Conversation with contemporary artists
Chicago-based artist collective Temporary Services in conversation with Max Schumann, Associate Director at Printed Matter Inc., discuss their shared concerns about self-publishing and the democratic aspects of artist books. Moderated by MoMA Director Glenn D. Lowry. Temporary Services, currently comprising Brett Bloom, Salem Collo-Julin, and Marc Fischer, is an artist group based in Chicago and Copenhagen that has existed, with several changes in membership and structure, since 1998. Temporary Services, which produces exhibitions, events, projects, and publications, consider the distinction between art practice and other creative human endeavors irrelevant. They invent infrastructure or borrow it when necessary. The group is self-representing and has never had a commercial gallery affiliation. In 2008 Temporary Services created Half Letter Press, a publishing imprint and online store, to better circulate their own published work and to begin highlighting and distributing the work of their peers. Publications by the group include Prisoners' Inventions with Angelo (WhiteWalls, 2003), Group Work (Printed Matter, 2005), Public Phenomena (Half Letter Press, 2008) and the nationally distributed newspaper Art Work: A National Conversation About Art, Labor, and Economics (self-published, with numerous contributors, in 2009). Max Schumann has been working at Printed Matter, Inc. for the past 21 years; he has been Manager since 1993, took on the title of Associate Director in 2005, and has played a key role in the development of many of Printed Matter's programs and services over the past two decades. Schumann is also a working artist and has shown internationally, mostly in public venues and alternative art spaces. He is currently represented by Taxter & Spengemann in New York City.