CIVIC MATTERS

International Exchange and Residency Project

Organized by Brett Littman, Irene Tsatsos, Veronica Wiman, and Zandra Ahl / Craft in Dialogue.
15 – 29 January 2006

Civic Matters invites artists, designers, and crafts artists from Finland, Los Angeles, and Sweden to meet in Los Angeles, at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, for a cultural exchange program and to develop a site for the production of art, design, craft, and ideas. Together, participants will develop a range of projects ‹ from design prototypes to all manner of social interventions ‹ that address identified needs or concerns within various communities in Los Angeles and in Scandinavia. Civic Matters provides a meeting point for participants to explore the dynamics of artistic collaboration; it is a dialogue-in-process and raises questions about cultural histories and traditions around the production and dissemination of art, craft, and design.

Civic Matters can be said to have started in September 2005 with the launch of a blog (artleak.org/civicmatters) to encourage ongoing communication between the participants. The project is characterized by its organically developing process, which reflects the personal and collective wishes and understandings of Civic Matters participants. Civic Matters embodies three distinct steps or phases of process ‹ communication, cultural exchange and proposal development, and proposal realization/production. From its inception Civic Matters has taken place in dialogue among the participants in Los Angeles, Stockholm, Helsinki and Turku and artleak.org/civicmatters.

Participants

Bicycle Kitchen , Mike Blockstein , Jeff Cain , Fallen Fruit , Hjärta Smärta ,
IC-98 , Journal of Aesthetics and Protest , Otto Karvonen ,
LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design , Muungano ,
Outpost for Contemporary Art , r a k e t a , ROR , Sissi Westerberg, Sundown Salon

Project support for Civic Matters comes from The American Scandinavian Foundation, Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation, FRAME, Craft In Dialogue/ IASPIS, SAS Airlines, Salvation Army, Steelcase, and Knoll Textiles.

Support for Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions and its programs comes from Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, California Community Foundation, City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Hollywood Chamber of Commerce Community Foundation, JPMorgan Chase Foundation, LLWW Foundation, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, Morris Family Foundation, and the members of Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions.