What We Want Is Free

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What We Want Is Free
Generosity and Exchange in Recent Art

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Ted Purves - Editor

SUNY series in Postmodern Culture

Price: $49.50
Hardcover - 196 pages

Release Date: December 2004

ISBN10: 0-7914-6289-7
ISBN13: 978-0-7914-6289-8

Price: $24.95
Paperback - 196 pages

Release Date: December 2004

ISBN10: 0-7914-6290-0
ISBN13: 978-0-7914-6290-4

Summary

Examines the way recent artists have incorporated concepts of generosity into their work.

Through a variety of lenses, this book examines contemporary artists' use of the "gift"—the distribution of goods and services—as a medium for artistic production. Featuring a detailed survey of over fifty artists' projects from fifteen countries, What We Want Is Free explores how these artists use their projects to connect participants to tangible goods and services that they might need, enjoy, and benefit from. Samples of these various projects include the creation of free commuter bus lines and medicinal plant gardens; the distribution of such services as free housework or computer programming; and the production of community media projects such as free commuter newspapers and democratic low-wattage radio stations.

“If you are an artist, read this book. No matter how you define and structure your practice, the essays within What We Want Is Free will lead you to consider important questions about how you work and what kind of life a project can lead.” — Smalldoggies Magazine

"What We Want Is Free makes a genuine contribution to current discussions and debates concerning art, politics, and culture." — Ron Scapp, coeditor of Eating Culture

Contributors include Bill Arning, Stacy Asher, Kate Fowle, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Jessica Ingram, Mary Jane Jacob, Ben Kinmont, Lars Bang Larsen, Carolyn Mackin, Francis McIlveen, Jarrett Mitchell, Cesare Pietroiusti, Ted Purves, Shane Aslan Selzer, Susan Sobeloff, Josho Somine, and Jörgen Svensson.

Ted Purves is Chair of the Graduate Program in Fine Arts at the California College of the Arts.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction
Ted Purves

I. Potlatches and Potlucks: Theories of Art, Gifts, and Communities

1. Reciprocal Generosity
Mary Jane Jacob

2. Sure, everyone might be an artist . . . but only one artist gets to be the guy who says that everyone else is an artist
Bill Arning

3. Lunch Hour: Art, Community, Administrated Space, and Unproductive Activity
Kate Fowle and Lars Bang Larsen

4. Blows Against the Empire
Ted Purves

II: Exchange and Social Aesthetics in Praxis

5. Four Projects
Jörgen Svensson

6. A Given
Ben Kinmont

7. How Do You Pin a Wave Upon the Sand? An Interview with Cesare Pietroiusti
Shane Aslan Selzer

8. A Call for Sociality
Jeanne van Heeswijk

III: The Handbook for Gift and Exchange-Based Art

Introductory Remarks on the Handbook
Ted Purves

Part One: Project Histories
edited by Jessica Ingram, Ted Purves, and Shane Aslan Selzer with written contributions by Stacy Asher, Jessica Ingram, Carolyn Mackin, Francis McIlveen, Jarrett Mitchell, Ted Purves, Shane Aslan Selzer, Susan Sobeloff, and Josho Somine

Part Two: Exchange—The "Other" Social Sculpture
Francis McIlveen

Index

Related Subjects

Art
Art Theory
Postmodernism

42985/42986(JP/DF/FK)