[2] Jeffrey Kastner, ‘Uncertain Alternatives’, ARTnews, June 1996, p. 120-123.

[3] Collette Chattopadhyay; ‘Their Way – Nonprofit spaces in SoCal’, Artweek, Vol. 23, Aug 1992, p.16.

[4] Paul Stopforth; 5 Years at The Alternative Gallery – The Market Gallery, Johannesburg, Market Gallery, 1982, p. 5.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Anthony Akerman; ‘The Last Bastion of Freedom Under Siege’, Culture in Another South Africa, 1989, p.55.

[7] Esme Berman, Art and Artists of South Africa, Cape Town, Balkema, 1986, p. 24.

[8] Joyce Ozinsky; 5 Years at The Alternative Gallery – The Market Gallery, Johannesburg, Market Gallery, 1982, p. 1. Originally from an article in The Rand Daily Mail, 1981.

[9] Paul Stopforth; 5 Years at The Alternative Gallery – The Market Gallery, Johannesburg, Market Gallery, 1982, p. 5.

[10] Terence King; Ibid, p. 6.

[11] Paul Stopforth; Ibid, p. 5.
* This image is taken from 5 Years at The Alternative Gallery – The Market Gallery, Johannesburg, Market Gallery, 1982.

[12] The fourth wall is a term that describes the invisible wall dividing the audience and the stage. In the traditional three sided theater the viewer is clearly separated from the drama as if ‘looking through a window frame’. This could be seen as parallel to the model of a viewer in front of an object. In the same way that installation or site-specific art might seek to engage with the viewer in his/her space, so the dramatic action in experimental theater might seek to intrude beyond this fourth wall. In terms of the ‘progressively radical’ theatrical strategies that an artist or playwright might employ to ‘break the fourth wall’, one might consider these examples: A playwright presents a play in the traditional theatrical manner and the work tells a story using characters with which the audience can identify. It contains no controversial material and it portrays values that one can identify as being consistent with the ‘conventional’ views of the audience. A second playwright may use a conventional narrative format, but the content of this drama touches on issues that challenge the audience and perhaps run counter to the political convention. The third playwright, however, employs devices that rupture a naturalistic dramatic presentation. He/she ‘breaks through the wall’ by invading the viewer’s space, speaking directly beyond the wall or taking the dramatic action out of the theater entirely. The most extreme break might occur in a dramatic presentation that invades the viewer’s space not only physically, but psychologically by presenting itself ‘as reality’, by ‘staging’ events ‘in the world’.

[13] Collette Chattopadhyay; ‘Their Way – Nonprofit spaces in SoCal’, Artweek, Vol. 23, Aug 1992, p. 16.

[14] RoseLee Goldberg; Performance – Live Art 1909 to the present, New York, Harry Abrams, 1979, p. 6 – 7.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid.

Because these alternative spaces ran counter to commercial interests they required a structure that reflected the spirit of their philosophy. They were able to maintain a certain “freedom” and flexibility by operating with very little of the ‘support’ structures that commercial galleries or museums required. As was to be the case later with the FLAT Gallery, the spaces created in the early 70s in the United States were self funded and run out of lofts owned by the artists or warehouses owned by friends of the artists. They relied heavily on the ad hoc supervision of highly motivated young idealistic volunteer artists for operation as well as programming.
The FLAT programming was created without any advance planning, and exhibitions and events were mounted as interest or opportunity presented itself. Interestingly, this seemingly ‘loose’ curatorial organization for programme scheduling was a characteristic shared by the FLAT with many of these early alternatives in the United States.

Jeffrey Kastner quotes Bill Arning who describes one of the oldest in New York City, White Columns (which is still in operation), as it was in the early 70s:

White Columns... seemed a blissful free for all… [The space in its earliest days] was a strange and wonderful place. Artists’ work was not reviewed. Slides were not looked at. If you were recommended by someone involved with the space you could just mount a show. A calendar was hung on the wall and you could decide when you wanted a show and for how long.[1]

This policy of open impromptu programming, a feature of the FLAT Gallery as well as many infant alternative spaces, continued to be a central issue with those alternative projects that were formed in the decades that followed. An open policy for exhibitions brought with it a wonderful ‘anything goes’ spirit but also a giddy lack of quality control. Though this fostered a climate that encouraged a special breed of fearless experimentation that was perhaps essential for the development of new art forms, criticism followed around the question of ‘professional’ standards. Indeed, the FLAT was regarded with skepticism by some established artists and critics in Durban (particularly in the beginning) because it operated with such an open exhibition policy.
As was the case with the curatorial functions and the programming, so too the operation of most alternative spaces was provided not by professionals on payroll budgets but by the initiative and commitment of the artists involved. Often the problem of finding a site for an alternative space would be solved by opening up private studios or lofts to the public or by bartering labor for space. The FLAT was housed in an apartment and operated through the volunteer efforts of the apartment's occupants and the artists who participated in the various programmes.
Southern Exposure in San Francisco was an artist initiative where the artists involved took on the responsibility of reconditioning an abandoned building in leu of rent. Meredith Tromble reports in a conversation with Robbin Henderson (co-founder of the project):

The space was empty and charred when we first moved in. It belonged to a dancer and had a nice wooden floor, but there had been a very bad fire and so it took so long to get the insurance money that the dancer had moved out, leaving the space empty. When the insurance money came in Project Artaud used it to make a down payment on the building and did not repair the space, so we - the twelve of us who founded the gallery - agreed that if we could have it and use it rent free, we'd fix it up.[1]

Indeed a large part of the flexibility and independence that the early alternatives enjoyed was due in large part to the (relatively) low overhead and temporary nature of the sites involved.[2]
Though the alternative spaces declared themselves to be concerned not with “the ideas of the marketplace but the marketplace of ideas,” [3] the realities of growth and the efforts to create a sustained project led to concerns with funding sources. Though funded largely by the resident artists, even the FLAT gallery relied in part on support from the Bartel Arts Trust and the Durban Arts organization who each provided grants of R400/month and R300/month respectively.
As the decade ended, for the most part as various ‘alternative spaces’ in the United States began to become more established and to seek funding. Also, they began to rely more and more on grants from all levels of government. Ironically, an ambitious National Endowment for the Arts was established under the conservative Republican presidency of Richard Nixon, and this program called NEA provided a stable supply of government support. With this financial support the 70s alternative spaces flourished and reached a certain degree of stability. Though a more structured operation replaced the ‘free for all’ attitudes of the earlier incarnations, the programming though government sponsored was at that time surprisingly independent, that is, there was a remarkable lack of government interference in programming. (Not until the famous Mapplethorpe and Serrano debates in the mid 80s would the conservative forces in the US congress look towards government funding of the arts as a rallying point.)
By the late 70s and early 80s, the ‘alternative space’ in the United States had become a convention. The crisis these venues faced was complex in nature and ironically a result of their ‘success’. As the alternative spaces grew and budgets swelled they became more structured and their programming less flexible. They began increasingly to resemble the ‘mainstream’ venues they had once critiqued; no longer seen as ‘alternative’. Mark Gisbourne addressed this in an article for Art Monthly on the state of these alternative spaces in the 90s:

If alternative spaces no longer operate on the periphery, outside the mainstream, this may be due to the lateral aesthetic conditions implicit in the Post-Modern. For what once appeared clearer is now blurred by the erosion of the boundaries of where inner and outer begin and end.[4]

In a sense, alternative practices by their very nature cannot be static and those of one generation must be re-examined, critiqued and redefined by the next. In the United States, many of the alternative practices of the 70s became the market friendly novelties for the 80s, and many of the alternative spaces of the 70s became the bloated institutions of the 90s. Even so-called radical programming that addressed difficult political issues became within a season or two the conventional fare of major museums.

The alternative spaces of the 70s had emerged from the decade with more stable funding thanks to the NEA and matching grants from local government sources and they remained independent in terms of the content and form of their programming, but a crisis was clearly on the horizon. As Kastner points out in Uncertain Alternatives, alternative spaces began to resemble the larger institutions that they had originally seen themselves opposing:

With stability came more infrastructures and bureaucracy slowing down the spaces’ ability to move quickly to present the most progressive, avant-garde work at the earliest possible time.[5]

Conversly, “more aggressive political shows on topics such as sexuality, gender, reproductive rights, US foreign policy and multi-culturalism, increased efforts to reach out to the community and project spaces for young artists became familiar aspects of many contemporary art museums.” Practices that had been regarded as ‘alternative’ were co-opted to the mainstream. What had been ‘marginal’ found itself in the ‘center’.[6]
The alternative spaces were criticized from the left and the right, both raising questions as to the relevance in terms of audience and programming. When studies on the effectiveness of such venues revealed a 2 - 5% art audience, which was deemed primarily “educated, affluent, and white” [7], ammunition was given to both sides of the debate. Conservatives in the US congress claimed that the alternative spaces and the alternative programming catered to a politicized ‘in-crowd’ and did not justify public spending. Suspicious artists wondered if publicly funded alternative spaces were no more than artificial stimulations funded by the NEA and administered by professional art bureaucrats. David Trend spoke to this suspicion when he wrote in Afterimage:

How can organizations, promoting supposedly ‘radical’, politically critical independent work, be associated with a branch of government? The paradox of government support is that it not only supports these structures but channels them too. A system of monetary rewards has evolved that encourages ‘professionalism’ and aesthetic definitions of what art should be.[8]

Ironically the NEA came under extreme fire from the right in the early 90s when Jessie Helms, a conservative US senator from a rural southern district, attacked the NEA’s (indirect) sponsorship of the so-called ‘immoral’ art of Mapplethorpe and Serrano.[9] A conservative mood led to spending cuts and unwanted hostile attention to the programs to be funded. The NEA was torn apart by the struggle, experimenting at one point with an “anti obscenity” pledge requirement for grants. By the 1990s the economic boom of the 80s was over and corporate funding in steep decline. The once well-funded NEA eliminated the ‘artists organization’ category and individual grants in the face of severe financial constraints and threats of censorship issues.
Others, such as writer, Marcia Tanner, added their voices to the criticism of ‘alternative spaces’ and accused the non-profits arts organizations of being “stagnant” and “structured on a model now two decades old.” She continued:

They are neither light on their feet nor responsive to the changing art market, but rather hamstrung by public policy, funding requirements, and accountability.[10]

Indeed, what had been perceived as radical by one generation became institutionalized by the next, but also what had set itself counter to the marketplace now found itself complicit. With the institutions transforming the notion of ‘non-profit’ into yet another convention, artist initiatives began to spawn commercial venues.
Spaces in the East Village seemed to embody the casual spirit of the early alternatives when, in the early 1980s, they sprung up in small storefronts in the, then cheap, seedy Lower East side neighborhood of New York City. Many were artists run, but few positioned themselves in opposition to the marketplace. Though many East Village galleries exhibited work that addressed the dynamics of ‘commodification’, unlike the conceptual art, land art or process based performance art of the 70s, did not through its form resist its own commodification. For some, which embraced the marketplace, it was an ‘alternative’ practice that defined itself through its rejection of what was seen as the naive idealism of the 70s. For others, a radical agenda in terms of content remained but without the same ‘radical forms’ of the previous generation. Venues like PPOW gallery that exhibited work that dealt with ‘in your face’ leftist political content, such as Sue Coe’s drawings, paintings, and prints, was still a commercial gallery and operated in a modest sized space. Here the small, sometimes artist run, commercial galleries, were seen as more ‘cutting edge’ than the now ‘institutionalized’ alternatives. However, the phenomenon of the East Village ‘alternative’ gallery scene was short lived. Those galleries that survived eventually moved to larger spaces in SOHO, to become more established commercial venues. This changing position of the alternative space vis-a-vis commerce is articulated by Gisbourne when he writes:

By the mid-80s in the face of the East Village art boom, a decisive shift had taken place. Alternative spaces became increasingly more integrated with the commercial art ‘scene’ and their traditional role as oppositional spaces was brought into question. These venues occupied a not too dissimilar position to the SOHO based galleries to whom they became something of a feeder industry.[11]

This was in part due to the growing acceptance of what had been alternative practices into commercial venues and established museums as well as a result of changing agendas within the once ‘marginalized’ artists’ communities. Many of the East Village galleries, though engaged in ‘experimental’ work, did not necessarily position themselves in a manner that was resistant to the marketplace.
The integration of alternative spaces into the mainstream, the adoption of their approaches by mainstream institutions, the dwindling of audiences and funding crisis prompted many such as Terri Cohn to ask the question:

What is alternative about alternative spaces in the 90s? To what in fact are they alternatives?[12]

The implicit question here was, how can the alternative spaces survive, how can they renew themselves? It articulated the realization that for the ‘alternative space’ to sustain itself and be truly ‘alternative’ it must constantly re-invent itself. What was to profoundly inform this re-invention was the realization that an ‘alternative space’ could be a temporary site, and even more radically, that it was not necessarily even a building or a geographic ‘space’, but rather a site of activity. This crisis also marked a growing awareness that the nature of any alternative space, like an alternative practice, might be a vibrant, but short life. Reinvention and renewal were indeed the key concepts, but the commitment to spontaneous expression also brought with it an appreciation for impermanence.