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Thesis Abstract
Alternative to the Alternative:
The changing face of San Francisco’s independent art spaces.
Perched on the edge of the continent, San Francisco has long been home to more alternative art spaces per capita than any other American city. Over time, these exceptionally generative sites have continually adapted to their shifting terrain. Today, in the face of catastrophically diminished funding, these fiercely independent organizations are increasingly appropriating commercial practices in order to survive.
Though the current shift toward commercial strategies is affecting the entire alternative arts sphere, it is most dramatically manifesting in newer spaces. Unlike older alternative spaces, which have long utilized marginal commercial activities like art auctions and ticket sales, these new spaces are integrating commercial practices centrally into their programming. These activities, whether revenue-raising exhibitions, products, events, or publications, can seem identical to those of commercial galleries, but often critically engage the very market forces they exploit. An example of this phenomenon is Hallway Bathroom Gallery’s online exhibition, Blank Art Objects, that sells works on paper anonymously for $100 a piece. Only after purchasing a work does the buyer discover the identity of the artist—casting the fetishization of art celebrity into sharp relief.
While today’s independent art spaces have found ways to use the market to support their experimental programming, such commercial engagement carries with it worrisome potentials as well as broader implications. Beyond the more immediate hazards of market commoditization, the commercial activities of today’s upstart art spaces call into question the historical financial distinction between commercial and alternative arts activity. This destabilization of once clear categories suggests that the art landscape needs to be remapped. Such a redefinition should not aim to cleanly divide spaces based on a single criteria, be it tax status, organizational structure, or any specific practice. Instead, it must compare organizations’ cumulative affect based on whether they use capital to expand art or art to expand capital. Re-understanding the terrain in this way will highlight spaces that expand artistic discourse and merit support.
Contact
zacharyscholz.com
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