Panel Discussion on Collaborative Art & Design

Come Together: The Rise of Cooperative Art and Design
a discussion with Francesco Spampinato (author) and collectives The Yes Men, DIS, and Improv Everywhere

FREE - South Court Auditorium, doors open at 5:30 p.m.

The past twenty years have seen a new generation of artists working together in small groups and large collectives to explore new avenues of art, design, performance, and activism.

Join Francesco Spampinato, author of Come Together: The Rise of Cooperative Art and Design, and creative groups featured in his book for a lively discussion on motivations, logistics, and objectives that drive an artist to give up his ego and embrace anonymous and shared endeavors. What emerges is a common desire to transform the viewer into producer, making him aware of his potential as an agent of change. Borrowing strategies and symbols from mass media, the global market, and the entertainment industry, these collectives unravel and overthrow the power structures that lie behind political and social propaganda, and the construction of cultural products.

In Come Together, author and visual artist Francesco Spampinato assembles an international roster of forty of today’s most exciting and influential collectives, from design studios like Project Projects and political performance artists The Yes Men to flash mob provocateurs Improv Everywhere and the multimedia artists Assume Vivid Astro Focus. Alongside visual portfolios of their best work are in-depth interviews addressing each group’s unique motivations, processes, and objectives. What emerges is a shared desire to turn viewers into producers and to use commercial mass-media strategies to challenge prevailing social, political, and cultural power structures. Come Together is an essential resource and inspiration for students, art lovers, and anyone interested in the cutting edge of visual culture.

Copies of the book are available for purchase and signing at the end of the event.

Francesco Spampinato is a contemporary art and visual culture historian, writer, and artist. He teaches at Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, and has taught at Parsons School of Design, The New School, New York, and NABA, Milan. His writing has appeared in Apartamento, DAMn°, Flash Art, Kaleidoscope, L'Uomo Vogue, and Waxpoetics among others. He lives and works in New York.