Franklin Furnace

On Wednesday,  I went to a fascinating research seminar at DMU's IOCT, given by Toni Sant who lectures at the University of Hull. Toni was talking about a New-York based avant-garde institution called 'Franklin Furnace', on which his book Franklin Furnace and the Spirit of the Avant-Garde: A History of the Future focuses. I'd never heard of Franklin Furnace before so I was utterly intrigued.

Founded in 1976 by Martha Wilson and originally based at 112 Franklin Street, New York, the avant-garde collective was started to collect and archive ephemeral art (which itself seems somewhat paradoxical). Initially, they produced and showcased Artists' Books, which took many forms from the limited paper editions of Ida Appledroog to the more conceptually challenging (in terms of the notion of Artist's Books) work of Timm Ulrichs who in 1986 produced an artists' book called 'Concrete Poetry' which was, in fact, a block of concrete produced in an edition of 50.

For me, what was really interesting about Franklin Furnace's interest in Artists' Books was the way in which 'the page as alternate space' was not confined to a particular medium. It could be in book form or concrete or later what Franklin Furnace conceptualised as electronic artists' books, featuring works such as Jenny Holzer's online project 'Please Change Beliefs' which invites participants to alter the cultural idioms available on the online site.

I also liked the political radicalism of Franklin Furnace, demonstrated nicely by the project 'Bikes Against Bush', an interactive Graffiti project that printed text messages sent by web users directly onto the Manhattan streets.

Franklin Furnace is still active today, but has now moved to the web - http://www.franklinfurnace.org/ - where you can find its art archive.