Not An Alternative (est. 2004) is a collective and non-profit organization that works at the intersection of art, activism and theory. It has a mission to affect popular understandings of events, symbols, institutions, and history. Through engaged critical research and design, the group curates and produces interventions on material and immaterial space, bringing together tools from art, architecture, exhibition design, and political organizing.
All these efforts are enacted with an eye towards social change and strategies for creative political intervention that involve creating points of entry for arts audiences and everyday citizens alike–not through a typical head-on (or head-butt) approach, but through the occupation and redeployment of popular vernacular, semiotics, and memes.
Not An Alternative’s performances, exhibitions, and presentations have been featured within art institutions such as Guggenheim (NY), PS1/MOMA (NY), Tate Modern (London), Victoria & Albert Museum (London), MOCAD (Detroit), and Museo del Arte Moderno (Mexico City), and in the public sphere, where they collaborate with community groups and activist mobilizations.
For more than a decade Not An Alternative hosted free lectures, screenings, panel discussions, workshops and artist presentations at their former studio in Brooklyn, NY. The space consisted of a production workshop, filming studio, video editing suite, and a coworking space for artists, activists, scholars, and cultural producers. The group’s members are now distributed across the U.S..
Kwel' Hoy: We Draw The Line, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Washington D.C.
Whale People: Outdoor Exhibition and IMAX-style Film Projection at Lummi Nation
Like the Waters We Rise: Climate Justice in Print, Interference Archive + Nathan Cummings Foundation Gallery, NY
Offsetted, Curated by Cooking Sections, Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery, Columbia University, NY
Whale People: Protectors of the Sea, Co-Created with Lummi Nation, Florida Museum of Natural History, Gainesville
The Idea of the Avant Garde, Curated by Marc James Leger, NeMe Arts Centre, Cyprus
Kwel Hoy': Many Struggles, One Front, Co-Created with Lummi Nation, Watershed Center, Princeton
Kwel Hoy': We Draw The Line, co-created with Lummi Nation, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh
The Museum of the Future, as part of Hold These Truths, curated by No Longer Empty at Nathan Cummings Foundation
The Natural History Museum, American Alliance of Museums Convention, Washington D.C.
Agitprop!, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn
Mining the HMNS, Project Row Houses, Houston
The Natural History Museum, Association of Science and Technology Centers Convention, Montreal
The Natural History Museum, American Alliance of Museums Annual Convention, Atlanta
The Museum of the Future @ Eyebeam Showcase, Gallery 216, Brooklyn
This Changes Everything, Foundry Theatre, NY
The Natural History Museum Grand Opening, Queens Museum of Art, NY
Disobedient Objects, Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Art or Sound, Fondazione Prada - Ca' Corner Della Regina, Venice
Beyond Zuccotti Park, Sao Paulo Architecture Biennial, Sao Paulo
From Zuccotti to Taksim: Negotiating the Right to the City through Public Space, Hazel & Robert Siegel, Gallery, Pratt University, Brooklyn
Occupy Their Desire, Our Haus, Austrian Cultural Forum, NY
Occupied Real Estate, Collective/Performance, Exit Art, NY
Occupy Everything, Stadtmuseum Graz, Austria
Alternative Histories, Exit Art, NY
Tomorrow is Another Day (After the Economic Crisis), No Soul for Sale, Tate Modern, London
City From Below, Baltimore, NY
The Subsumption Machine, Mixer: Expo, Eyebeam, NY
Not An Alternative Presents, X Initiative, NY
Friendly Fire, NY Art Book Fair, Printed Matter, NY
Festival Break 2.4: Potempkin Village, International Festival of Contemporary Art, Ljubljana
When Artists Say We, Artists Space, NY
Traverse the Fantasy, Art in the Contested City, Higgins Gallery, Pratt University, Brooklyn
Majority Whipped, Majority Whip, White Box, NY
A Blade of Grass
Puffin Foundation
Chorus Foundation
Eyebeam Center for Art & Technology
Voqal Fund
Brooklyn Arts Council
The Public Society
Overbrook Foundation
Horton Foundation Fund
Compton Foundation
Benoona Fund of RSF Social Finance
Andy Warhol Foundation
The New York Community Trust
Solidaire
Argosy Foundation
Wallace Global Fund
LUSH Charity Pot
Patagonia Foundation
Invoking The Pause
Heinz Foundation
Beespace NYC
Hewlett Foundation
Scintilla Foundation