Over 100 Artists and Projects, 25 Curators and 9 New Commissions Highlighting 20 Years of Socially Engaged Art.

September 24 – October 16, 2011
The Historic Essex Street Market

80 Essex St. – Enter on Delancey

Allied and Le Petit Versailles will be represented at booths on October 7 & 8 from Noon to 8pm.

Please drop in and visit us.

Allied Productions, Inc. is a multi purpose non profit arts umbrella organization giving opportunity for artists of various mediums to show their work, as well as providing fiscal sponsorship, management support and project presentations locally, nationally, and abroad.  Allied’s primary project is Le Petit Versailles, the Operation Greenthumb garden that hosts a Spring through Fall schedule of free public events presenting film/video, readings, workshops, forums, theater, performance, exhibition, installation, interdisciplinary practice, and live works. LPV promotes social activity in open green public space. The collective of artists forming Allied Productions, Inc. have collaborated on innumerable projects since meeting in New York City’s downtown art, club, and political circles in the mid 80’s. The collective functioned as the second generation of artist-managers at Abc No Rio, bringing performance, performing arts, cinema, and inter-disciplinary art to the fore, while retaining the focus on challenging, experimental, socially-driven creative practice in visual arts established by No Rio’s founders from Collaborative Projects, Inc. (CoLab). During this period Allied functioned as No Rio’s organizational management and fiscal sponsor. Allied’s current relationship with Abc No Rio continues as outside advisors, consultants, and conservators on archives and collections as a link to the living history of progressive creative action.

Allied’s archival projects include the preservation of works from the Naked Eye Cinema, the extension of No Rio’s film/video program, and the works of Gordon Stokes Kurtti, a principal founding member who died of AIDS related causes in 1987 at the of 27. Allied’s other longtime organizational associations through the intersection of common creative interests and activities include MIX NYC, and The Film Makers’ Cooperative.

About MARKET

Curated by Temporary Services   www.temporaryservices.org

(Brett Bloom, Marc Fischer, Salem Collo-Julin)

Our ongoing investigation of the intersection of art, labor, economics, and the production of social experiences has led us to initiate a new project called MARKET. MARKET is our group’s contribution to the exhibition “Living as Form”, organized by Creative Time in New York City.

MARKET temporarily restores the Old Essex Street Market building at the southeast corner of Delancey and Essex Streets to its original function as a market place and publicly shared space. The MARKET version will be free to use, non-competitive, and particularly diverse in its offerings.

The Old Essex Street Market buildings were built in the 1930s under the administration of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. While one of the market buildings on Essex Street remains active as an actual marketplace, the Old Market building that is hosting “Living as Form” is managed by the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC). NYCEDC rents the raw building space for film shoots, events, and other temporary functions.

MARKET borrows the infrastructure provided by Creative Time’s rental of the Essex Street Market. Each participant in MARKET is given one of six six-foot long stands within the “Living As Form” exhibition to use for an entire day, throughout the hours and duration of the exhibition. Each participant will be able to use MARKET for one or more days, according to availability. The brightly colored stands, designed by Temporary Services and constructed by Common Room, an architecture firm in the Lower East Side, are modeled after lemonade stands, produce stalls, and flea market style table-top presentations. Each vendor’s table is the same size, provided to the vendor free of charge. Any money made by those who sell things can be kept entirely by the individual, group or business.

MARKET provides indoor market stalls for a range of people and practices that are not often included in traditional market place settings. Table space is provided to people and groups that have demonstrated a commitment to the Lower East Side, regardless of the economic intention or viability of their practice, usual criteria for participation in a market. We have asked groups and individuals to participate that do not have a public office or cannot afford rental property, neighborhood spaces that do rent real estate but could use a boost in visibility or a change of audience, individuals that operate outside of typical Capitalist economies, local experts, organizations that have heavily documented culture from the neighborhood, seasonal vendors and single-person enterprises, and others who add to the eclectic energy of the area.

MARKET creates space for direct conversations and reflections on the many diverse ways in which we make our world and the kinds of relationships we want to foster in our daily exchanges with others, be they social, economic, cultural, or a combination of these things. MARKET champions the values of decency, compassion, working on a small scale, empowerment, and non-exploitative relationships with other people. Among the concerns we wish to highlight are creativity and self-representation, human relationships to the built and natural environment, social and spatial justice, and ethical economic practices. MARKET is, in part, a response to the ongoing economic and social crisis and its devastating impacts on the global economy, ecology, and on vulnerable populations.

A free publication will accompany MARKET and function as a directory to these people and organizations and their missions that can be consulted long after the exhibition ends. It is a snapshot of active organizations and people working on the Lower East Side in the Fall of 2011.