Appendix Project Space is a renegade exhibition and performance space located in a converted garage in an alley off Alberta Street here in Portland. It is programmed by a close-knit group of artists whose practice embodies a philosophy of uninhibited making. Appendix commissioned us to produce a poster for each of their monthly shows in 2010.
1. We created a process by which the artists behind Appendix became an automatic design machine, using their own art practice and sensibilities to unconsciously design the poster themselves. We gave each member of the Appendix collective a series of assignments printed on sheets of otherwise blank paper. The assignments were loosely defined tasks ("Make something round in the lower half," "Make something vertical on the right side") given without context. When the completed assignments were placed on a predetermined grid, the forms combined to construct the letters in the word APPENDIX. The orange letterforms were our basis for the instructions, the black combines are the layered artist's solutions. The Appendix crew collaborated on a task without knowledge of the task or collaboration, and we made a poster with little control over what, in the end, it would look like. We knew where it was going, but not how it would get there, which seemed like a nice way to embody the Appendix philosophy.
2. Travis Fitzgerald was the only one of the members of the house to have a solo show this season. I asked the other members of the collective surreptitiously steal some object from Travis and bring them to me. Over a period of one week, these objects were to be in my posession and to be used as the materials for various art operations, attempting to reflect a superficial read of the breadth of Appendix's work (installation, performance, drawing). Travis was upset about one of the missing items (the necktie), and it was decided to end the project early. This poster serves as a record of a deliberate disruption to the collective's attempt at cohabitation.
3. Two artist collectives are showing at the two Alberta Alleyways spaces. They both work at an intersection of sculptural installation and music performance. Some predicted a brawl. In the style of Animorphs, as suggested by Josh Pavlacky of Appendix.
