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  Edited by Sarah Schultz and Sarah Peters

  Contributions by Susy Bielak, Steve Dietz, Stephen Duncombe, Futurefarmers (Amy Franceschini, Michael Swaine), Lewis Hyde, Jon Ippolito, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Sarah Peters, Rick Prelinger, Machine Project (Mark Allen), Red76 (Courtney Dailey, Dylan Gauthier, Sam Gould, Gabriel Mindel Saloman, Mike Wolf), Sarah Schultz, Scott Stulen, Works Progress (Colin Kloecker, Shanai Matteson)

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  Buy the Book

  Open Field: Conversations on the Commons is available in book form via Walker Postscript, the Walker Art Center’s print-on-demand publishing imprint, which presents short and focused texts to delve more deeply, or broadly, into the rich concepts that animate the institution’s diverse artistic programs.

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Contributor Biographies

• 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.

• Colin Kloecker

  Artist and designer working at the intersection of public engagement and civic design. With a background in architecture, he has created numerous public art projects as co-director of the design studio Works Progress.

  Machine Project

  Loose confederacy of artist/performer collaborators based in Los Angeles’ Echo Park neighborhood. Founded by Mark Allen, the group’s work investigates art, science, music, literature, food, and more. In July 2011, Machine Project and the Walker presented Summer Jubilee, a two-week residency consisting of more than eighteen unique projects at Open Field.

  Shanai Matteson

  Artist, writer, and cultural producer, has led myriad collaborative, cross-disciplinary projects. As co-director of the studio Works Progress, she draws on her interest in science and systems to produce public art and design programs at the intersection of disciplines.

  Sarah Peters

  Co-creater of Open Field during her tenure as the associate director of public and interpretive programs at the Walker Art Center. She is currently an independent writer, educator, and arts programmer.

  Rick Prelinger

  Archivist, writer, and filmmaker keenly interested in the commons. He is the founder of the Prelinger Archives, a collection of 60,000 advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur films, which was acquired by the Library of Congress in 2002.

  Red76

  Nationwide network of artists and activists that since 2000 has conducted projects in physical space, in print, and online that focus on the ways knowledge is produced and the forms it takes. Their 2010 Open Field residency was organized by Courtney Dailey, Dylan Gauthier, Sam Gould, Gabriel Mindel Saloman, and Mike Wolf.

  Gabriel Mindel Saloman

  Vancouver-based artist, writer, and musician. His artistic, curatorial, and musical projects include Diadem, the STAG, Collective Jyrk, the Lower Mainland Painting Co., and Yellow Swans.

  Sarah Schultz

  Director of education and curator of public practice at the Walker Art Center. In addition to co-creating Open Field, she has led the Walker’s efforts to engage diverse communities with contemporary artists and art forms for more than a decade.

  Scott Stulen

  Co-creator of Open Field and founder of the Drawing Club. A practicing artist, he is the project manager of mnartists.org, an online resource for more than 18,000 Minnesota artists.

  Michael Swaine

  Artist and educator dedicated to working in the community through socially engaged art practice. He is a senior lecturer at the California College of the Arts and an analog designer with Futurefarmers.

  Mike Wolf

  “A collaborative free radical contaminating primarily the tissues of the Midwestern United States through experiential research, writing in the first person, drawing, taking walks, and talking about it all.” The Illinois-based artist is a member of the collective Red76.

  Works Progress

  Artist-led public art and design studio based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The group’s collaborative projects are known for providing new platforms for public engagement across creative and cultural boundaries.