New York City

Initiatives

Venues

• 98 Bowery, 1969-1989
• ABC No Rio, center for art and activism, *1980
• A.I.R., artist-run exhibition space for women artists, *1972
• Amant, non-profit exhibition venue, Brooklyn, *2019
• Anthology Film Archives, *1970
• Art in General, *1981
• Artists Space, *1972
• Babycastles, *2009
• BHQFU, artist-run school, *2010
• Bitforms, gallery, *2001
• Bluestockings, bookstore cafe and activist center, *1999
• Cabinet, magazine and events, *2000, Log
• Central Booking, *2009
• CUE Art Foundation, *2002
• The Current Museum of Art, *2016
• Danspace Project, *1974
• The Drawing Center, museum, *1977
• EFA Project Space, arts venue, *2008
• e-flux
• Electronic Arts Intermix, *1971
• Elsewhere, live music venue
• nightclub and arts space, *2014
• Flux Factory, *1993
• Franklin Furnace, *1976
• The Free Black Women's Library, *2015
• Genspace, community biolab, *2009
• Gowanus Studio Space, cooperative workspace, *2007
• happylucky no.1, space for art and music, *2015
• Harvestworks
• Industry City, *2009
• Interference Archive, *2011
• The Invisible Dog Art Center, *2009
• Issue Project Room, performance venue, *2003
• The Kitchen, *1971
• Knockdown Center, art center and performance space, *2012
• Light Industry, film and electronic art venue, *2008
• Metrograph, movie theatre, *2015
• Miriam, artist-run gallery and bookshop, *2019.
• No-Space, *2004
• Participant Inc, alternative art space, *2001
• Performance Space New York, *1980/2018
• Pioneer Works, culture centre, *2014
• Playground Coffee Shop & Annex, community space and bookstore
• Prime Produce, multi-use space, *2018
• Printed Matter, art space & artists books, *1976
• Reanimation Library
• Recess, *2009
• Recurse Center, formerly Hacker School, *2011
• Reverse, art space, *2012
• School for Poetic Computation (SFPC), artist-run school, *2013
• SculptureCenter, *1928
• Soft Surplus, *2018
• Spectacle, collectively-run screening space, *2010
• The Stone, improvised music venue, *2005, [1]
• Storefront for Art and Architecture, *1982
• Wendy's Subway, library and workspace, *2013
• White Columns, alternative art space, *1970

• Past venues: X Initiative (2009-2010), Collective for Living Cinema (1973-1992), 112 Greene Street (1970-).
• more: Art Spaces Archives Project, Alternatives in Retrospect: An Historical Overview 1969-1975, [2] [3], [4], [5], [6], [7].

Initiatives and collectives with no permanent event venue

• Avant.org, *2014
• Blank Forms, curatorial platform for performance, *2016
• Clocktower Radio, all-art online museum radio station, *2003
• Common Practice New York, advocacy group, *2012
• Cybernetics Library, *2017
• Deep Lab, *2015
• Hyphen-Labs
• Living Room Light Exchange New York, *2016
• Primary Information, *2006
• Rhizome, *1996
• Signal Culture, *2012
• The Thing, *1991
• UbuWeb, avant-garde arts resource, *1996
• Unbag, *2017, Log
• W.A.G.E. (Working Artists and the Greater Economy), *2008
• WFMU, independent freeform radio, *1958
• Past initiatives: ART/new York (video magazine on art, *1981) [8], Collaborative Projects Inc. (Colab) (1978-1986) [9], Institute for Art and Urban Resources (IAUR, *1971).

Events

• !!Con, conference, *2014
• Platform Cooperativism, conference, *2015
• Printed Matter's NY Art Book Fair, *2011
• Radical Networks, conference, *2015
• Software for Artists (S4AD), annual event, *2015, [10]
• Theorizing the Web, since 2013
• Event listings: Nonsense NYC, Screen Slate, The Skint.

Past events

• Cybernetics Conference, 2017, videos
• Alternative Art School Fair, 2016
• alt-AI, 2016
• Other Primary Structures, exhibition, 2014
• Digital Labor, conference, 2014
• PRISM Breakup, 2013
• Breakout, festival, 2009
• The Internet as Playground and Factory, conference, 2009
• video_dumbo, festival for contemporary moving image, 2005-2013
• Anticopyright Network, exhibition, 1997
• Real Estate Show, exhibition, 1980 [11]
• Punk Art, exhibition, 1978
• Lives, exhibition, 1975
• Schizo-Culture, 1975
• Open Circuits, conference, 1974
• Computer Art Festival, 1973-1975
• Women's Video Festival, 1972-1980
• Software - Information Technology: Its New Meaning for Art, exhibition, 1970
• Information, exhibition, 1970
• Kinesthetics, exhibition, 1969
• TV as a Creative Medium, exhibition, 1969
• Some More Beginnings, exhibition, 1968
• The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age, exhibition, 1968
• 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering, festival, 1966
• Primary Structures, exhibition, 1966
• The Responsive Eye, exhibition, 1965
• Annual Avant Garde Festival, 1963-1982
• Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, exhibition, 1936
• Cubism and Abstract Art, exhibition, 1936
• Machine-Age Exposition, exhibition, 1927
• International Exhibition of Modern Art Assembled by Société Anonyme, exhibition, 1926-1927

Art workers

• Tega Brain
• Ingrid Burrington
• Ted Byfield
• Taeyoon Choi
• Michael Connor
• Aria Dean
• Charles Eppley
• Ben Fino-Radin
• Alexander R. Galloway
• Kenneth Goldsmith
• Sarah Hamerman
• Sam Hart
• Nabil Hassein
• David Hecht
• Melanie Hoff
• Nora N. Khan
• Shannon Mattern
• Marc H. Miller
• Alan W. Moore
• Lai Yi Ohlsen
• Laurel Ptak
• Legacy Russell
• Trebor Scholz
• Mindy Seu
• Paul Soulellis
• Dan Taeyoung
• Dennis Tenen
• Francis Tseng
• Charles Turner
• McKenzie Wark
• Chris Woebken

See also

• Monoskop's NYC Twitter list

Publications

• Alternatives in Retrospect: An Historical Overview 1969-1975, ed. Jacki Apple, New York: New Museum, 1981, 52 pp. Exh. catalogue. Exhibition. Publisher.

• Alan Moore, Marc Miller (eds.), ABC No Rio Dinero: The Story of a Lower East Side Art Gallery, New York: ABC No Rio with Collaborative Projects, 1985, vi+195 pp.

• Cultural Economies: Histories from the Alternative Arts Movement, NYC, ed. Julie Ault, New York: Drawing Center, 1996, 72 pp. [12]

• Julie Ault (ed.), Alternative Art, New York, 1965-1985: a Cultural Politics Book for the Social Text Collective, University of Minnesota Press, with New York: Drawing Center, 2002, ix+396 pp. Publisher. TOC.

• Art Spaces Archives Project, 2003 ff. List of organizations. Surveys list.

• Clayton Patterson, et al. (eds.), Resistance: A Radical Social and Political History of the Lower East Side, New York: Seven Stories Press, 2006, 672 pp. Publisher. Event.

• Alan W. Moore, "Artists' Collectives: Focus on New York, 1975-2000", in Collectivism After Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination After 1945, eds. Blake Stimson and Gregory Sholette, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007, pp 193-221.

• Christelle Terroni, Les Pratiques artistiques des Espaces Alternatifs à New-York, 1969-1980, Tours: Université François-Rabelais, 2010; rev. as New York Seventies. Avant-garde et espaces alternatifs, Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2015. (French)

• Marc H. Miller, 98 BOWERY: 1969 - 89: view from the top floor, 2009 ff. Exhibition (2019).

• Alan W. Moore, Art Gangs: Protest and Counterculture in New York City, Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 2011, 185 pp. Street-level history of artists’ groups and collective activity by artists in New York from 1969 to 1985. Review: Anderson (Oxford Art J).

• Gallery 98: Art Ephemera, 1960s-1990s, ed. Marc H. Miller, New York, 2011 ff. [13]

• Christelle Terroni, "Essor et déclin des espaces alternatifs", La vie des idees, Feb 2011. (French)
  • "The Rise and Fall of Alternative Spaces", Books & Ideas, Oct 2011.

• Lauren Rosati, Mary Anne Staniszewski (eds.), Alternative Histories: New York Art Spaces, 1960 to 2010, MIT Press, and Exit Art, 2012, 408 pp. Rosati's essay, Rachleff's essay. Publisher. Reviews: Anderson (Oxford Art J), Basciano (ArtReview), Friel (Afterimage).

• Jessamyn Fiore (ed.), 112 Greene Street: the Early Years, 1970–1974, New York: Radius Books, 2012, 192 pp. Review: Anderson (Oxford Art J).

• Mary Anne Staniszewski, "Alternatives and Attitudes: Today and Yesterday", in Germano Celant, et al., When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/Venice 2013, Milan: Progetto Prada Arte, 2013, pp 457-468. Publisher.

• Carey Lovelace, "Optimism and Rage: The Women's Movement in Art in New York, 1969-1975", Woman's Art Journal 37:1, Spring/Summer 2016, pp 4-11.

• Tom Goyens (ed.), Radical Gotham: Anarchism in New York City from Schwab's Saloon to Occupy Wall Street, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017, 258 pp. Review: Blum (J Stud Rad).

• Pauline Chevalier, Une Histoire des espaces alternatifs à New York: de SoHo au South Bronx (1969-1985), Dijon: Les Presses du réel, 2017, 501 pp. Review: Besson (Critique d'art). (French)

• Nandini Bagchee, Counter Institution: Activist Estates of the Lower East Side, Fordham University Press, 2018, 264 pp. Publisher.

• Steve Lyons, Rezoning the Alternative: Art and Politics in New York at the Dawn of the Reagan Era, Montreal: Concordia University, 2018. PhD dissertation. [14]

• Steven H. Jaffe, Activist New York: A History of People, Protest, and Politics, forew. Eric Foner, New York University Press, 2018. [15]

• Klaus Biesenbach, Bettina Funcke (eds.), MoMA PS1: A History, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2019, 304 pp. [16] [17]

• Alan W. Moore, "“Approaching Downtown” NYC in London: Post #1", "Post #2", "Post #3", "Post #4", "Post #5", Art Gangs, Aug-Sep 2022. A series of posts about the Approaching Downtown: Avant-Garde Cultural Production in New York City, 1970s-1990s symposium at the Courtauld Institute, London, in mid-July.

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