Downtime at the Experimental Station: A conversation with Dan Peterman, By Dan S. Wang – September, 2004
Dan S. Wang interviewed Dan Peterman about a range of topics: Peterman’s art practice, the community that inhabited the building at 61st Street and Dorchester, the fire that destroyed the building, the struggle against the city to rebuild, and the rebirth of the building
as the Experimental Station.
Download the complete text: 
Artists at Work Forums: Dialogue with Chicago’s Visual Art Community – Chicago Cultural Center, October 14th, 2004
The panel is called “Artists Connect” and is about: “the power and potential of artists working together.”
The Chicago Cultural Center is located at 78 E. Washington. The panel is in the 5th Floor, SW Meeting room.
Connect the Dots: An exhibition investigating models of connectivity created by artists curating artists – The LeRoy Neiman Gallery, Columbia University, September 7 – 28, 2004
Connect The Dots is described as:
[A]n exhibition investigating models of connectivity created by artists who curate. The co-organizers David Dempewolf and Scott Rigby have enlisted the help of 60 international artists and groups to contribute their field research and findings to add to a collective knowledge base about an emerging practice.
The exhibition is intended to be a meeting of minds for co-generating a tangible appendix of strategies for artist curated projects. The participating artists examine their past and current curatorial work as experiments within a social field of vocational relationships.
Contributions will be displayed within a science fair-like setting. This format re-presents a specific art practice through the middle-school equivalent of a science convention where practitioners share strategies, developments, and distribute information within a community of their immediate peers. This project will culminate in the creation of a printed journal that will help articulate a current set of specific practices, and serve as a list of possibilities for new work by emerging practitioners.
Secret Affinities – La Casa Encendida, Madrid, Spain, June 29 – Mid September, 2004
We are presenting a small version of Prisoner’s Inventions in Spanish. The texts were translated by Amaya de Miguel.
PDFS en Español:
introduccion.pdf
tazadepapermache.pdf
tatuajes.pdf
calentadoresporinmersion.pdf
calentadoresporinmersion1.pdf
calentadorporinmersion2.pdf
vaso.pdf
The End of the End of the Line – Soap Factory, Minneapolis, July 10 – August 22, 2004
We are presenting Binder Archives, which will have a brand new binder by Josh MacPhee.
Download the catalog:
Soap Factory
Interface Black Box: White Cube – 8th Festival Garage, Stralsund, Germany, July 23 – August 14, 2004
Locate Public stellt die Frage nach dem öffentlichen Raum und seiner Veränderung durch die Medialisierung. Welche brauchbaren
Formen der künstlerischen Einmischung in den öffentlichen Raum gibt es und wie werden diese wahrgenommen bzw. vermittelt? Künstler und Kuratoren im Kampf um die Aufmerksamkeit des Publikums. Brett Bloom wird über die Arbeit von Temporary Services sprechen.
Migrating Identity – Transmission/Reconstruction – Artiet Amicitiae, Amsterdam, May 21 – June 13, 2004
We are presenting Dave’s Stories in conjunction with MI-TR. The cd of Dave’s Stories will be playing at Arti et Amicitae. In addition, a new letter written by Dave Whitman to his fellow homeless persons in Amsterdam was published in Z-magazine.
24 international artists, filmmakers and theoreticians are invited to enter the transit-zone: Migrating Identity— Transmission/Reconstruction is a project that investigates the nomadic artistic practice vs. the image contingency of the migrant/refugee, focusing on perceptions of identity and the unseen other.
Dragged City – Collaborative project with JaM, PR ’04, San Juan and Rincon, Puerto Rico, May 26 – June 6, 2004
Dragged City is a project designed for the shared spaces of cities. We are constructing unique carts and attachable devices that drag behind bicycles. Human energy will pull and power mobile cook-outs, large road-drawings, a kitchen and bar, musical tones, a library of printed materials, a toilet for women only and other practical and spectacular functions. We will ride the bicycles and encourage others to join us.
Dragged City Index
JAM
Puerto Rico ’04
Hot Hobby Glue Dispenser: re-created from Angelo’s drawing and description
The Optimistic Mood – University of Sunderland, Sunderland, UK. Opens April 27, 2004
We are presenting a small selection of inventions and drawings from the Prisoners’ Inventions project.
Contraband Radio: re-created from Angelo’s drawing and description
Prisoners’ Inventions – Basekamp, Philadelphia, April 2 – May 7, 2004
Basekamp will house a replica of Angelo’s prison cell, re-creations of prisoners’ inventions and a new publication of interviews and discussions around the project and related prison issues. The book of Angelo’s drawings and writings will be available.
Prisoners’ Inventions Overview
Chicago Ravioli – On the street in April, a reception will be held April 30, 2004, at the Gold Star Bar, 1755
West Division Street
A brand new, Chicago-version of public ravioli will be distributed in late March and early April.
In collaboration with: Jacqueline Badzin, Jessica Berger, Stephanie Pereira, and Sheetal Prajapati.
Sound Canopy – Corner of State and Adams in Chicago, Starts January 9, 2004
Sound Canopy was initiated by Michael Burns in conjunction with the Hyde Park Art Center. Sound Canopy consists of 32 speakers mounted on a construction canopy, an amplifier and a cd player. Several local groups and organizations were contacted to find contributors to this year’s Sound Canopy. This is the second version of Sound Canopy. It is now in a new location.
Temporary Services has invited the following persons to contribute: Melinda Fries, Iain Mott, and Dave Whitman.
Sound files and further information
Full drawing of Sound Canopy installation
Dave’s Stories – Borne of Necessity, Weatherspoon Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina, January 18 – April 11, 2004
Temporary Services is presenting a newly edited CD of recordings our friend Dave Whitman made for us between 2001 and 2003. It contains over an hour of stories about Dave and his life on the streets of Chicago.
Borne of Necessity is described as:
This January, the Weatherspoon presents an exhibition that considers the causes and effects of poverty in contemporary life. Featured will be the work of ten contemporary artists or artists’ groups from throughout the United States, Canada, England, and Slovenia; four of whom have created new works for the exhibition. The project aims to increase awareness of the causes of poverty and to provoke a response to the issue. It will be particularly relevant in North Carolina, a state that has pioneered efforts to define poverty and now is experiencing a higher rate of joblessness than the nation as a whole.
Dave’s Stories – description of our collaboration with track lists and mP3s.
“The Foldings Collection” edited by Peter F.A.N. Redgrave
Cram Sessions 1: Collective Effort – Organized by Chris Gilbert, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore,
Maryland, March 3 – March 28, 2004
Temporary Services will be presenting Binder Archives and Audio Relay in Cram Sessions, which is described as:
Cram Sessions: These are small “packed” exhibitions that last for a month. We are choosing the title “cram session” not only because it embodies the idea of urgency but also generosity. Too many exhibitions are based on the idea of preciousness of the work but give us too little to think about. By contrast the “Cram Session” presents art as vehicle for thought, art as material for a conversation. The weight of these exhibitions will be thrown on the side of understanding and reflection. On free evenings during each session, the curator, together with select groups of the artists and other collaborators, will be present in the exhibition for a salon. With the four “Cram Sessions” we are counting down and preparing – beginning with “Cram Session 4” and ending with “Cram Session 1” – and at the same time we are building new audiences and generating a knowledge base in our viewers.
Location: The site for the exhibitions is the Fox Court; the agora-like character of the space is suited to the idea of discussion. Chairs and benches will be set up in each exhibition along with reading material to encourage people to linger in the space.
Cram Session 1: Collective Effort March 3 – April 18, 2004
In an increasingly individualistic and atomized culture, art has become a haven for the idea of attempting to realize utopian goals through group effort. This exhibition brings together work by artists who depict (McCail), enact (Putrih) or archive (Temporary Services) transformative collective efforts.
Binder Archives will visit several locations around Baltimore prior to the exhibition.
Services – Colgate University, Hamilton, NY, March 8 – April 2, 2004
We are presenting several projects: Prisoners’ Inventions, Dave’s Stories, and work from our Public Phenomena archive – our entire collection of Ancient Order Fliers (anonymously self-published newspapers found in Chicago) and three carousels of images including: trucks built in trees, handmade signs (like the one pictured above), parking place savers and a variety of other selections.
We are reprinting 15 of our booklets for free distribution.
Opens March 8, 2004.
Get Rid of Yourself – Lothringer 13, Munich, December 2003 – February 2004
Prisoners’ Inventions, Audio Relay, Binder Archives, Aesthetic Analysis of Human Groupings (see image below) and Public Sculpture Opinion Poll on view at Get Rid of Yourself.
Temporary Services | Aesthetic Analysis of Human Groupings
Drawing of an immersion heater, by Angelo
Prisoner’s Inventions – Collaboration between Angelo and Temporary Services, Fantastic, MASS MoCA, March 8, 2003 – February 2004
For Fantastic, Temporary Services is collaborating with Angelo, an incarcerated artist that we are working with entirely through written correspondence. Two years ago Temporary Services invited Angelo to write and design a booklet about the many ingenious, practical,
necessary, and sometimes downright bizarre things he has seen other prisoners invent. Angelo has generated about 110 pages of drawings and writings on prisoners’ inventions. He has illustrated everything from immersion heaters with electrical plugs made from razor blades or paper clips and popsicle sticks, to cooking methods for making bologna jerky with light fixtures.
Angelo’s drawings and writings run contrary to popular lore that claims prisoners only create things to escape, get high, or kill each other. Angelo’s drawings reveal another side of prison existence: the need to have those objects that allow the most basic human desires to be felt. It is not surprising that many inventions allow people a means to eat better and feel more comfortable.
For this exhibition, we will present enlarged type-set facsimiles of Angelo’s illustrations. We will also build copies of the objects that Angelo illustrated to make the drawings more tangible. Angelo suggested that we build a prison cell so that visitors could experience some of the psychological impact of the architecture he lives in. Using his precisely measured drawings, MASS MoCA’s fabricators, Richard Criddle and team, have constructed a full-scale facsimile of Angelo’s prison cell. The built cell will also allow us to present some of the inventions in their proper context.
We received help on this project from Jennifer Breckner, Sebastion Campos, Anthony Elms, Rob Kelly, Jeffrey McMillian, Audrey Peiper, Zena Sakowski, Joel Score, and Ryan Swanson.
Drawings of Prisoners’ Inventions
Recreated Prisoners’ Inventions
Recreated prison cell
Visitors