An Act of Showing Rethinking Artist-Run Initiatives Through Place

A starting point and inspiration for the exhibition/symposium was Chris Kraus¿s short text ¿Kelly Lake Store and Other Stories,¿ a text that speaks to the dilemmas of globalization and the growing inequality that the current form of globalized capital is creating. For Kraus, as for philosopher Jeff Malpas, "place" and where you are in the world, matter. In the context of our constant connection through the internet, it can seem as if actual, physical and material place has diminished in importance. The proposition of the exhibition and this publication is, on the contrary, that physical, material place is still of the greatest importance. It still matters, even if the ways that it matters are contested and varied. The project recognized that one of the strengths of artist-run initiatives is their appearance and presence in a specific location/place. This focus on location/place recognized the importance of local production and local knowledge and by inviting a range of ARIs from across Australia and the Asia Pacific the exhibition performed a program of `trans-locality¿ that is, ¿the local in relation to local rather than local to global.¿ In writing of the significance of the `trans-local¿ curator Nina Möntmann concludes that it is small artist-run spaces and initiatives that hold out the possibility for an alternative to the dominant and ubiquitous neoliberal economies which fuel the international and globalized `branded and franchised¿ art institutions that run mainly for profit. Concurring with Möntmann¿s critique of our current situation, the project, both the exhibition and symposium invited a range of ARIs to engage in a material conversation on the importance of place, for them, through sending us artworks. These material objects of expression became testament to the connections and networks that were made in the course of the project.