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1 50 2 https://groups.temporaryservices.org/files/original/ecf4099d38c610b3806e1efcaa7d80f4.png 9703535b75aa09e5c1110866f6cdb815 https://groups.temporaryservices.org/files/original/c289d9ae16325595dc2a610ff508fea4.jpg d5513cc35f9d6959fbb67610db027997 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Subject The topic of the resource Collaborative groups Description An account of the resource This collection of group names documents the work of people who have chosen to make art and culture in collaborative configurations like collectives, duo, cooperatives, and more. Title A name given to the resource GROUPS Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Temporary Services Subject The topic of the resource Artist group, three spaces, four publishing imprints Description An account of the resource Temporary Services is Brett Bloom and Marc Fischer. We are based in Auburn (IN) and Chicago. Salem Collo-Julin worked with us from 2001-2014. We have existed, with several changes in membership and structure, since 1998. We produce exhibitions, events, projects, and publications. The distinction between art practice and other creative human endeavors is irrelevant to us. The best way of testing our ideas has been to do them without waiting for permission or invitation. We invent infrastructure or borrow it when necessary. We were not taught this in school. We try different approaches, inspired by others equally frustrated by the systems they inherited, who created their own methods for getting work into the public. Temporary Services started as an experimental exhibition space in a working class neighborhood of Chicago. Our name directly reflects the desire to provide art as a service to others. It is a way for us to pay attention to the social context in which art is produced and received. Having “Temporary Services” displayed on our window helped us to blend in with the cheap restaurants, dollar stores, currency exchanges, and temporary employment agencies on our street. We were not immediately recognizable as an art space. This was partly to stave off the stereotypical role we might have played in the gentrification of our neighborhood. We weren’t interested in making art for sale. Within the boundaries of “what sells” artists often carve out tiny aesthetic niches to protect, peddle, and repeat indefinitely, rather than opening themselves up to new possibilities. Experiencing art in the places we inhabit on a daily basis remains a critical concern for us. It helps us move art from a privileged experience to one more directly related to how we live our lives. A variety of people should decide how art is seen and interpreted, rather than continuing to strictly rely on those in power. We move in and out of officially sanctioned spaces for art, keeping one foot in the underground the other in the institution. Staying too long in one or the other isn’t healthy. We are interested in art that takes engaging and empowering forms. We collaborate amongst ourselves and with others, even though this may destabilize how people understand our work. AGAINST COMPETITION Much of the art world is structured to favor competition. Grants are competitive. Students compete for funding. Hundreds compete for a single teaching position. Artists compete with artists – stealing ideas instead of sharing them, or using copyright laws to prohibit thoughtful re-use. Artists compete for shows in a limited number of exhibition spaces instead of finding their own ways to exhibit outside of these venues. Artists conceal opportunities from their friends as a way of getting an edge up in this speculative capital-driven frenzy. Gallerists compete with other gallerists and curators compete with curators. Artists who sell their work compete for the attention of a limited number of collectors. Collectors compete with other collectors to acquire the work of artists. Temporary Services seeks to create and participate in ethical relationships that are not competitive and are mutually beneficial. We develop strategies for harnessing the ideas and energies of people who may have never participated in an art project before, or who may feel excluded from the art community. We mobilize the generosity of many people to produce projects on a scale that none of us could achieve in isolation. We strive towards aesthetic experiences built upon trust and unlimited experimentation. GROUP WORK & WORKING WITH OTHERS Working together in a group gives us both the ability to do multiple projects at once and the flexibility to use each other’s experiences to our collective advantage. We like collaboration because of the inherent challenges and incredible possibilities that come from working with others. We utilize each other’s skill sets and trust in each other’s ideas because we have worked together for so long. We are dedicated to finding ways of working together while still maintaining our own individual voices. A group is only healthy when the individuals are healthy. The reverse is equally true. Each of our viewpoints has room to breathe without the necessities of group speak. We do write together, and often speak in public together, but we don’t feel the need to dress or think alike. We sometimes work outside of the group and bring those experiences back to Temporary Services. Learning and working together, and with others, enriches each of our lives. There has been a noted rise in the number of people making work in groups in the past decade. We document some of this activity at www.groupsandspaces.net, initiated as a research tool and to make groups more visible to one another. We took advantage of an offer from a sympathetic building owner and worked with like-minded practitioners to co-found Mess Hall, a keyholder-run, experimental cultural center in Chicago. The space operated from 2003-2013. BUILDING LONG-TERM INFRASTRUCTURE TO SUPPORT SIMILAR WAYS OF WORKING We represent ourselves and maintain the greatest degree of control over our work. When we get opportunities, we often try to extend them to others – particularly those who might not get the same chances we’ve gotten, perhaps because they are more difficult to communicate with, don’t adhere to conventional social graces, or are severely marginalized. We are starting to contend with the complexities of having a more autonomous sustainable practice. We’re aided by lectures, workshops, honorariums and the occasional grant or award, but there isn’t nearly enough for three people to live on. The forms our work takes rarely generate sellable objects, and when they do, the results are hard to distribute. Many other artists are in the same boat. We are creating an online store to better circulate our own published work and to begin highlighting and distributing the work of our peers. We will more actively publish books by people we admire by launching a new press. None of this will create a financial windfall but the history of our practice has been to work and experiment at our own pace, with people we care about on terms we can live with. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brett Bloom & Marc Fischer Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived https://temporaryservices.org/served/about/ Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copy & Share Brett Bloom Chicago group Half Letter Press Indiana Marc Fischer Mess Hall publishers socially engaged Temporary Services https://groups.temporaryservices.org/files/original/cab3afca16380deb5a515b9c136500b3.jpg d9b2bda8d6929631d1ba037e92751485 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource SPACES Subject The topic of the resource This collection of group names documents the work of people who have chosen to work in collaborative configurations like collectives, duo, cooperatives, and more, and have chosen to run an art space. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Collaborative Administrators Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copy & Share Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mess Hall Subject The topic of the resource Experimental Cultural Space started by Artist-Activists Description An account of the resource Mess Hall was an experimental cultural center collaboratively run by "keyholders" from 2003-2013. Here is an article from Time Out Chicago about the closing of Mess Hall: Stop by Mess Hall (6932 N Glenwood Ave) before March 29, when the experimental cultural center closes forever, and you might walk out with some new stuff. During my visit to the Rogers Park storefront earlier this month, two passersby came in to select items from a rack of free clothes as a few of Mess Hall’s seven keyholders—the artists, activists and writers who run the space—prepared for its final exhibition, the crowdsourced retrospective “Our Collective Future.” Money never changes hands at Mess Hall. Founded in 2003, it hosts a mix of programs unlike anything else in Chicago, presenting art exhibitions, lectures, film screenings, poetry and craft workshops, Occupy Rogers Park meetings, Food Not Bombs meals and the Free Store: a much bigger version of the giveaway I witnessed. “Since the announcement about closing, the biggest question we’ve gotten is, ‘When’s the Free Store?’,” keyholder Rozalinda Borcila says. (It’s March 24.) Mess Hall can offer free programming because of an unusual arrangement with its landlord, commercial real-estate agent Alan Goldberg, who purchased its building in 1999. “It was kind of a crack house,” Goldberg tells me by phone. A drummer married to a costume designer, the arts enthusiast decided to turn the property into artists’ studios. The storefront housed the cooperative Inclusion Arts Gallery for two years, and when its director decided to pursue other projects, Goldberg sought another tenant. After he read a New York Times article that mentioned the artist collective Temporary Services, then based in Chicago, the landlord asked its three members if they would like to use the approximately 700-square-foot space–for free. “They kept trying to figure out what the catch was,” Goldberg recalls. Five other keyholders ultimately joined Temporary Services in founding Mess Hall. Because they had to pay only for utilities—Goldberg charged $1 rent per year so Mess Hall could have an official lease, but it’s unclear he ever collected it—Mess Hall could be explicitly noncommercial. It could also avoid the bureaucracy and constraints of becoming a nonprofit. When cultural spaces charge admission, “that sets up a barrier for some people,” keyholder Lora Lode explains. “We were adamant that we wanted it to be open.” Temporary Services’ Salem Collo-Julin, who now lives in Philadelphia, concurs that free admission helped Mess Hall reach an audience beyond most keyholders’ art-school circles. One of her favorite events was Tamms Year Ten’s 2009 critique of the Justseeds artist collective’s Prison Portfolio posters. “It was a packed room, and not everyone was well-versed in the traditional methodology of doing a critique,” Collo-Julin says. “But it turned out to be this really interesting and productive discussion about what propaganda can do.” Mess Hall is closing because Goldberg wishes to turn the storefront into a center “for Jewish studies and meditation,” his “passion” for almost two decades. According to Borcila, the keyholders don’t have plans to reopen Mess Hall elsewhere. “We are not Mess Hall,” she says. “It’s taken a lot of people to shape this place.” She hopes a two-part workshop, “The Material Production of Cultural Space,” gives supporters ideas about how to start their own initiatives. “I think it’s sad that it’s leaving,” Collo-Julin says, “but it’s had a full life.” Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived https://www.timeout.com/chicago/art/mess-hall-closes-in-rogers-park Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2003-2013 activism anti-capitalist art cultural center experimental urbanism