AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

Dear Artist,
You could be in a show at the New Museum! … as a part of the MWF Video Club project, 1986 – 2001.
This is happening very soon.

July 17th, 2013 is the opening of an exhibition called “XFR STN” at the New Museum in NYC. This show is inspired by the problems of the MWF Video Club collection. The problem is – What to do with the hundreds of tapes the project accumulated over the years? The answer – digitize them in public!

As you may have gathered by prolonged silence, the MWF Video Club is no longer a functioning distribution project. We do have an archive, however, and at this point it is a significant holding of downtown New York video work from the end of the 20th century. The project is history.

During the course of this show – which is a working studio exhibition – a “Transfer Station” will be in operation, converting analog videotapes to digital media. Videos being transferred and videos already transferred will be continuously screened on the walls of the top floor of the museum.

This note is to inform you that your work in this collection may be screened incidentally as it is transferred as an ambient part of this “transfer station” installation. Please respond to lex [at] nadalex.net with a CC to awm13579 [at] gmail.com if you do not want that to happen, or with any queries you might have about the exhibition.

We are preparing a printed handout for the show, comprised of images like production stills, posters and the like, some essays, and recollections by people involved in MWF.
This means that all MWF Video Club & Colab-affilitated artists are invited to send in brief recollections of their video and film distribution experience during the MWF Video Club years (with MWF or not, as you like), the “digital turn” and the effect it has had on their moving image production, or another matter you consider relevant to this project. The closing date for submissions to the catalogue is June 5th, 2013 for texts and photos.

Send those to – .

Special events, panel discussions, screenings, and hanging-outs are being arranged throughout the run of the show, mostly on Thursday “free nights.” Please let us know if you want to be on the email list.
hope you are doing very well now,
and in the times to come,
all best wishes,
Alan W. Moore
for MWF Video Club and Collaborative Projects, Inc.
contact: awm13579 [at] gmail.com
for miscellaneous queries... but NOT with your photos and texts for this project, thanks
Send those to:

New Museum Presents “XFR STN” (Transfer Station), a project with the MWF Video Club,
Highlighting the Need for Media Migration Services to Preserve Creative Production
Exhibition/Lab to Provide Public with Transferring Service for Artist-Originated Content
TEL +1 212.219.1222
FAX +1 212.431.5326
newmuseum.org
Gabriel Einsohn, Communications Director
press@newmuseum.org
212.219.1222 x209

This July, the New Museum will dedicate its Fifth Floor gallery space to “XFR STN”
(Transfer Station), an open-door artist-centered media archiving project. “XFR STN” initially arose from the need to preserve the Monday/Wednesday/Friday Video Club distribution project. MWF was a coop “store” of the artists´ group Colab (Collaborative Projects, Inc.), directed by Alan Moore and Michael Carter from 1986–2000, which showed and sold artists’ and independent films and videos on VHS at consumer prices. The “XFR STN” at the New Museum will also address the wider need in the community of artists for access to media migration services as a means to preserve creative production. In addition to digitizing a portion of MWF Video Club’s collection (currently housed in a storage unit in Staten Island), the “XFR STN” will be used to preserve various materials from the New Museum’s own rich archive (including formats such as U-matic and audio tapes). In keeping with the original policies of the MWF Video Club, “XFR STN” will be open to any artist-originated content (analog or digital tape) whose format has become obsolete. The exhibition/lab will operate publically, informally exhibiting the material that is transferred, as well as rendering it available online through the platform of an online archive. The project will take place from July 17–September 8, 2013. Consistent with the dictum “distribution is preservation,” the project argues for circulation as a mode of conservation. “XFR STN” will serve as a collection and dissemination point for artist-produced content, as well as a hub for information about these past projects (including production materials and personal recollections). The project is both a pragmatic public service and an activity as metaphor: an opportunity to present aspects of a mediatic production process in continuous dynamic transformation. “XFR STN” is a project by Alan W. Moore with Taylor Moore, Alexis Bhagat, and the artists of Collaborative Projects, supported by the Solo Foundation. It is organized by Johanna Burton, Keith Haring Director and Curator of Education and Public Engagement, with Ben Fino-Radin, Digital Conservator, Rhizome; Tara Hart, Digital Archivist, New Museum; and Ethan Swan, Coordinator, Bowery Artists Tribute.
Support Generous endowment support is provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Skadden, Arps Education Programs Fund, and the William Randolph Hearst Endowed Fund for Education Programs at the New Museum. Education and public programs are made possible by a generous grant from Goldman Sachs Gives at the recommendation of David B. Heller & Hermine Riegerl Heller.

About the New Museum
The New Museum is the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to contemporary art. Founded in 1977, the New Museum is a center for exhibitions, information, and documentation about living artists from around the world. From its beginnings as a one-room office on Hudson Street to the inauguration of its first freestanding building on the Bowery designed by SANAA in 2007, the New Museum continues to be a place of experimentation and a hub of new art and new ideas.

from Franklin Furnace