Other Options

Other Options, a traveling exhibition and program series that began in October 2007, investigated ways in which artists are dealing with the current climate of support for cultural production. By increasingly incorporating new models of resource allocation, community building, funding structures and forms of exchange as part of their artistic production, these artists are creating new possibilities for the role of contemporary art in an everyday context.

The exhibition in Eyebeam’s Commons space included work by Forays, Josh Greene, Material Exchange, Mikey Merrill, Phil Orr/Ryan Thompson, ReTool, Joanna Spitzner, and Geraldine Juárez. Other Options was curated by InCUBATE.
Background Information

The impetus for this project began after an assessment of the current conditions of formalized support for cultural production in the United States revealed a heavily binary system of public vs. private support. Although the model of a nonprofit 501(c)3 corporation has traditionally been considered an appropriate mode of support, a number of flaws and contradictions are becoming apparent in the way that these organizations are made to function within society, both individually and as a collective “Nonprofit Industrial Complex.” In an attempt to explore the nature of such flaws and contradictions in the nonprofit system, Other Options asks the question: How does the current matrix of specific regulations and compliances to which nonprofit organizations are forced to adhere, affect the creative output, imagination, and flexibility of such organizations?

 

People: Forays, Geraldine Juarez, Joanna Spitzner, Josh Greene, Material Exchange, Mikey Merrill, Phil Orr/Ryan Thompson, ReTool
Tags: forays, other options