Alexander Provan 426 Park Place, Apt

Alexander Provan 426 Park Place, Apt. 3 || Brooklyn, New York 11238 [email protected] || 347.262.1293

Education Brown University, Class of 2005, B.A. in History.

Editorial Positions & Other Activities Editor, Triple Canopy, a magazine and editorial collective that published print and multimedia work and or- ganizes public programs, performances, and exhibitions (2007—present); canopycanopycanopy.com. Contributing editor, Bidoun, magazine of the arts and culture of the Middle East and its diaspora and organ- izer of public programs, educational initiatives, and exhibitions (2007—present); bidoun.com. Contributing writer, The Oxford American (2010—2011); oxfordamerican.org. Committee member, the Public School, a free educational platform for organizing classes, workshops, and lectures (2009—2010); nyc.thepublicschool.org. Literary Editor, Stop Smiling magazine (2007—2009); stopsmilingonline.com. Media coordinator and journalism associate, The Democracy Center (2006—2007): Research, writing, edit- ing and new-media development at this non-governmental organization based in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

Honors & Awards Recipient, Centro Cultural Montehermoso Kulturunea Art and Research Grant (Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain) for art-project production, 2011. Triple Canopy: finalist, National Magazine Award for General Excellence Online; American Society of Magazine Editors, 2009. Triple Canopy: recipient of grant from the New York State Council on the Arts, 2010—2011; grants from the New York Council for the Humanities, 2010—2011; grant from Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York, 2010—2011; Arts Writing Initiative grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, 2010—2013; grant from the Brown Foundation Inc., of Houston, 2009—2011; grant from the Buddy Taub Foundation, 2010; grant from the Orphiflamme Foundation, 2011; grant from the Office for Con- temporary Art Norway, 2011; grant from CEC ArtsLink, 2011; grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, 2012; grant from the Lambent Foundation, 2012. Bidoun: finalist, National Magazine Award for General Excellence, circulation under 100,000; American So- ciety of Magazine Editors, 2009. Winner, Utne Independent Press Award for Social/Cultural Coverage; finalist, General Excellence, 2009; finalist, Arts Coverage, 2010.

Exhibitions, Residencies, Artist Projects, Public Programs, Etc. “History Works,” B. Wurtz and Triple Canopy, Bureau, New York City, April 13–25, 2013. Panelist, Institutions After Art, Museum as Hub Conference, New Museum (New York), April 13, 2013. Visiting artist lecture, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, April 9, 2013. Corrected Slogans (A Publication in Four Acts): commissioned project with Triple Canopy as part of “Post- script: Writing After Conceptual Art,” Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, Colorado, October 12, 2012–February 3, 2013, the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, June 2013. Popular Legacy, Centro Cultural Montehermoso Kulturunea, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, July–September, 2012: solo exhibition of artist project and publications as part of the “Art and Research” program. Perfect Strangers, Sarajevo, June 21–July 6, 2012: a series of public programs at Collegium Artisticum, Kriterion, and the Bosnian Historical Museum, with Triple Canopy and Bosnian artists and writers, fol- lowed by a publication, supported by a grant from CEC ArtsLink. “House Arrest,” Franklin Street Works, Stamford, Connecticut, April 5–June 10, 2012: participation in exhibition and production of specially commissioned publication with Triple Canopy. “Millennium Magazines,” the Museum of Modern Art, New York, February 20–May 14, 2012: participation with Triple Canopy in this exhibition of experimental art and design magazines published since 2000. Global Art Forum_6: The Medium of the Media, Art Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, March 21–24, 2012: commisioned artist project in PowerPoint format, Universal Time (An Executive Summary); participation in panel discussion, (It’s Not) Net Art: Emancipate the Medium. Art in Circulation, Columbia College, Chicago, Illinois, March 15–18, 2012: teaching residency as part of the Interdisciplinary Arts Department’s visiting artists program, focusing on the emergence of the page as a site for artworks in the media magazines of the 1960s; the Internet as a public forum and its attendant politics of authorship and identity; and contemporary artistic practices engaged with alternative forms of circulation. Miscellaneous Uncatalogued Material, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, February–March 2012: series of public programs on the nature of publication and the history of digital technologies with Triple Can- opy, in conjunction with the exhibition “Print/Out”; production of related publication supported by MoMA. “Mystical Myanmar,” White Zinfandel, winter 2011: publication of an artist project in collaboration with the Myan- mar Tourism Promotion Board—part of an ongoing project called Promotional Materials, which involves work- ing with government agencies to create site-specific advertisements that utilize the commissioning magazine’s reader profile. The Bidoun Library, New Museum for Contemporary Art (Museum as Hub: The Bidoun Library Project), New York City, August 4–September 26, 2010; Serpentine Gallery, London, July 12–September 17, 2011; Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm, January 12–June 30, 2012: collaborated on the production of this peripatetic resource of books, periodicals and ephemera organized by Bidoun Projects—a “highly partial account of five decades of printed matter in, near, about, and around the Middle East.” Exhibitions in- cluded conversations, screenings, and presentaitons dealing with the diverse histories of printed matter related to the Middle East. “Invalid Format,” Miss Read, Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, November 26, 2012: discussion of the relationship between online and print publication and the genesis and form of Triple Canopy’s book, In- valid Format, with designer Project Projects. Factual Decoys, Artissima 18, Turin, Italy, November 4–6, 2011: curated and participated in a day-long series of discussions, presentations, and screenings with Triple Canopy at this international fair of contemporary art; acted as editorial director of a commissioned publication by the same name. “Addressing the Digital Humanities,” New York University, April 7, 2011: artist talk as part of a series of workshops presented by NYU’s Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, focusing on new conceptions and en- actments of the so-called general intellect that may provide a basis for social autonomy—as opposed to the so- cialized knowledge produced by the digital multitudes, which ends up supplying network capitalism with free labor and dematerialized rent.

Scale Models, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, Arizona, December 15–25, 2010: residency and organization of a series of public programs with Triple Canopy.

“Nous ne notons pas les fleurs, dit le géographe,” Bétonsalon, Paris, October 9, 2010–January 16, 2011: participation in group exhibition with Triple Canopy; publication of artist project in accompanying catalogue.

“Alternative Histories,” Exit Art, New York City, September 24–November 24, 2010: participation, with Triple Can- opy, in an exhibition tracking New York City alternative spaces and related projects since the 1960s. Sender, Carrier, Receiver, Program, Berlin, July 2010: residency and organization of and participation in a series of artist talks, performances, and panel discussions with Triple Canopy. Performance of “The Endpoint of All Gravity Is the Grave,” a parafictional lecture on monuments and memorials in Berlin, with Nine Eglantine Yamamoto-Masson and the International Necronautical Society.

The Page and the Screen, the Public School at Bétonsalon, Paris, June 29, 2010: facilitated this class examining print culture in the digital era and related, emergent publics and art practices.

The Weight of Air, Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, Paris, June 28, 2010: introduced and curated a screening of censored and marginalized radical film works from the 1960s and 70s.

“Internet as Material,” Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, Arizona, April 3, 2010: artist talk about Triple Canopy in relation to the history of artist books and new-media publishing. The Invisible Grammar, MoMA PS1, Long Island City, New York, October 4, 2009: performance as part of Triple Canopy’s tribute to “Time, Silence and Reduction, and Language” issue of Aspen magazine; in- terpretation of John Cage’s “Fontana Mix-Feed” and Susan Sontag’s “The Aesthetics of Silence.”

Selected Publications “Gestural Abstractions,” Artforum, March 2013: essay on digital interfaces, copyright law, and images.

“All for One,” Frieze, March 2013: essay on artist-run institutions and civil society. Editorial Director, Liberation Without End: The Invention of South Sudan (spring 2013): digital multimedia book for the iPad containing reporting and photographic essays on the independence of South Sudan and its aftermath, designed by Caleb Waldorf, supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. Editorial Director, Corrected Slogans (A Publication in Four Acts) (Triple Canopy and the Museum of Con- temporary Art Denver, January 2013, 244 pages): commissioned publication as part of the exhibition “Postscript: Writing After Conceptual Art,” October 12, 2012–February 3, 2013. “Overextensions of Ourselves,” A Prior, winter 2012: essay on the legacy of Marshall McLuhan and Norbert Weiner in contemporary art practice. “Always Out of Time,” Donald Ellis Gallery 12, October 2012: an essay on Native American art in the annual catalogue of Donald Ellis Gallery. Editorial Director, Invalid Format: An Anthology of Triple Canopy, Volume 2 (Sternberg Press, November 2012, 372 pages), designed by Project Projects. “Really Advanced Art,” The New York Observer, July 18, 2012: review of Claire Bishop’s Artificial Hells: Partici- patory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (2012). Editor, The Binder and the Server (Triple Canopy, March 2012, 70 pages), expanded paperback designed by Frank- lin Vandiver. Editorial Director, Volume Number 2: Miscellaneous Uncatalogued Material (Triple Canopy and the Museum of Modern Art, March 2012, eight-page broadsheet), designed by Tiffany Malakooti. (Exhibited as part of MoMA’s Millennium Magazines and acquired by its library.) “The Binder and the Server,” Art Journal, winter 2011, with Triple Canopy: essay on the image and value of labor in contemporary publishing practices. “Secondary Information,” Fillip, fall 2011: roundtable on art criticism with Julian Myers, Tara McDowell, Bruno Fazzolari, and Kristina Lee Podesva.

Editorial Director, Invalid Format: An Anthology of Triple Canopy, Volume 1 (Motto, December 2011, 336 pages), designed by Project Projects. (Acquired by the library of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.)

“The Work of Sport in the Age of International Acquisition,” Bidoun, summer 2011.

“The Nuance Brigade,” The Oxford American, March 2011: non-fiction chronicle.

“On Marina Abramovic’s Volcano Flambé,” The New York Observer, February 22, 2011. Review of Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants, Bookforum, December/January 2011. Editorial Director, Volume Number 1: Factual Decoys (Triple Canopy and Artissima 18, November 2011, sixteen- page broadsheet), designed by Alex Lesy. Contributor of an essay on representations of the DeLorean automo- bile entitled “Where We’re Going We Don’t Need Roads.” (Commissioned as part of Triple Canopy’s series of public programs at Artissima 18 in Turin, Italy, November 4–6, 2011.) “If You See Yourself, Kill Him,” a conversation with Johan Grimonprez and Tom McCarthy, in It’s a Poor Sort of Memory That Only Works Backwards: On the Work of Johan Grimonprez (Hatje Cantz & the Blaffer Art Museum, 2011). “Juicing the Global Jukebox,” Bidoun, winter 2010: an essay on the global pop product known as Pangea. “The Information Artist: On John D’Agata,” n+1, May 2010: an essay on the history of artifice in non-fiction writing. “The Golden Compass,” Bidoun, spring 2010: an essay on an Islamic sect’s oppositoin to global capitalism. “Rules for Invention,” text accompanying Hannah Whitaker’s exhibition “Victory Over the Sun!,” Kumu- kumu Gallery (New York City), February 2010. “Collage Bound: On Harry Smith,” Bookforum, February/March 2009. “End-of-Self Help,” The Nation, October 26, 2009. “The Vigilante,” GQ, October 2009. “An Alienation Artist: On Kafka and the Kafkaesque,” The Nation, February 16, 2009. “The Education of Lee Boyd Malvo,” Bidoun, Winter 2009. “The Idiocrats: In and Out of Online Culture,” The Nation, November 4, 2008. “Way of the Righteous: The Art of Roy Ferdinand,” Triple Canopy, September 2008. “Poll Position: John Zogby and the Future of Polling,” The Nation, August 27, 2008. “Menacing Earthworks,” The Believer, May 2008. “Rolling Out the Carpet for Homo Ludens,” The Believer, November/December 2007.

Bibliography Caroline Jones, “Systems Symptoms,” Artforum, September 2012. Orit Gat, “Screen. Image. Text.” Rhizome.org, May 16, 2012. Chris Wiley, “155 Freeman: Recognizing Commonalities While Remaining Independent,” Kaleidoscope, spring 2012. Antonia Carver, Art Dubai 2012 Catalogue (Art Dubai, March 2012, 244 pages). Holland Cotter, “Crisis and Critique,” The New York Times, February 16, 2012. Sasha Frere-Jones, “Slowing Down the Internet,” The New Yorker, January 17, 2012. Francesco Manacorda, Artissima 18: Annual Report (Artissima, November 2011, 191 pages). Jennifer Higgie, “Five of the Finest Art Magazines,” Financial Times, September 3, 2011. Melena Ryzik, “Arts Journal in Cyberspace Finds a Home on the Ground,” The New York Times, August 17, 2011. “Shutter to Think,” The New York Observer, July 12, 2011. Andrew Hultkrans, “No Hard Failings,” Artforum.com, April 6, 2011. Caitlin Jones, “The Function of the Studio (When the Studio Is a Laptop),” Art Lies, fall/winter 2010. Charles Petersen, “The Thing Itself,” n+1, October 2010. Wyatt Mason, “Bearing Down on the Banks,” Harper’s Magazine, September 5, 2008. Blake Wilson, “The Web’s Walled Gardens,” The New York Times, June 5, 2008