McLuhan, media theorist
I have a headache of which the future is made .
- Jim Morrison, poet
We are called to be the architects of the future, not its victims .
- R. Buckminster Fuller, visionary
The best way to predict the future is to invent it .
- Alan Kay, computer scientist
This present moment used to be the unimaginable future .
- Steward Brand, online community pioneer
What remains is future .
- Patti Smith, poet
To Christine
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I
Chapter 1: Franklin Furnace: A Timeline
Chapter 2: A Long Conversation with Martha Wilson
Art and the Loft Law in Downtown New York City - Paul M. Gulielmetti
Money and Art at Franklin Furnace in the Early Years - Barbara Quinn
Some of My Performances in Retrospect - Annie Sprinkle
When Franklin Furnace Went Virtual - Robert Galinsky
Exemplary Quality Irreverence - Adrianne Wortzel
You Can t Stay Avant-Garde - David S. Perlmutter
Part II
Chapter 3: Broadcasting Artists Ideas
Chapter 4: Virtually Live
Chapter 5: Preserving the Avant-Garde
Franklin Furnace Publications
References
Index
Acknowledgements
T his book has come about because of the generous spirit that has driven Franklin Furnace since 1976. I must therefore start by thanking Martha Wilson for making it all come together. I feel privileged to know the subject of my book beyond the archives she keeps in the name of Franklin Furnace.
Stacy Horn started the chain of events that led to the writing of this book. Robert Galinsky was among several guests she invited to speak during her Virtual Culture class, which I took at New York University s Interactive Telecommunications Program in 1998. I asked him to accompany me to the Fourth Performance Studies International conference at Aberystwyth in Wales and he insisted on inviting Martha Wilson to join us. I had been casually following Franklin Furnace as part of the contemporary New York art scene for about a year or so before actually meeting Martha Wilson in person for the very first time at New York s JFK Airport in April 1999. Galinsky has been a gracious friend ever since. He was always my man on the inside and helped give the beast that is New York City a human dimension I ve come to treasure greatly.
Richard Schechner, Diana Taylor, Andre Lepecki, Anthony J. Pennings, Branislav Jakovljevic, and Eric Miller gave me valuable feedback on some of my earlier research on Franklin Furnace for my doctoral dissertation at New York University s Tisch School of the Arts, Department of Performance Studies, in 2002/2003. Special thanks to Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, my guide throughout my years in New York (she s the one who first pushed me to write more about Franklin Furnace), and Catharine R. Stimpson, the amazing dean of NYU s Graduate School of Arts Science, whose support and sense of duty I will cherish forever.
My colleagues at the School of Arts and New Media on the Scarborough Campus of the University of Hull have been very supportive over the years I ve been with them. The same goes for the deans who have overseen my department in the years I ve been in Scarborough: Craig Gaskell and George Talbot. Special thanks to Fiona Bannon, Jennifer Parker-Starbuck, Linda Hockley, Maria Chatzichristodoulou (aka Maria X), and Jason Raven. Jonathan Cant, Tracy Bower, and Liz Wilson from the University of Hull s Research Funding Office deserve a special mention, too. Their assistance makes it possible for me to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council for providing financial support enabling me to finish this book through their Research Leave Scheme.
Many thanks to the Franklin Furnace staff: Harley Spiller, Michael Katchen, and Eben Shapiro, as well as Tiffany Ludwig, Dolores Zorreguieta, Rachel Knowles, and B.J. Lockhart. I am also profoundly grateful to Nancy Buchanan, the late Paul Gulielmetti, Frank Moore, David S. Perlmutter, Barbara Quinn, Annie Sprinkle, and Adrianne Wortzel for their direct contributions to the contents of this book. Jacki Apple, Yvonne Brookes, and Marty Heitner graciously allowed me to reproduce some of the essential illustrations that appear in this book. For granting me permission to reproduce images of their work, I m also indebted to Martine Aballea, Eric Bogosian, David Khang, Claes Oldenburg, William Pope.L, Diane Torr, Bernard Tschumi Architects, and William Wegman. Special thanks to Tim Miller, and Brian Routh (aka Harry Kipper) for sharing with me alternative insights into various aspects discussed in this book.
I would also like to express my appreciation to the book-publishing team at Intellect for all their support in bring this book to print, especially May Yao, Sam King, and Melanie Marshall. I m also appreciative of Pierre Portelli s help in picking the most effective book cover.
Amante Sant transcribed my long interviews with Martha Wilson and conversations with Robert Galinsky from 2001. I thank him for that and much more. I know that he is only interested in what I m saying because it is being said by his son. No father can be prouder, and no son luckier. My mother, Pauline, has been asking me about this book for many years. Well, here it is Ma!
Toni Sant Scarborough November 2010
Franklin Furnace and the Spirit of the Avant-Garde A History of the Future is supported by

Each year the AHRC provides funding from the Government to support research and postgraduate study in the arts and humanities. Only applications of the highest quality are funded and the range of research supported by this investment of public funds not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic success of the UK. For further information on the AHRC, please go to: www.ahrc.ac.uk
Introduction
T his is a book about Franklin Furnace. If you ve never heard of Franklin Furnace before now, you may ask who is Franklin Furnace? rather than what is Franklin Furnace? The who question may seem inappropriate to anyone already familiar with Franklin Furnace. However, the more you delve into the inner workings of Franklin Furnace, the who question becomes more and more interesting and significant. Any answer to the who question inevitably involves Martha Wilson, founding director of Franklin Furnace. This approach, however, may provoke a rather simplistic and somewhat misleading understanding of Franklin Furnace. The what question is quite essential. It gives Franklin Furnace a life beyond Martha Wilson; one built on a mission to make the world safe for avant-garde art.
Within a contemporary critical mindset, to define something as avant-garde arguably renders it no longer so. Naming something avant-garde has complex implications. In his highly influential Teoria dell Arte d Avantguardia , Renato Poggioli explains that the hypothesis that [avant-garde art] existed previous to the era which coined its name is an anachronism twice over: it judges the past in terms of the present and the future (1968 [1962]: 15, original emphasis). Furthermore, as Hal Foster warned in the 1990s, terms like historical and neo-avant-garde may be at once too general and too exclusive to use effectively today (1996: 21). Foster also proposes that artists practicing within a contemporary avant-garde framework have moved away from grand oppositions to subtle displacements (25, original emphasis). In this way, to discuss Franklin Furnace within the context of avant-garde art we must keep in mind that we are not dealing with one clear, specific thing.
Avant-garde is a fluid term applied to different approaches and works, with multiple focal points that shift in intensity depending on time, place, and context. Leafing through some of the most significant attempts to theorize the avant-garde, this immediately becomes fairly evident. 1 Richard Schechner takes this as a starting point in proposing his own theory of the avant-garde, stating that [w]hat the avant-garde has become during the past 100 years or so is much too complicated to be organized under one heading (1993: 5). Expanding on Poggioli s theory of the avant-garde, Schechner proposes a schema of five overlapping avant-gardes (a historical avant-garde, a current avant-garde, a forward-looking avant-garde, a tradition-seeking avant-garde, and an intercultural avant-garde) but argues that the term no longer serves a useful purpose and should only be used to describe the historical avant-garde, which in his view spans from the late nineteenth century to the mid-1970s (18). It is somewhat ironic that the end of the historical avant-garde as delineated by Schechner coincides with the advent of Franklin Furnace. This apparent coincidence has not escaped Martha Wilson, who in establishing Franklin Fu