Franklin Furnace Archive

This is Philippa Chan, an intern at Franklin Furnace. I have been interning at the Furnace since the end of July of this year. After the recent completion of my Bachelors of Art History and Theory, I decided it would be beneficial for me explore the art industry before going on to complete my honours and (finally) graduate. My life in New York is immensely different to my life back in Sydney. It has taken some time for this city to feel “like home” but I can now say with confidence that it definitely does. I came to New York from Sydney, Australia because I felt that this city could offer me the best in contemporary art and culture. I feel privileged to have stumbled across the Franklin Furnace internship programme because I believe it has been able to offer me an uncensored view of the art industry. Franklin Furnace has been extremely inclusive of me and all the other interns that I have worked with. I feel that we get real responsibilities and projects, rather than just the menial ta...

Hi, this is Marco, one of the two new Italian interns of Franklin Furnace. I’m so happy to be here, working for such a great association in the city that never sleeps. I am working here for four weeks and my past habits in Italy seem so far away. Italy: one of the most beautiful countries on the earth, with an amazing history especially in the art’s field. Millions of people come every year from all over the world to see Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Raffaello, Giotto, Tiziano (the list is so long!). Despite that, in my country there aren’t in reality any public grants for avant-garde artists. Would Michelangelo’s life have been the same without fundings? This is such a shameful inconsistency! For me it would be a dream to recreate one day an association like Franklin Furnace in Italy. Yes, I can say that this my long term goal. So, here I am in New York City: I’m trying to learn as much as I can about this reality. I’ve had several times the opportunity to explore the archive. Let me say:...

This is Andrea, one of the Franklin Furnace interns. I just recently returned from Florence, Italy where I was studying painting conservation and jewelry design. Although I miss Europe and now have mixed feelings about America it feels good to be back at the Franklin Furnace office and to be able to explore the archives. Martha Wilson suggested I find something from the first ten years of Franklin Furnace that interests me and write about it. When scrolling through the files I saw a lot of interesting performance, artist books, installation and mail art projects. There were a few that I recognized and I was excited to realize that Franklin Furnace was a part of them. However, one specific project called out to me. Guillaume Bijl's "The Art- Liquidation Project" of April 14, 1982 was part of a series of installations that transformed the art galleries into spaces for pragmatic or business purposes. These spaces were turned into places such as a travel agency, vocational gu...

Martha Wilson wrote this Introduction for Franklin Furnace's The Flue magazine of Winter 1983 in a Special Issue on Artists' Books, Archives and Collections. I am writing this introduction to acquaint you with the reasons I founded Franklin Furnace in 1976. First, let me digress a bit to tell you I had been practicing my artwork in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, which took the forms of publications, video, performance, film, and written articles. My boyfriend and I received the Art & Project bulletins from Amsterdam and bought Gilbert & George books, Larry Weiner's Statements, and Something Else Press works as well as works by other Conceptualists such as Dan Graham, Doug Huebler, and Robert Barry, in order to understand what was happening in contemporary art from our perch in the Far North. When I moved to New York in 1974, I met many other artists such as Marcia Resnick, Athena Tacha, Jenny Snider, Conrad Gleber, Gail Rubini, Tim Burns, Leslie Schiff, artists who l...

I was first introduced to an artist book only very recently, when I did a small presentation on Ed Ruscha’s Every Building on the Sunset Strip for an art class. The artist book is a form that, just as it was when Martha Wilson founded Franklin Furnace in 1976, is still somewhat ignored, and certainly misunderstood. One reason for this is the artist book’s incompatibility with the conventions of art exhibition. On the one hand, an artist book needs to be handled in order to be fully appreciated and, on the other hand, the more famous books (such as Ed Ruscha’s) are now valued at thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars. In preparing for my presentation on Every Building on the Sunset Strip, I was exhilarated to learn that my college library had a copy of the book and that I thus had an opportunity to experience it first hand. I sat in a corner of the library, with Ed Ruscha’s book on the table in front of me, savoring both the fact that I was holding an important piece of art...

Through email correspondence with Franklin Furnace, Marina Abramovic shared her thoughts on Gotovac and his significance as an artist and filmmaker: "Hearing of Tomislav's passing made me very sad. It's a great loss for the international art community, and I feel it much more as I always saw him as guide, a huge inspiration that pushed me to experiment in my own research and art work. He was a great artist, an innovative filmmaker and a charismatic performer, way ahead of his time. I learned so much from his courage and physicality, from his restless need to search for a new language and expression. My own work would not be the same without the path started by Tomislav. Losing him we truly lost a master of our time. My condolences and thoughts go to his family and friends in this difficult moment."

Senior Archivist at Franklin Furnace Michael Katchen remembers a dinner party in his home at which Gotovac performed I Am My Own Dog , during his residency with Franklin Furnace in 1994: “The staff of Franklin Furnace would socialize all the time with Tomislav. So I wanted to make a dinner for him. [...] It could have been his birthday, because there are two little cakes in one of the pictures [I took]. So we were all eating, we knew he wanted to do this performance and I had said okay. He prearranged everything while I was cooking dinner all day. It was a really well planned out performance. Obviously it wasn’t exactly choreographed; he improvised a lot. He got up at the dinner table and took off his clothes and just started performing. He stood up and crawled around on all fours, walking himself [with a dog leash]. That’s what the title was: I Am My Own Dog . A lot is up to interpretation: [the concept of] control over yourself, this whole thing about Tito, and Tito’s control over t...

The President of the Croatian Association of Artists wrote a short piece that pays tribute to Tomislav Gotovac's work, and his significance to Croatian art and film. Take a look !

The poster for Gotovac's Point Blank exhibit show photographs of his performances in 1994. On the back, the artist's words reveal a reverence for narrative film and an insightful perspective on his work and life as an artist and filmmaker. Tomislav Gotovac, artist and filmmaker, died at 63 on June 25, 2010. In January of 1994, he presented an installation and performance work, Point Blank , at Franklin Furnace as part of a residency in New York funded by ArtsLink. During his time in New York, he made a vivid impression on Franklin Furnace staff and his audience. Though little recognized outside his native Croatia, Gotovac was an important performance artist and filmmaker, particularly significant to Eastern Europe’s avant-garde. He was best known for his politically charged work, much of which addressed his experience of oppression in Tito’s Communist Yugoslavia. In 1996 he worked on his only collaboration, with Aleksandar Battista Ilic and Ivana Keser, on a performance piece...

Brent Burket, who attended Dread Scott's "Money to Burn" performance on Wall Street two weeks ago , wrote a very articulate post (with some great photographs) on his blog Heart as Arena. Take a look, and thanks to Brent for letting us share this! http://heartasarena.blogspot.com/2010/06/love-that-burns.html

Dread Scott’s performance went really well! It was the summer solstice, longest day of the year, no rain in sight. Dread came to Franklin Furnace at 10:45 to meet with us and with his crew. I got a call from NYSCA asking if I could clarify the funding credit on the flyer; they were anxious because it looked like Stimulus funding was going directly to Dread Scott. I said it was too late to reprint the flyer, but that I would answer press inquiries with the information that Stimulus funding was awarded to FF in support of the Program Coordinator’s salary. Then we left for Wall Street. Dread emerged from the subway station, walked along Wall Street singing “Money to Burn, Money to Burn” like Oscar Brown Jr.’s “Rags and Old Iron” song. He had $250 pinned to the front of a black cotton shirt. A videographer was close upon him, and his wife Jenny had a bucket of sand and another bucket of water. Andrea, a FF student intern and I started handing out flyers as Dread rounded the corne...

June 22, 2010 is a day to go down in history. On this seemingly normal Tuesday traders, workers, and tourist's on wall street didn't know what was in store for them. Franklin Furnace funded this particular street performance and as an intern I had the wonderful opportunity to attend, hand out the artist cards and await the press. We started at the Franklin Furnace office and I met Dread and the crew. Martha Wilson and I left first and got to Wall Street where we waited on the steps of the Federal Hall for Dread to emerge from the subway station.The whole performance was planned perfectly. Everyone involved met at the steps to wait for Dread. To the general public we were only a group of people on Wall Street with no intentions of "disorderly conduct". Shortly before Dread arrived, a fire truck had stopped on the corner. I thought it may have been an omen, but it was just an opportunity for tourists to take pictures. Then came Dread wearing a shirt with saf...

Welcome to Franklin Furnace's new blog. Note that our site is www.blogspot.com/franklinfurnacearchive and not www.blogspot.com/franklinfurnace. That blog was a test blog and this blog is the legitimate one. Keep coming back for updates and goingson. If you are an artist with a blogspot, make sure to follow us to keep in tune with what we do at Franklin Furnace and how we can help you!