In 2005, the great New York cultural arts organization Creative Time brought together 39 artists, educators and thinkers over a series of intimate dinner parties. Critical conversations were initiated, ideas were discussed and challenged, and all of it was recorded for posterity in Who Cares. The topics included how art functions as public practice, the globalization of creative economies, the dominance of restrictive notions of beauty, and the war culture in which we live today. The countercultural motivation of the project was best explained in the words of Doug Ashford: "I have always wanted to see how the ideas of artists can affect everyday life in this city and how they can ignite dialogue and participation." Participants include Ashford, Julie Ault, Hans Haacke, Emily Jacir, Lucy Lippard, Daniel Martinez, Marlene McCarty, Helen Molesworth, Anne Pasternak, Paul Pfeiffer, Michael Rakowitz, Martha Rosler, Ralph Rugoff, Amy Sillman, Allison Smith, Kiki Smith and David Levi Strauss.

Who Cares

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Creative Time Books

This cultural reader, edited by Creative Time curator Nato Thompson, gathers more than 100 artists, thinkers and activists to reflect on the historical roots and current manifestations of democracy in the United States. Taking as a springboard the exhibition Democracy in America: The National Campaign, presented by Creative Time in association with the Park Avenue Armory in September of 2008, this compendium includes writing and artwork by Laurie Anderson, Critical Art Ensemble, Liam Gillick, Jenny Holzer, Matt Keegan, Jon Kessler, Mark Tribe and many others; essays by Yates McKee, Doug Ashford of Group Material and curators Sofia Hernandez Chong Cuy and Nato Thompson; and interviews with Critical Art Ensemble's Steve Kurtz, Rene Gabri &amp; Ayreen Anastas and Trevor Plagen--as well as a series of town hall-style conversations with artists and activists from five cities across the country.

A Guide to Democracy in America

Liam Gillick

Yates McKee

Anne Pasternak

Gregory Sholette

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

As part of the 2009 Creative Time-presented project It Is What It Is, British artist Jeremy Deller (born 1966) encouraged the public to address the conflict in Iraq by inviting a revolving cast of participants to take up residence in New York's New Museum and discuss the war, later setting up at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago to record conversations and photograph each participant in the project.

Jeremy Deller: It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq

Other Media

In November 2006, the artist Paul Chan visited New Orleans, in particular those parts of the city devastated by Katrina. "Friends said the city now looks like the backdrop for a bleak science-fiction movie. (...) I realized it didn't look like a movie set, but the stage for a play I have seen many times." That play was Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, a play that has often been successfully staged in politically charged circumstances, such as a prison (San Quentin), and during a war (the Siege of Sarajevo, directed by Susan Sontag). In 2007, Chan staged four free outdoor performances of Godot in two New Orleans neighborhoods. This volume records Chan's project in essays and photographs, elucidating the terrible symmetry between Godot and post-Katrina New Orleans, and, as Chan writes, "the cruel and funny things people do while they wait: for help, for food, for hope."

Paul Chan: Waiting for Godot in New Orleans: A Field Guide

Thompson, Nato

Pasternak, Anne

Ya Salaam, Kalamu

McElroen, Christopher

Performing Arts

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Books by Creative Time Books