Over the past several years ART2102 has acted as a platform for artists and curators in Los Angeles to realize their projects and exhibitions. From its space in Boyle Heights, ART2102 hosted a vibrant program known for its open cultural discourse and flexibility of ideas, and for engaging both local and international artists at various stages in their careers. Gradually, ART2102 moved away from this physical site as its programming and initiatives engaged with the large network of other artists-run spaces across Los Angeles and Southern California.

Dispatches and Directions, the final publication and project of ART2102, does not simply document this history, but also emulates the organization’s role as a platform and a network by spotlighting a number of the artists-run collaborations that are currently active in Los Angeles, and that will continue to thrive as ART2102 recedes. The publication not only provides a space in which these organizations can describe their work, but will also look at the legacy of ART2102 in light of the diverse range of programming emulated by these groups.

The publication, edited by Ronni Kimm and Jesse Aron Green, features contributions from various artist-run projects, including, Artist Curated Project, ESL, Genesis Project, Los Angeles, MATERIAL, Monte Vista, Slab, Telic Arts Exchange, Wildness. Also included are thoughts and anecdotes from Kate Fowle, Rika Hiro, Songmi Huff, Thomas Lawson, Paul McCarthy, Yoshua Okon, Renaud Proch and Erlea Maneros Zabala; an essay by Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer; a directory of over 60 artist-run and non profit organizations; and a specially commissioned “Star Chart” to help navigate the scene, by artist Jim Skuldt. The publication was designed in collaboration with Willem Henri Lucas.

Selected Publications & Print Ephemera from the LACE Archives 1978–2008.

From its founding in 1978, LACE — Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions — was a pivotal, artist-run organization committed to presenting the work of Southern California artists and highlighting bleeding-edge work. Both a treasure-trove and a grab-bag, this book reproduces a wealth of archival material from LACE’s first three decades. Flyers, postcards, memoirs, catalogs, posters, invitations: the editors have chosen an engrossing selection, including well-known names like Lita Albuquerque, Paul McCarthy, Red Grooms and Mike Kelley, and lesser-known but equally worthy artists. As Liz Kotz writes in her introduction, for a new generation of art historians, movements like Minimalism, Happenings and Conceptual Art are just names; the archive allows them to experience the history first-hand. And if you were around at the time, this book is as deeply satisfying as going through that box of stuff you have kept since college days.

Piero Golia founded in 2005, with his long-time friend Eric Wesley, the Mountain School of Arts, an educational structure that rapidly became a new spot on the cultural map of the city of Los Angeles.

This book, composed of discussions between artists, presents a kind of report on this unique “institution:” teaching methods, academic syllabus, and students’ selection are here explained with metaphors, compared with artistic interaction, and equaled to performances. Not unlike Golia’s work itself, the development of the school and its program follow a poetic of the gesture, of the instant, and of actions recalling Fluxus, Gino de Dominicis’ or Paul McCarthy’s works.

As a career’s start, Piero Golia successfully convinced a woman to have his portrait and the words “Piero My Idol” tattooed on her back (tattoo, 2001); soon after, following an invitation to the Tirana Biennale, he rowed across the Adriatic Sea in the opposite direction to migratory movement to reach Albania (”Going to Tirana,” 2000). And, on January 14, 2005, Golia vanished from New York City leaving no documented proof of his whereabouts; he traveled from a place to another, crossing borders without a trace, for resurfacing only on the morning of February 7 at the Royal Academy of Arts in Copenhagen for a unique lecture about his adventurous trip. He now lives in Los Angeles, a place that blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction, making it the perfect setting for his exploration into the process of myth-making and his ironic outlook on contemporary society.

Since the 1960s, Los Angeles has been a hub for groundbreaking art. This slim volume features work by Bas Jan Ader, Michael Asher, John Baldessari, Chris Burden, Douglas Huebler, Larry Johnson, Mike Kelley, William Leavitt, Paul McCarthy, Bruce Nauman, Maria Nordman, Raymond Pettibon, Stephen Prina, Allen Ruppersberg, Ed Ruscha and Christopher Williams.