The LACE archive represents a crucial site of cultural history for southern California. The past three decades have featured diverse and diffuse practices and the LACE archival stores are one of the primary sources of information of this important work. LACE had been using the benchmark of this three-decade mark to raise the archive’s visibility and offer unprecedented creative and scholarly access.
Designer Mark Owens developed the overall conceptual framework of Living the Archives in collaboration with Executive Director Carol Stakenas and Independent Curator Lisa Carlson. Inspired by the legacy of Fluxboxes from the 1960’s to more recent creative curatorial print projects such as North Drive Press, LACE’s Living The Archives is a necessary and vital extension of our project space, not a comprehensive timeline and catalogue.
Living The Archives features republishing of select crucial texts which continue to be in demand: such as excerpts from TV Generations, curated by John Baldessari and Bruce Yonemoto (1986); Against Nature: A Group Show of Work by Homosexual Men, curated by Dennis Cooper and Richard Hawkins (1988); and Democracy When
! Activist Strategizing in Los Angeles, curated by Tone O. Nielsen (2002). Scholars Jane McFaddden (Associate Chair of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Director of Graduate Studies, Criticism and Theory at Art Center College of Design) and Glenn R. Phillips (Curator in the Department of Contemporary Programs and Research at the Getty Research Institute) wrote the forward for the reprint materials.
The limited box edition also includes original LACE ephemera, and four portfolio projects by Liz Young, Harry Gamboa Jr., Suzanne Lacy w/ Barbara T. Smith, Felis Stella, and Tenechia Terrell as well as Stephanie Taylor w/ Les Figues Press. As a whole, the group will represent the spectrum of media that LACE continues to champion, including visual art, performance art, and video, as well as public practices.
-LACE Website, 2015
