Colab

Colab is the commonly used abbreviation of the New York City artists' group Collaborative Projects, which was formed in 1978 after a series of open meetings between artists of various disciplines. ^[1] Colab was active for about 10 years and became distinguished by its politically engaged open membership. Colab bypassed alternative spaces and applied directly to funding agencies as a nonprofit organization.

Among the group's numerous accomplishments include the New Cinema; a screening room for punk and no wave films (1979)^[2]; the Times Square Show, a large open exhibition near the center of New York's entertainment district (1980); support and inspiration for the ABC No Rio cultural center (1980-82 (ongoing); Potato Wolf artists' television series (1978-1984), support of the Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine (1984), and MWF Video Club (established in 1986). ^[3] The group is presently moribund.

Quotes Describing Colab

"We [Collaborative Projects] are functioning as a group of artists with complementary resources and skills providing a solid ground for collaborative work directed to the needs of the community-at-large. Specifically we are involved in programs facilitating development, production, and distribution of collaborative works. These works will be realized in various media including film, video for distribution and cable-cast, and live cable TV broadcasts, as well as other more conventional art media such as graphics and printed materials." ^[4]

"This statement (the one above) defines three fundamental aspects of Colab- members' desire to create and distribute "collaborative work" under the umbrella of an artist-run organization, their focus on new media versus traditional art objects and their openness to a range of aesthetic styles that would meet the "needs of the community-at-large." This last point was critical to the group's identity and served as a the foundation of a workshop-oriented administration that encouraged experimentation in many different areas, including but not limited to TV production, video editing, film, and performance art. With various workshops operating simultaneously and the participants' ability to draw on like-minded members as partners, Colab could produce many projects without the burden of an institutional identity. Typically, individual members worked together on more than one project in small subgroups that changed and over lapped from one project to the next."^[5]

"In the bohemia of downtown Manhattan, the band - and crew - based practices of art rock and super-8 filmmaking thrived. The first artists' group to achieve prominence in New York was Colab (Collaborative Projects), which produced a show in Times Square in 1980. This exhibition was a groundswell of popularly accessible socially themed artworks held in an empty building that has housed an erotic massage parlor. Critics called it "punk art" -- "three cord art anyone can play." The South Bronx art space Fashion Moda participated in the Times Square Show, bringing in some of the new generation of graffiti artists who had been exhibiting in the Bronx as part of the hip-hop culture of writers, rappers, and break dancers. A forty-member democratically run membership group; Colab inspired other artists to form groups and mount huge shows in Brooklyn lofts, seeding the present-day artists' communities there. Earlier in 1980, artists emulating 1970's Puerto Rican activists had seized a building on New York's Lower East Side and opened it as a collectively run cultural center. ABC No Rio was passed on to successive managements until today it is an anarchist cultural center run by a collective with close ties to the publishing group Autonomedia."^[6]

Members

Various artists who were associated with Colab, include:

• Charlie Ahearn
• John Ahearn
• Liza Bear
• Scott Billingsley
• Andrea Callard
• Diego Cortez
• Mitch Corber
• Jody Culkin
• Jane Dickson
• Orshi Drozdik
• Peter Fend
• Colen Fitzgibbon
• Bobby G
• Matthew Geller
• Mike Glier
• Ilona Granet
• Julie Harrison
• John Hogan
• Jenny Holzer
• G. H. Hovagimyan
• Becky Howland
• Christof Kohlhofer
• Fred Krughoff
• Justen Ladda
• Joe Lewis
• Aline Mayer
• Michael McClard
• Dick Miller
• Eric Mitchell
• Alan W. Moore
• James Nares
• Joseph Nechvatal
• Tom Otterness
• Cara Perlman
• Uli Rimkus
• Judy Rifka
• Walter Robinson
• Christy Rupp
• Jane Sherry
• Teri Slotkin
• Beatrice (Bebe) Smith
• Kiki Smith
• Seton Smith
• Wolfgang Staehle
• Anton van Dalen
• Tom Warren
• Robin Winters

Footnotes

References

• The Red Book, 1978 (NEA application document authored by Coleen Fitzgibbon, Andrea Callard and Ulli Rimkus) Andrea Callard Papers, The Downtown Collection, Fales Library, NYU
• David Little, Colab Takes a Piece, History Takes It Back: Collectivity and New York Alternative Spaces, Art Journal Vol.66, No. 1, Spring 2007, College Art Association, New York, pp. 60-74 (Article[2])
• Marc Masters, No Wave, Black Dog Publishing, London, 2007
• Alan W. Moore, Artists' Collectives: Focus on New York, 1975-2000 in Collectivism After Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945, Blake Stimson & Gregory Sholette, (eds) University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2007, pp. 193-221.
• Alan Moore and Marc Miller (eds), ABC No Rio Dinero: The Story of a Lower East Side Art Gallery, Collaborative Projects, NY, 1985
• Grace Glueck, Up With People, Collaborative Projects exhibition review, New York Times, January 6, 1984
• Carlo McCormick, The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 1974–1984, Princeton University Press, 2006

External links

• Colab related Art Film & Video listing
• "Book report" discussing Colab history and members
• Interview with Jenny Holzer with discussion of Colab
• Raphael Rubinstein, "When bad was good: the art scene of downtown Manhattan ca. 1974-1984 is resurrected in a show that originated in New York and is now in Pittsburgh" Art in America (June-July, 2006)
• "Colab Redux" 2008 art exhibition of Colab members at Brooke Alexander Editions, New York City
• Colab related Artists Cable Television listing (Potatoe Wolf)
• Colab at UbuWeb