Conversations on the Commons: An Introduction
The coeditors of Conversations on the Commons introduce the core idea of Open Field as an experiment in collective creativity in a museum-operated space and lay out the guiding philosophy of the project.
Mark Allen
Founder and executive director of the Los Angeles–based collective Machine Project. He is currently an associate professor of art at Pomona College and a board member at the Andy Warhol Foundation.
Susannah Bielak
Artist and associate director of public and interpretive programs at the Walker Art Center. She was the project manager of Living Classroom and curates ongoing Open Field programming.
Courtney Dailey
Maker of objects, texts, events, and myriad collaborative and collective situations. She currently resides in San Francisco.
Steve Dietz
Serial platform creator. He is the founder, president, and artistic director of Northern Lights.mn, which produces the Twin Cities nuit blanche art festival Northern Spark, among other projects. He is the former curator of new media at the Walker Art Center, and the curator of Futurefarmers’ residency for Open Field 2010.
Ashley Duffalo
Public and community programs manager at the Walker Art Center. She was the project manager for Futurefarmers and Machine Project residencies and curates ongoing Open Field programming.
Stephen Duncombe
Academic and an activist. He is an associate professor at the Gallatin School of New York University and the author of the book Dream: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy (2007).
Amy Franceschini
Artist and educator based in San Francisco whose multimedia work encourages platforms of exchange and production. She founded the artist collective and design studio Futurefarmers in 1995 and cofounded Free Soil in 2004.
Futurefarmers
Founded in 1995, Future Farmers is a group of artists and designers collaboratively creating work to challenge and critique current social, political, and economic systems. The collective’s studio supports art projects, an artist-in-residency program, and research interests. Futurefarmers was co-commissioned by the Walker and Northern Lights.mn to conduct a residency on Open Field in August 2010.
Dylan Gauthier
Visual artist, curator, and media educator based in Brooklyn. He is a cofounder of Mare Liberum, an experimental boat-building, print-making, and publishing collective.
Sam Gould
Cofounder of Red76. His interests concern politics, sociality, culture, and education. He teaches in the Text and Image Arts department at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Lewis Hyde
Poet, essayist, translator, and cultural critic with a particular interest in the public life of the imagination. A MacArthur Fellow, Hyde is the author of numerous publications, including The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World (1983) and Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership (2010).
Jon Ippolito
Artist, curator, and advocate for network art and culture. He is associate professor of new media and co-director of the Still Water lab at the University of Maine.
Marc Bamuthi Joseph
Director of performing arts at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and an internationally presented performer. His distinctions include a National Poetry Slam championship and a United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship. In August 2011, he and collaborating partners presented a week-long residency at Open Field.