Ad Hoc Vox

[uds-billboard name=”adhocvox”]

Ad Hoc Vox

Contact/Email: info@adhocvox.org
Website: www.adhocvox.org

How is the project operated?
We are artist-run and nonprofit.

How long has it been in existence?
We had our first event in July of 2007.

What was your motivation?
In 2007 we were a couple of years out of school and both beginning to teach, but we had questions that weren’t being answered by our involvement with the academy in either capacity and wanted to try and answer those questions outside of its restrictions.  It seemed the easiest way to do so was to organize conversations around a given topic and invite people to speak on that topic we thought would be interesting, so we began to organize panels at galleries.

Number of organizers/responsible persons of the project.
Colleen Asper and Jennifer Dudley.  We take on collaborators for many of our events and we have had consistent helpers over the years, but no other organizers.

How are programs funded?
We don’t pay our participants and have been extremely lucky to have so many amazing people gift their time to us over the years.  Since we don’t have a space our only overhead is renting chairs and audio equipment for events and the maintenance of our website.  We ask the spaces we work with to cover rental expenses and usually end up paying the rest out of pocket.

Who is responsible for the programming?
Colleen Asper and Jennifer Dudley, additionally on several panels we have had guest moderators who have made decisions about panels and the one film screening we have done thus far had a guest curator.

Number and average duration of exhibitions/events per year.
This varies considerably, but 4 is average.

What kind of events are usually organized?
Most of the events we have done have been panel discussions, but we have also curated a show, an issue of an online publication, and organized performances, readings, and film screenings.

How is your programming determined?
Most events respond to the work currently installed in each space that hosts us, or some aspect of the space itself, with events that range from panel discussions to performance series and film screenings.  Rather than making the works present our direct subject, however, the dialogue we initiate centers around a topical or structural consideration of the work, privileging an expanded idea of what constitutes a conversation about art.  This is grounded in the conviction that art is an inherently interdisciplinary practice that benefits and is benefited by dialogue with other fields; consequently we place no restrictions on the range of subjects we address.  It also keeps us from serving as a promotional wing of the galleries we work with.  We have included not only artists, art historians, critics, curators, and other members of the art community in our events, but also anthropologists, architects, writers, economists, philosophers, and wide variety of thinkers and producers.

Do you accept proposals/submissions?
Not formally, but several of our guest moderators have approached us over the years.

What is your artistic/curatorial approach?
Ad Hoc Vox is an artist initiated dialogue that always approaches our diverse set of concerns from the perspective of artistic production.  Our name loosely translates to a voice for the situation at hand and thus our approach is to follow whatever feels urgent and unexplored to us at a given moment.

What’s working? What’s not working?
The openness of Ad Hoc Vox allows for a flexibility that has consistently allowed the project to work in whatever way we need it to.  When difficulties arise, they can usually be traced to the difficulty of collaboration in general rather than anything specific to how Ad Hoc Vox is structured.

What kind of role do you hope to play in your local art scene or community?
Since we are both based in New York most of our events have been there, but we have done events elsewhere, so our community is always shifting.  One role we hope to play is to create conversations outside of any fixed institution.

What idea are you most excited about for the future?
Continuing to reinvent what Ad Hoc Vox is.

Images courtesy of Ad Hoc Vox