A Fast History of Franklin Furnace
It all started in 1976, when I saw that major institutions were not accommodating works of art being published by artists, and decided to gather, exhibit, and sell, preserve and proselytize on behalf of the form that came to be known as "artists' books." I opened Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. in my living loft (which happened to be a storefront) on April 3rd, 1976. Soon after, Printed Matter, Inc. came into being to publish and distribute artists' books; we reapportioned the pie, Franklin Furnace taking the not-for-profit activities of collecting, cataloging, preserving, exhibiting and related activities like artists' readings, the activity that evolved in turn into the performance art program. Printed Matter published and sold artists' books as a for-profit corporation, (and later sought and received not-for-profit status too).
Franklin Furnace's presentation of temporary installation work and what came to be known as performance art started right from the getgo. The artists who were publishing artists' books were the same ones who considered the text to be a visual art medium (Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger come to mind). Martine Aballea, whose book was in Franklin Furnace's collection was invited to read in our storefront in June 1976. When she showed up in costume, with her own lamp and stool, the performance art program was born. Although I called it Artists Readings in the beginning, every artist chose to manipulate the performance elements of text, image and time, from a very simple 1977 performance by Robert Wilson of the word "there" repeated 144 times with a chair on stage, to the more messy 1983 performance of Karen Finley taking a bath in a suitcase and making love to a chair with Wesson oil. Franklin Furnace's niche became the bottom of the food chain, premiering artists in New York who later emerged as artworld stars: Ida Applebroog, Eric Bogosian, David Cale, Willie Cole, Guillermo Gomez-Peņa, Ann Hamilton, Theodora Skipitares, Michael Smith, Annie Sprinkle, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Paul Zaloom, and hundreds of others.
08. Jenny Holzer's "Truisms" exhibited in Franklin Furnace's storefront window in 1978. Someone threw a bolt through the phrase, "Boredom makes you do crazy things." Artist Mike Glier, Jenny Holzer's husband, was photographed by Jacki Apple09. Claes Oldenburg's "Ray Gun Poems" was published in 1960 on a stencil machine owned by Judson Memorial Church. When I asked him how many were produced, he replied, "Fatigue was a factor." Photo by Marty Heitner
10. "Russian Samizdat Art" was curated by artists Rimma and Valery Gerlovin. Photo by Marty Heitner
11. Robert Wilson performing in September, 1977. Photo by Jacki Apple
12. Leslie Labowitz performing "Sprout Time," March 20, 1981, as part of "We'll Make Up a Title When We Meet," aka LA-London Lab, a gathering of feminist performance artists from Los Angeles (selected by Suzane Lacy) and London (selected by Susan Hiller). Photo by Marty Heitner