Alan W. Moore

Alan W. Moore (born 1951, Chicago) is an art historian and activist whose work addresses cultural economies and groups and the politics of collectivity. After a stint as an art critic, Moore made video art and installation art from the mid-1970s on. He runs the House Magic information project on self-organized, occupied social centers. He lives in Madrid.

Critical work

Alan W. Moore worked with the no wave artists’ group Colab and helped start the cultural center ABC No Rio[1] [2] in New York City after participating in Colab's The Real Estate Show (1980), one of the best-known artist squat actions in New York history.[3] He is co-author with Marc Miller of the book ABC No Rio Dinero: The Story of a Lower East Side Art Gallery New York: ABC No Rio with Collaborative Projects, 1985. Moore is also the author of Art Gangs: Protest and Counterculture in New York City (Autonomedia, 2011).

Along with Coleen Fitzgibbon, Moore created a film in 1978 (finished in 2009) of a no wave concert to benefit Colab called X Magazine Benefit that documents a performance of Boris Policeband, DNA and James Chance and the Contortions. Shot in black and white super-8 the film captures the gritty look and sound of the music scene during that era. In 2013 it was exhibited at Salon 94, an art gallery in New York City.[4]

Moore created MWF Club in 1986 as a distribution company for Potato Wolf and All Color News COLAB television programs that aired on public access TV. MWF Club expanded to include programs from various other groups such as Communications Update, Downtown TV, Glenn O'Brien's TV Party, New Cinema, Cinema of Transgression, Naked Eye Cinema and numerous artists and filmmakers.[5]

In the early 1990s he went back to school to study art history. He has written on artist collectives, cultural districts, and cultural economies.

He also has contributed chapters to Alternative Art NY (edited by Julie Ault) (University of Minnesota Press, 2002); Collectivism after Modernism (edited by Blake Stimson and Gregory Sholette) (University of Minnesota Press, 2007); Resistance: A Political History of the Lower East Side (edited by Clayton Patterson) (Seven Stories Press, 2006).

In 2013, Moore organized an exhibition workshop entitled "XFR STN" (Transfer Station) that was held at the New Museum. The opening night featured "Moving Image Artists' Distribution Then & Now" an ersatz assembly of participants in the MWF video club, introduced by Moore, Andrea Callard, Michael Carter, Nick Zedd and Coleen Fitzgibbon.[6]

Footnotes

  1. ↑ The Formation of ABC NO RIO
  2. ↑ The ABC No Rio Interviews: Alan Moore
  3. ↑ Alan Moore on theTimes Square Show
  4. ↑ COLEEN FITZGIBBON AND ALAN MOORE: X MAGAZINE BENEFIT COLAB 1978, 2009
  5. ↑ XFR STN at the New Museum
  6. ↑ XFR STN at the New Museum

References