Greetings list folks. I am introducing myself as requested when I joined. My name is Nato Thompson and I have many interests which are in cahoots with many of the folks on this list. I am a curator over at a museum called MASS MoCA and currently finishing up an exhibition titled The Interventionists: Art in the Social Sphere which opens May 29, 2004. It's a big ol' exhibition featuring the work of (although not everything is finalized): The Atlas Group, Center For Tactical Magic, Critical Art Ensemble, Minerva Cuevas, Explo, Coco Fusco and Ricardo Dominguez, HaHa, Tana Hargest, Institute for Applied Autonomy, Michael Moore, N55, Lucy Orta, William Pope L. , J. Morgan Puett, Michael Rakowitz, Spurse, subRosa, Rubén Ortiz Torres, Dre Wapenaar, Krzysztof Wodiczko, The Yes Men, Yo Mango. Ya, see, I said it was a big ol'show.
Now, I also work with a loose-knit, increasingly pan-US group of activists/artists/interventionists/anarchists titled The Department of Space and Land Reclamation. We plan weekend campaigns to reclaim public space and work as a nexus between on the ground activism and more flighty artsy projects. It's a sort of artists/activist retreat intensive which we have done in Chicago, San Francisco and soon in Los Angeles.
Currently my main interest is in producing infrastructures to increase the circulation of radical aesthetic projects in the United States specifically (with global linkages in mind). This would manifest as an association of spaces, magazines, critics, and projects dedicated to resisting global capitalism and control. So, I put myself out there to folks on the list on that level.
I have managed to look through the interesting debate that has developed over the course of this list's history. I would just like to add that it seems to me, fairly removed to think of arts as ineffective in radical activist circles. While I do believe that many of the types that are ever so popular in the Euro scene like Rikrit Tirivanija, Liam Gillick, Philip Parreno, etc. etc. (you know those relational aesthetics phonies) are dubious at best. I wouldn't go so far as to dismiss the linkages that are actually working and out there in the far more removed sub-sections of activism and art. I prefer to think of the aesthetic projects that work through the lens of an infrastructure of resonance. That is to say, I believe there are plenty of artists who are actively participating in various roles and their work is being appreciated, and being inspiring, with those who are 'on the ground' getting shit done. On a cursory level I can think of Critical Art Ensemble, Ricardo Dominguez, subRosa, God Bless Grafitti Coalition, Yo Mango, ukabot, Red 76, Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, Clamour magazine, Wolkenklausur, Space Hijackers, Reverend Billy, Pink Bloque, Craig Baldwin, Center for Tactical Magic, Oreste, and on and on to the break of dawn. I think the work that many people on this list are up to is actually quite effective and I kind of get bored quickly with claims that such effectiveness isn't possible. I see 'effectiveness' all the time. I think it is important that if we feel uninformed about radical practice, we should not make up for it by making generalizing statements about the ineffectiveness of radical art. It's really not worth spending too much time on because, well, there is desperate, real organizing work that needs to get done and these types of arguments don't get anything done. Spending too much time thinking that 'relational aesthetics' is the art world, well, its just boring and false. Lets talk about work we actually like and lets work on producing connections for radical freedom across the globe.