Sept 23 - Nov 11TRANSFERS

Artists
Thomas Riley Andersen, Mike Arvan, Drew Beattie & Daniel Davidson,
Judy Glantzman, Lawrence Seward

Actors
The First World Theater
Computer Coding
Edward Potter

Exhibition
TRANSFERS is a group exhibition that examines the expression of surrealist tendencies in painting by contemporary artists. The exhibition begins with painting and continues in an exploration of the relationship between painting and theater. Each artist has created a costume inspired by their paintings, intended for theatrical collaborations to illuminate the fantastic vision of the picture frame. These costumes, exhibited on stages in the gallery, will serve to transform Exit Art / The First World into a performance space as actors of the First World Theater, under the direction of Papo Colo, perform from texts inspired by The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges. Documentation of these daily performances will then reach a greater audience through the internet, allowing for immediate reception and interaction.
The transfer from painting to theater allows for the continuation of the artist’s original narrative. The dynamic, public nature of performance offers a unique approach to the expression of the surreal which creates a contrast to the static, solitary permanence of painting. The transmission of information through the computer marks a new level of immediacy and gestural communication. TRANSFERS serves as an experimentation on the translation of the surreal expression of one medium to another. The exhibition expands Exit Art / The First World’s exploration of new media and the reinvention of traditional forms.
Theater:
The First World Theater presents Imaginary Beings every Saturday at 3:30 and 5:30. Filling the spaces of the front and back galleries with an aural/spatial dissonance, the actors bring life to the characters created by the featured artists and Borges.

Curators
Jeanette Ingberman and Papo Colo

Dec 2 - Jan 27 IMAGINARY BEINGS

Artists
Ida Applebroog, Meghan Boody, Louise Bourgeois, Nina Bovasso, David Henry Brown Jr., Antonina Canal, Nicola Constantino, Scott Cunningham, Dame Darcy,
Sue deBeer, Nicole Eisenmann, Judy Fox, C. Garcia Martinez, Steven Gontarski,
Elliott Green, Kristin M. Hartmann, Ben Katchor, Kaz, Jerry Kearns, Larry Krone,
Krystine Kryttre, Peter Kuper, Carol Lay, Alfredo Martinez, Dominic McGill,
Shirin Neshat, Laura Newman, Elizabeth Olbert, Tom Otterness, Roxy Paine, Joyce Pensato, E. Pierre Louis, Jörg Rode, Jonathon Rosen, Rudy Royval, Christy Rupp, Alison Saar, Lucas Samaras, Keith Sanborn, David Sandlin, David C. Scher, Arlene Shechet, Kate Shepherd, Cindy Sherman, Amy Sillman, Allison Smith, Kiki Smith, Rachel Stevens, Javier Tellez, Miguel Trelles, Fred Tomaselli, Connie Walsh, S. Clay Wilson, Angela Wyman

Exhibition
Each civilization has its myths. These myths embody imaginary figures -- the dragon, the minotaur, the golem, to the super-heroes of commercial culture. Imaginary Beings concerns both the interaction of fantasy and reality, and the construction or deconstruction of figures existing within the artists’ imagination. Imaginary Beings exemplify heroes and villains, saviors and demons. They are products of the human condition and our theatrical imagination. Imaginary Beings represents our joys and fears. There is a tradition of imaginary beings within the history of art: from Brueghel to Goya, from the folkloric to the conceptual, from storytelling to theater, from poetry to filmmaking.
The inspiration for Imaginary Beings derives from Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Book of Imaginary Beings,” a poetic investigation into the creatures, monsters and figures embodied in ancient and modern lore. First published as “El libro de los seres imaginarios” in 1967, Borges’ book reflects a cultural fascination and an enduring need for the imaginary figure. The artists selected represent different generations and visual approaches to the ideas expressed by Borges. The exhibition forms a dialogue -- from the drawings of Louise Bourgeois, to the photographs of Lucas Samaras and Cindy Sherman, to the comic art of S. Clay Wilson and Jonathon Rosen, and finally to a new generation of artists -- with each artist interacting and shaping a contemporary view on this ancient practice.

Curators
Jeanette Ingberman and Papo Colo

Theater
A combination of poetry, prose, and acting, in a collaborative exploration of life and love, the body and spirit, in the reflection of a mirror. Conceived by Papo Colo.

Feb 24 - Apr 20 COUNTERCULTURE: Alternative Information from the Underground Press to the Internet

Exhibition
Counterculture: Alternative Information from the Underground Press to the Internet was a comprehensive historical exhibition that examined the role of the alternative media in fostering social, cultural, and political change in America from 1965 to the present. The independent and underground press had its flowering in the United States during the 1960s and can be seen as a component of the “alternative” space movement. As such, Counterculture explored the function of alternative media as a site, a public space within popular culture that facilitates the formation of social groups through collective cultural practices. Counterculture not only documented these counter practices but also chronicled censorship battles and other conflicts over the control of information. Over 2,000 newspapers, magazines, ‘zines, and new digital publications, covering thirty years of media activism, were included in Counterculture. These publications featured an innovative approach to graphic design, technology, journalistic prose, and cultural politics.
Counterculture began with the rise of the underground press in the mid-1960s. Cheap offset printing allowed for the production of elaborately designed tabloid newspapers ranging from the psychedelic Oracle to the movement-oriented Black Panther Party Paper. The exhibition also traced the Yippies attempts at media intervention and the efforts of the FBI’s COINTELPRO program to harass, censor, and even confiscate underground papers. Fueled by the youth movement and its outspoken opposition to authority, official information, and the War, as well as its advocacy of sex, rock, and drugs, the underground ushered in a new era in American culture.
A second generation emerged in the years 1975-85 with different issues and ideas. In the wake of Watergate and the end of the Vietnam War, Americans began to accept alternative views on the environment, women’s rights, and gay and lesbian issues. These new concerns are reflected in such pragmatic publications as the Whole Earth Catalog and Our Bodies, Our Selves. The punk subculture, though centered on alternative music, also had a strong influence on alternative media in the 1970s. In particular, the proliferation of self-published ‘zines like Maximumrocknroll, Punk and Murder Can Be Fun satirized the first generation of underground. This period also coincided with the rise of the “alternative” art gallery which presented new art forms by artists whose work resisted the art market. As part of the “alternative” space movement, publications such as Franklin Furnace’s newsletter The Flue informed and proliferated ideas about independent art practices. This section offers a surprising mix of anarchist political views, alienation, and cut-and-paste graphics.
In the past decade, battles over freedom of expression and access to new media have characterized the “culture wars,” AIDS activism, and the new computer technologies of the Internet. and the World Wide Web . Counterculture looked at the relationship of artists publications like The Fox to the explosion of alternative art spaces during 1980s, the use of public posters and actions by gay and lesbian activists (such as Gran Fury and ACT UP), and challenges to definitions of information, privacy, and property in cyberspace.
Counterculture also presented the legacy of cultural revolutions and perpetuated the climate which encourages citizen-based information.
Brian Wallis, the curator of the exhibition, is a cultural critic, writer, and independent curator. He is the editor of Art After Modernism and the coeditor of Constructing Masculinity. During the 1980s, he published the radical arts journal Wedge.
Counterculture: Alternative Information from the Underground Press was conceived by Exit Art / The First World. It is part of an ongoing series of projects exploring the relationship between communication, graphic design and art.

Curator
Brian Wallis
Assistant Curator
Melissa Rachleff

Public Programs
March 16, 17 NEWSREEL
a talk and screening with Norman Fruchter, Roz Payne and Lynn Phillips

Films
See attached Program
Saturday, March 16, 7:00 pm, Sunday, March 17, 2:00 pm

Film program summary
As a part of the exhibition Counterculture: Alternative Information from the Underground Press to the Internet, Exit Art / The First World presented, in video format, selected films by the 1960s radical film collective Newsreel. The films were presented over the course of two days: Saturday, March 16 at 7:00 pm and Sunday, March 17th at 2:00 pm.
Newsreel was founded in 1967 by filmmakers and activists who were committed to making films about anti-War, student, and cultural struggles. The self-appointed propaganda wing of the “Movement,” Newsreel’s mission was to work with insurgent/activist groups throughout the world “to expand the awareness of events and situations relevant to shaping the future of our movement.” Utilizing montage, Newsreel often analyzed events, explicitly through narrative context and implicitly in the style and texture of the films. Whether covering the Black Panthers, students, or protests like the Chicago Democratic Convention -- Newsreel challenged the “official” story.
As part of their mission to instigate social change, members of Newsreel would present films to political organizations and community groups across the United States as a means of generating dialogues and political strategies. In homage, Exit Art / The First World was pleased to have original Newsreel members Norman Fruchter, Roz Payne and Lynn Phillips present to discuss the films.

Program 1
Saturday, March 16th
Off The Pig (Black Panther)
1968 15 minutes
A promotional film for the Black Panther Party: the chants, training in armed self-defense, the support of the Black community, alliances with Peace and Freedom in Oakland, the Panther’s Ten Point Program, confrontation with the Oakland police, and more chants. Interviews include Huey P. Newton (in jail), the Minister of Defense for the Panthers, and with Eldridge Cleaver, Minister of Information.
Up Against the Wall, Miss America,
1969 5 minutes
A record of Women’s Liberation groups organized attempts to disrupt the 1969 Miss America pageant. Calling the Miss America contest an insidious display of “mindless womanhood,” this short film documents demonstrations on the Boardwalk, outside the convention. The film also shows material that the mainstream media censored in its coverage, the footage from the protest inside the convention hall.
Talk, 7:30:
A key part of Exit Art/The First World’s presentation was the talk on Saturday with founding Newsreel members, Norman Fruchter, currently the Director of the Institute for Education and Social Policy at New York University; Roz Payne, a teacher and writer based in Vermont; and, Lynn Phillips, now a freelance writer who writes for The Nation and Glamour Magazine. Each will addressed the history and philosophy of Newsreel and discussed the films selected for the screening.
Screening, 8:30:
Columbia Revolt
1968, 50 minutes (edited by Lynn Phillips)
In May, 1968, the students of Columbia University went on strike and seized buildings after the administration ignored their demands for an open discussion on Columbia’s involvement in oppressing the citizens of Morningside Heights and Harlem and its ties to the escalating war in Vietnam. Far from meeting the students demands, the administration refused to recognize students as legitimate negotiators. The protracted argument ultimately forced the students to occupy take over and occupy university buildings. Using footage from inside the occupied buildings, the film ignited student protests and inspired student seizures on other college campuses. Although the film ends with an analytic sequence, Columbia Revolt functioned as agit prop: seen by over a million people, it remains the most requested Newsreel film. The first Newsreel “hit!”

Program II
Sunday, March 17 Screening, 2:00:
Yippie Film
1968 12 min
One of the more intentionally humorous films made by Newsreel, depicts the street theater and media savvy of the Yippies during the Democratic Convention in Chicago and brutal repressionary tactics orchestrated by Mayor Daley’s police force. The original program notes remarked, “Like Richard “the Pig-hearted” Daley, the Yippies are not prone to sticking straight to the facts.” Music includes The Fugs, Phil Ochs, Lawrence Welk, Wolf Lowenthal and Rennie Davis.
No Game,
1967 19 min
October 21, 1967, The Pentagon: The Confront the Warmakers protest organized by David Dellinger and Jerry Rubin brought out over 100,000 anti -war demonstrators. Following the Civil Rights tactic of non-violence, the protesters were not prepared for a violent confrontation with the military police and Pentagon Guards armed with tear gas and rifle butts. Shots also include Allen Ginsberg chanting to exorcise the Pentagon. No Game was one of the first films completed by Newsreel.
Screening, 3:00:
Summer of ‘68
(A Film by Norman Fruchter and John Douglas) 55 min
Newsreel’s most meta-political and analytical film. The film is broken into sections focusing on an organizer central to a project. The film considers the moment -- 1968 -- and is a perspective on the strengths, limitations and possibilities for political insurgent movement in full cry. Summer of ‘68 is a call for political seriousness, beyond purely reactive strategies, to another level of political responsibility. Subjects include: draft resistance organizing in Boston, a Boston organizer’s trip to North Vietnam, a GI Coffeehouse in Texas, NEWSREEL’s appearance on Channel 13 in New York, the editorial production meeting at New York’s underground paper, The RAT, and the Chicago Convention. The film portrays the movement’s efficacy, integrity and humanity.

April 11 PAPER TIGER AND BEYOND
Activist Media from Public Access to the World Wide Web

A talk and screening with: Brian Drolet, Randi Cecchine, Simin Farkhondeh, Tuli Kupferberg, Cathy Scott and, Johnny Stevens. Moderated by Dee Dee Halleck.
Thursday, April 11th, 7:00 pm

Program Summary
As a part of the exhibition Counterculture: Alternative Information from the Underground Press to the Internet, Exit Art / The First World presented Paper Tiger and Beyond: Activist Media from Public Access to the World Wide Web. The evening was structured as a thoughtful discussion across generations and media with Paper Tiger alumni Tuli Kupferberg, Simin Farkhondeh, Cathy Scott and Randi Cecchine, Peoples Video Network Johnny Stevens, and Voyager’s Brian Drolet. The discussion was moderated by Dee Dee Halleck, who founded Paper Tiger in 1981. Video clips feature: Paper Tiger, a selection of programs representing the group’s fifteen year history; Deep Dish, a national grass roots satellite network that grew out of Paper Tiger; and People’s Video Network, a collective that produces and distributes activist programming.
Paper Tiger Television is a series of programs that are broadcast on public access channels, which analyze and critique issues involving media, culture and politics. The shows feature scholars, community activists, critics and journalists addressing the ideological assumptions and social meanings of the mainstream media as well as exploring the opportunities for alternative communications sources. Paper Tiger’s approach is decidedly low budget; the average cost per half hour program during the early 1980s was $200, most of which represented studio time. Broadcast weekly, Paper Tiger features well known intellectuals and cultural critics offering an incisive interpretation of a chosen publication. The series included popular segments such as Herbert Schiller reads the New York Times, Murray Bookchin reads Time; Tuli Kupferberg reads Rolling Stone; and Martha Rosler reads Vogue to name a few. During the late 1980s and 1990s Paper Tiger grew more sophisticated technically and has produced segments on topics ranging from the Gulf War, to media coverage in the Balkans, to the EZLN uprising in Mexico to Barbie.
Paper Tiger’s programs examine a particular aspect of the communications industry, from print media to TV to movies, looking at its impact on public perception and opinion. Other videos represent the people and views which are largely absent from the mainstream media. The goal of the programming is to provide viewers with a critical understanding of the communications industry. This critical consciousness, Paper Tiger maintains, is a necessary step towards more equitable and democratic control of information resources.

Speakers
Tuli Kupferberg is a writer, editor, artist who was also a member of the legendary East Village band The Fugs; Simin Farkhondeh and Cathy Scott made the Gulf Crisis TV Project; Randi Cecchine currently works at Paper Tiger Television; Johnny Stevens is from People’s Video Network; and, Brian Drolet of Voyager, produced the Mumia Abu Jamal CD Rom and is working with Paper Tiger on future internet projects. Moderator Dee Dee Halleck conceived and founded Paper Tiger Television in 1981. She currently teaches at University of California at San Diego.
During the week of April 8-13 selections from Paper Tiger, Deep Dish, People’s Video Network, the Gulf Crisis TV project and Voyager’s CD Rom on Mumia Abu Jamal can be seen at Exit Art / The First World’s Cafe Cultura.
The public programs of Exit Art / The First World are funded in part by the NYSCA/DCA Cultural Challenge Initiative.

Film Screening
Guy Debord
The Society of the Spectacle

Organizer
Keith Sanborn
Saturday, April 13 & 20 8:00/10:00 pm

Program summary
Exit Art / The First World was very pleased to screen, in video format, Guy Debord’s influential and remarkable film The Society of the Spectacle. The film waspresented on video with newly translated English subtitles by Keith Sanborn. This evening marked the first New York screening of the work.
Few groups have had a more profound impact on post-War France than the Situationist International (SI). From 1957 to 1972 the Situationists formed the center of an unparalleled interrogation of political and cultural relations. Alternately credited with causing or participating in the May 1968 uprising in Paris, the Situationists slogans and tactics became common coin for the generation of 1968 in France.
Guy Debord, one of the founding members of the Situationist International, has been painted both as a dynamic figure and as the egotistical pope of the SI. His writings and actions over three decades have had a tremendous impact, as Mr. Sanborn notes, “If Debord’s work in theory has become the unexamined, decontextualized cornerstone cliché of postmodernism, his paintings, artists books and films are unfortunately known to only very few outside of France.” This situation was exacerbated during a ten year period --from 1984 until early 1995 -- when, by Debord’s explicit prohibition, his films were not shown in France. This situation arose in the wake of the assassination of Gerard Lebovici, a major figure in the French film industry and Debord’s longtime friend, publisher and producer. The French press maligned Debord in their coverage of Lebovici’s murder, going as far as to link Debord with the West German radical/terrorist Baader-Meinhof group. The papers were forced to print retractions and, Debord pulled his films from distribution declaring they would never again be shown in France, later adding “‘I should have said, ‘or anywhere else.’” Debord maintained this ban until 1994 when he collaborated on a video project with Brigitte Cornand. To end a painful illness, Debord committed suicide in late 1994. In January 1995, by previous arrangement, the new collaborative video was shown on Canal + in France along with Society of the Spectacle and Refutation of all judgments which have been brought up to now whether in praise or hostile to the film called Society of the Spectacle. The latter is a response to the critical reception of Society of the Spectacle in the form of a 20-minute film.
The film Society of the Spectacle is Debord’s 1973 adaptation of his 1967 book by the same name. The film is an essay, based upon the Situationist theory of “detournement,” that is, the re-contextualized use of pre-existing images as a form of social critique. In Society of the Spectacle, Debord uses images and sequences from Hollywood features, East Block features, news footage, documentaries, TV commercials, soft-core porn and a vast number of stills, some of which seem explicitly shot for the film. The film makes use of a nearly continuous voice-over consisting of passages from Debord’s 1967 text. Sanborn speculatively identifies the speaker as Debord himself. Music for the film is by the 18th century composer Michel Corette. The film is structured around intertitles, which include both acknowledged and unacknowledged quotations from Hegel, Marx, Cieszkowski, von Clausewitz and others. The film is extremely dense visually, verbally, psychologically, intellectually. Society of the Spectacle has had a tremendous impact in France. It is an astonishingly sophisticated and coherent response to the experience of May 1968.
Keith Sanborn is a filmmaker who has organized several projects on Lettrist and Situationist films including Film Modernism and its discontents: a perspective from Paris, a series of Situationist films that were presented at Exit Art in 1990. He is also noted for The Deadman, a film made in collaboration with Peggy Ahwesh and based on the novel by Georges Bataille. Mr. Sanborn has also translated other films including Rene Vienet’s Can Dialectics break bricks? Berthold Brecht and Erich Engel’s Mysteries of a Hair Salon, Gilm Wollman’s The Anticoncept, Maurice LeMaitre’s Is the film started yet?

Public Talk
Peter Berg
founding member of the Diggers in San Francisco
Friday, May 10, 1:00 pm

Public Talk Summary
As a part of the exhibition Counterculture: Alternative Information from the Underground Press to the Internet, Exit Art / The First World presented an afternoon with Peter Berg, a founding member of the San Francisco collective, the Diggers and an actor and performer with the San Francisco Mime Troupe where he originated the term Guerrilla Theater.
The Diggers, a San Francisco-based group that maintained a commitment to a free society, involved artists, performers and activists. The Diggers were influenced by the theories of Marx, Brecht and Artaud. Formed in the fall of 1966 as an outgrowth of the Artists Liberation Front, many of the Diggers were also affiliated with the San Francisco Mime Troupe. After the Hunter’s Point riot of 1966 -- an event that brought out the National Guard who enforced curfews -- students and the burgeoning hippie community of the Bay Area planned a protest. According to Eric Noble, a chronicler of the Diggers, members of the Artist’s Liberation Front found the student organizations, particularly Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and confrontational tactics “lame” and instead decided to host a happening/festival in Golden Gate Park where everything would be free, thereby spreading the ethos of love. The success of this event led to other free activities, including the daily free lunches in Golden Gate Park. The San Francisco Diggers included Emmett Grogan, Judy Berg and actor Peter Coyote. They and others set up daily free lunches, a free store, and even provided housing for the young people who were flocking to the Haight Ashbury district.
Peter Berg is also a noted ecologist, speaker and writer. He is currently founder and director of Planet Drum Foundation, an ecological organization. Berg believes that the relationships between humans and the rest of nature point to the importance of supporting cultural diversity as a component of biodiversity.

Public Talk
Paul Krassner
Thursday, May 30, 7:00 pm

Public Talk Summary
As a part of the exhibition Counterculture: Alternative Information from the Underground Press to the Internet, which is extended through June 1st, Exit Art / The First World presented an evening with writer/satirist Paul Krassner. The reading was hosted in conjunction with Seven Stories Press’s publication of The Winner of the Slow Bicycle Race: The Satirical Writings of Paul Krassner.
Called the father of the underground press by People magazine in the 1960s, Krassner published the irreverent, humorous and satirical journal The Realist, on view in the Counterculture exhibition. Krassner began his career as a child prodigy violinist, became a Mad magazine contributor, and was Lenny Bruce’s obscenity coach, and co-founded with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin the Yippies.
Krassner read excerpts from his new book The Winner of the Slow Bicycle Race and answer questions from the audience. The book collects all Krassner’s most recent stories, as well as his most famous satirical pieces from past years. The book is Swiftian in intention and contemporary in subject matter. It reveals Krassner to have the heart of a muckraker and the spirituality of a seeker after truth. Stephen Holden of the New York Times called Krassner “An expert at ferreting out hypocrisy and absurdism from the more solemn crannies of American culture,” and Art Spiegelman stated, “Krassner is one of the best minds of his generation.”
Krassner endures today as an intrepid, unrehabilitated, counterculture torch bearer, calling attention to the absurdity in reality, poking irreverent fun at the things we hold sacred, mixing fact and fiction to stimulate and provoke.

June 15 - July 13 SWEAT

Artists
Lynda Abraham, Yuval Adler, Brian Austin, Jonathan Bepler, David Henry Brown Jr., David Byrne, John Corbin, Scott Cunningham, Sue deBeer, Daniella Dooling,
John Drury, Matthew Flower, Steven Gontarski, Jeff Gurecka, Elliott Green, Kate Howard, Kim Jones, Brad Kahlhamer, Dominic McGill, Warren Neidich, Edouard Pierre Louis, Laura Sansone, Lawrence Seward, Allison Smith, Tony Stanzione,
Heather Stephens, Michael Tong, Javier Tellez, Miguel Trelles, Sergio Vega, Connie Walsh, Jeff Wyckoff

Exhibition
During the summer of 1996 Exit Art / The First World was an urban tropical paradise. Sweat was a group exhibition/experiment which dealt with beach fantasies, escape, heat, and the rituals inspired by the change of season. Sweat developed as a collaborative experiment among thirty one artists and took the form of a collective installation as artists worked together with Papo Colo to tackle creative challenges and create an elaborate, hedonistic summer environment. Sun worship, water, inertia, leisure time and tourism were some of the several themes which inform the art pieces and installation. Comprised of art objects, performance and found ritual objects of the season - assembled and manipulated in group efforts, the exhibition celebrated the season as a chaotic vision of Utopia of organized contradictions.
Sweat provided the opportunity for a diverse group of artists to transform the space with its vision and create work in a celebratory spirit. Escaping was never easier as when the tropics and beach fantasies found their way to SoHo in the summer of ‘96..

Curators
Jeanette Ingberman and Papo Colo

Closing Event
Ambientheater
Saturday, July 20, 1996, 8 - 11 pm

Performers
Lynda Abraham, Tanya Barfield, David Henry Brown Jr., Sue de Beer, Carlos Celdran, Patty Chang, Dean Street F.O.O, Deborah Edmeades, Inigo Elizalde,
John Esteva Wilson, Gloria, Gavin Grace, Daniel Green, Jeff Gurecka, Matthew Flower, Yasira Nun, Adam Putnam, Heather Stephens, Jeff Wyckoff.

Program Summary
Exit Art / The First World and Sweat closed for the summer in a grand performance spectacle, Ambientheater, a 3-hour performance theater event. Twenty two performance artists were invited to choose a specific work of art in the exhibition and to create a performance in response to that work and specific to the space it occupied. The performances were ongoing and occurred simultaneously over the course of the evening, creating a fusion of overlapping media: sculpture, performance and sound. The audience was equally implicated in determining the spectacle - free to walk and stop through the different performances in a way akin to the modern shopping mall experience.. The result was an Ambientheater event in which the production had no set beginning or end but rather was an experience uniquely determined by each individual depending upon how they chose to approach it.