ABSTRACT
What started in the winter of 1980 as a straightforward call to establish an archive of politically committed art, wound up instigating an ambitious new artists’ collective. A decade before the emergence of the world wide web and prior to the introduction of the personal computer, one NYC-based organization of artists and activists sought to produce a networked, parallel arena in which to nurture, theorize, display, and distribute creative practices opposed to, or simply desperate to be something other than, capitalist culture. This essay provides an overview of Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D)’s approximately seven years of activity, as well as some reflections on its legacy for the new and increasingly expansive wave of activist art we are witnessing at the start of the twenty-first century.
