A Brief Introduction to Temporary Services

From article in "Art on Paper" - Sept/Oct 07

"When it snows in downtown Chicago, many residents set to work on their public art. They exit their homes and apartments, grab snow shovels, and dig their cars out, after which they gather materials from the surrounding area (a safety cone, a broom, a plastic deck chair, a two-by-four, an old mattress) and build a barricade to reserve their parking spot.

Innocuous on the surface, these place-holding structures become fascinating anthropological specimens when seen side by side in photographs. An art historian with an interest in the vernacular who is unaware that they weren’t made by artists might be tempted to describe them as assisted readymades, found-object sculptures, or assemblages. The Chicago-based Temporary Services refers to them as “public phenomena,” and in more ways than one these temporary sculptures are an appropriate metaphor for Temporary Services themselves, a group that I think has become the inspirational core for what might be the most important underground movement in American art in the last decade. Their exhibitions, public interventions, events, and publications—which reflect an overarching interest in people’s efforts to transform their environments by manipulating the raw material of their existence—provide a cultural model that escapes the trappings of gallery-driven, taste-based aesthetics."


http://www.artonpaper.com/bi/v12n01/feature-temporary-services.php