Public Projects – Doug Ashford

Program, produced for The Three Rivers Arts Festival, 7 – 23 June, 1996.

“The quotations and underlying images running throughout the program guide were compiled by Group Material as our contribution to this year’s public art component of the Three Rivers Arts Festival, Points of Entry: A Community Based Public Art Project. We have integrated the Festival’s schedules and information with a constructed ‘dialogue’ from interviews conducted spontaneously on the street, during a radio call-in program, and from scheduled discussions in homes and offices. Several excerpts are reproduced from previous writings by architects, critics and designers. All texts are represented anonymously to de-emphasize attributes normally used to categorize identity— such as location of residency or institutional affiliation—and instead highlight actual statements.

The questions we raised with interviewees were largely about their experiences using the city, neighborhoods and public spaces, recent relevant changes, personal and collective histories, functions of urban festivals and the cultural, corporate, and consumer entities that administrate, support and visit such events. The linked fragments can be read as a textual chain that was not conducted as a dialogue in real time, but should convey a logic of interconnectedness between topics.

As ‘community’ and ‘public’ are amorphous terms it is crucial to question the ideological underpinnings and context as well as the character of social constellations at work when they are invoked. Given recent trends toward professionalization of community-based art alongside privatization of public space, we decided to investigate the term ‘community’ in relation to the festival itself.

Our project is not a sociological or scientific survey, nor is it a random sampling of Pittsburgh residents and there is no pretense of objectivity here. The overarching goal of the project is to introduce unarticulated perspectives and voices into the official festival arena and to construct a picture of ‘community’ and ‘the city’ as indeterminate and contested by introducing unexpected observations, critiques, and agendas.”

From Group Material, “Project Statement,” Three Rivers Arts Festival Program, 1996

Collection of quotations from residents of Pittsburgh for Program. _(link)

PDF of entire work _(link)

“Point of Entry” – publication produced by Three Rivers _(link)

Program, Three Rivers Festival. 1996

Democracy Wall, The Museum of Fine Arts,Boston, 1994

A reiteration of the original “DA ZI BAOS” installation of 1982, this project refocused the process of representing public opinion around a single institution. One of the best collections of art in the country, the MFA had a reputation of representing only one aspect of the many communities that make up the city of Boston. Given the architectural prominence of its new wing and entrance, complete with shops, cafeteria and other additions – this location presented itself as the perfect site to pose questions. The color yellow framed the opinions of various professionals working in and managing the museum, while neighbors, artists and visitors were printed on red. In comparing how the uses and understandings of museums can be so different, Group Material was repeating one of its original queries: “who is art for?”

From Julie Ault’s text for Show and Tell: “Doug and Julie spend several days interviewing MFA staff including curators, educators, and administrators about their perspectives on the role and state of the museum. They also tape a hundred impromptu interviews with visitors entering the museum and passersby in the vicinity. The resulting Democracy Wall engenders controversy. The museum’s director leaves the curator a lengthy phone message expressing dissatisfaction with the critical content of the piece, and requests that a disclaimer message be placed nearby, saying in effect, it’s only art. The statements are presented as anonymous, but at the opening many of the formerly-friendly staff who were interviewed steer clear of Julie and Doug, who speculate that people have misgivings about their candor. Perhaps the public exposure of the museum as a contested institution is also unsettling to them.”

GM Democracy Wall Boston 1994

Democracy Wall. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 1993

Democracy Poll, Group Material, June 26 – July 5, 1990. Produced for the Neue Gesellschaft furÂ bildende Kunst in Berlin (NGBK), the work appeared in three iterations: as an electronic billboard on the Ku’damm, as a printed booklet inserted into the newspaperÂ Der Tagesspiegel, and as as billboards replacing advertisements on several U-Bahn train stations.

Democracy Poll, GM

Democracy Poll, NGBK, Berlin. 1990

Your Message Here.Â Randolph Street Gallery, Chicago. 23 February – 20 March, 1990.Â Â

Your Message Here, Chicago, Feb. 23 – Mar. 30, 1990

Subculture.Â IRT subways trains ofÂ New York. 1 -30, September 1983. Supported with funds from New York State Council for the Arts (NYSCA), Group material contracted to rent advertising space from the MTA. Artists were asked to produce their own multiples that Group Material ganged up and delivered for installation. The project is featured on the evening news of Channel 5, WNEW, whichÂ describes the projectÂ as “artworks coming underground.”

Subculture, IRT subway trains, NY, Sept. 1-30, 1983

Shopping Bag, produced for D&S Austellung, Kunstverein Hamburg, 14 October – 26 November, 1989.

“… less than ever does a simple reproduction of reality express something about reality. A photograph of the Krupp works or the A.E.G. reveals almost nothing about these institutions…. Therefore, something must be constructed, something artificial, something fabricated.” – Bertolt Brecht.

In the summer of 1989 Group Material went to Hamburg, invited by the Kunstverein there to produce a project outside the museum as part of their ‘D&S’ exhibition. We were to stay in the city for five days to research the site and present the organizers with a proposal. Our research was two days of very pleasant strolling through the downtown business district. We shopped a lot.

In Germany you can’t help but think about war. We talked about the idea of “post-war” alliances and military industries as we stepped in and out of boutiques and stores. The seemingly infinite arcades of Hamburg make a sort of urbanized American mall, a concentration of consumer bliss easily traversed by foot. Our conversation on war at first seemed strangely artificial in this, the more familiar nightmare of consumption, out of place amongst the warm wood paneling and chrome counters. We realized that any legal attempt to divert attention from these glitzy displays toward some sort of artwork about military weaponry would be futile. So we shopped some more.

In large part, the consumer affluence that we were taking part in, was and is a direct result of a history of military and economic domination by strong countries over smaller ones, multinational interests over local concerns, and profits over people. Behind each cash register is an intricate geography of demographics and battle-plans. There, the capitals of fashion and armaments neatly coexist.

The proliferating global informational order and its expanding communications and media systems has increasingly blurred the definitions of ‘public’ and ‘private.’ Our ‘public’ work, something with a practical function, would be seen in use on the streets of Hamburg as it made its way into the ‘private’ space of the home.

The shopping bag replaced the usual ones in a large department store and a variety of smaller shops for the duration of the exhibition. It was a reproduction of a connection, a fabrication that people could take with them.

Group Material, (Doug Ashford, Julie Ault, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Karen Ramspacher) 1989

From: “Exhibition Statement,” published in Art Papers, _(link)

bag side2 ShoppingBag

Shopping Bag, Kunstverein, Hamburg, Oct. 14 – Nov. 26, 1989

In the Fall of 1991 Group Material was invited by Diane Shamash, manager of the city of Seattle Arts Commission’s Public Art program to participate in

Cash Prize: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Dec. 17-20, 1991

DA ZI BAOS Union Square, NY. Installed April 1982

DA ZI BAOS Union Square, NY. Installed April 1982

In collaboration with Visual AIDS for Day Without Art, December 1, 1990, Group Material adapted AIDS Timeline for the December 1990 issues of: Afterimage; Art in America; Art &Auction, Art New England; Arts Magazine; Artforum; Contemporanea; High Performance; October, Parkett, and Shift. Each contained a spread that presented one year of the Timeline, and each was re-designed for the specific formats and readership of each publication.