Artist Run Space Syndicate Sydney
A syndicate of artist run spaces in Sydney coming together for mutual support and good times to promote and lobby government and cranky neighborhoods for changes to legislation and other obstacles that effect the survival of our sector.
To share resources
To share knowledge
To cross promote
To give support
To create change
To transform our city
We meet once a month at any one of our rotating member spaces and post all information on our co-managed website www.combined-arts.com
Small Press Publications Archive and Distro-Exchange
Zine culture and small publications are big in Sydney. But there are very few artist led libraries or collections dedicated to the acquisition of one off and small run publications that document the ephemeral side of artist run ventures and events. We consider this to be an important long term project, as many artist run spaces plot the future creative endeavours of the city.
We also created the Librarium because we love words, we crave ideas, and of course we especially love books, and we desire an intervention into the fast paced digital dystopia that our global lives sometimes feel like. We want to slow down, and we think other people do too. We also want to expand the horizon of small press publications and create a bigger audience for this work.
Bill + George have been involved in the zine scene for a long time, since the ‘Biggest Zine and Small publications festival in the Asia Pacific’ in 2006 as part of Gang Festival. Our permanent library emerged as one of the outcomes from our artSlab program (Nov 2007 - October 2008).
Since 2008 we have acquired two massive bookcases and have been slowly building our library and wondering how we can consolidate this collection and extend this knowledge into the community. Part of this is our relationship with the folk at the Chicago Underground Library who we hope to collaborate with in sharing open source software to help catalogue our collection. If you are interested in being part of our Sunday cataloguing socials you can email us here. info@billandgeorge.org or check our website: www.thelibrarium.org
A rouge housing project
Yurt Empire is an attempt to ART-ifically graft and insert an artist’s colony and economy onto an apparent ‘wasteland’. It is also a live art work containing a growing number of sustainable and unsustainable situations; A durational performance based installation about housing and living, about the cultural commons, about urban wastelands and the embroidery of decay; An embedded platform for ephemeral conversations as well as a performative protest about rising housing costs in Sydney.
For 3 months in 2012 we intend to build 12 yurts on a vacant site in the City of Sydney and enact a series of community and cultural interventions. The site we have prioritised is North Eveleigh, adjacent to the existing CarriageWorks contemporary art centre. But it could be reimagine anywhere. The process of building the Yurts will be directed by 12 key artists who will each work in collaboration with one another to complete the set of 12 Yurts on site. They will then live in the Yurts for a period of 8-10 weeks. During this time any number of creative engagements and iterations may happen on the site ranging from a performative storytelling project to community workshops and collaborative investigations about site and for site. www.yurtempire.blogspot.com
