Nick Paparone, Bacchanal-Tootsie Roll Whip. Installation details, 2008. Photos Stefan by Abrams, courtesy of Vox Populi.

Philadelphia's Vox Populi Gallery is an artist-run non-profit space with 25 members who vote collectively on the space's agenda. A consensus might sound like task enough; then consider that Vox (as it's called for short) is actually four rotating spaces with a video lounge and a project space for which outsiders can apply to exhibit. Vox's populist model isn't so much a radical rejection of the ways of seeing art than a practical (more than it seems) intervention into the culture of exclusivity and hierarchies in galleries, says director Andrew Suggs, "Other than that, the space follows, you know, a museum model, its white walls, it looks like sort of most galleries I guess..." Here he explains the gallery's participatory plans for the X Initiative, and why a collective memory isn't always the best one.


ALEX GARTENFELD: I was hoping you could tell me what you are going to bring to the exhibition, how they approached you and how you plan to represent yourself there

ANDREW SUGGS: I think the process for invitation was standard. I do not know exactly how it worked but someone from the exhibition just contacted me to ask if Vox would be interested in participating, and of course it's an incredible opportunity because it's free basically. (LAUGHS)

AG: You're one of a few artist collectives I've spoken to that requires an actual vote to make decisions.

AS: Vox is an artist collector so there are about 25 artist-members. I am the director but all of the decisions, administrative decisions and programming decisions, are made by a majority in the membership. So I brought the invitation to the membership and everyone was very excited and then we began a conversation about how we would participate. It was a really interesting exercise for us to figure out about how to participate because Vox is a collective that shows the work of its members and then that takes up about half of our programming and the remainder of the programming is outside programming that we choose...

AG: Are you all going?

AS: Yes.

AG: How are you all going to get here?

AS: Well, people are on their own, but everyone is participating. It was interesting for us to try to come up with an idea for this because we don't really work collaboratively. Everyone who is a member shows at the gallery once a year, and we are a big community, but we don't collaborate on artwork.  

AG:  Do you all have solo exhibitions once a year?

AS:  Yes.

Nick Paparone, Bacchanal-Tootsie Roll Whip. Installation details, 2008. Courtesy Vox Populi.

AG: How often do the shows turn over?

AS:  Every month. The gallery is divided strangely. It's actually four small galleries within the space, so there are usually three Vox artists showing and an outside artist showing in the fourth space.

AG: How many members did you have when you started?  

AS: Well, Vox is 21 years old, it was started in 1988, and I am not sure how many members there were originally. I think that there were probably four or five-the history is actually really sketchy, and we are putting out a book at the end of this year that sort of is celebrating 21 years and someone is working on writing the history of Vox for the book but it's really, really hazy.

AG: So what's the tentative understanding?

AS: The tentative understanding is that a small group of recent graduates in Philadelphia wanted to have some place to show their work and weren't happy with the opportunities that existed, so they pitched in together to get a space. Initially it was very loose; anyone who wanted to participate could if you met the obligations of helping out with the responsibilities of running the space and then contributing some money for the rent, there were no sort of qualitative decisions made about new members, from what I understand it was very loose. Then of course over the years it has developed into sort of more a professionalized non-profit that receives a lot of foundation and grant funding.

AG: What are your requirements now?

AS: We do membership reviews once a year and it's an open call, so the members all get together and look at the applications and decide if we want to take on new members. There is no real set number or real criteria. We look for artistic excellence and then of course a requirement is that you have to live in Philadelphia because you have to be able to contribute to running the space.

AG:  Would you describe Vox as specific to Philadelphia?

AS: Definitely, and I think the reason that Vox has been around for 21 years is that it is very tied to how things work in Philadelphia. Philly has an extremely small, almost non-existent, commercial gallery culture. There aren't a ton of collectors in Philadelphia and so the scene here is focused on either alternative or artist-run spaces. People like to say that the Philly art scene is really like a community, and it's really true. It's a small-enough place that there isn't a lot of competition. You can borrow equipment from other institutions.

AG: Was there anything specially that you were interested in bringing to New York?  Like any  specific themes?

AS:  Sure, I mean I can tell you a little about what we are going to do. We had a series of meetings with all the members where we tried to figure out how we would approach it and what we decided in the end was to sort of challenge ourselves with a collaborative installation. During the install period and I think through the opening, we are going to be outfitting our space with a couple of new walls; we will be building that stuff. Over the course of the exhibition, there will be Vox members working in the space and people are going to bring their artwork or their installation materials and react to whatever is already existing in the space. We have set up some rules for ourselves, like you can move things around if you don't like where something is put, but people can leave sort of notes about their work and what they do or don't want done to it.

AG: Are you from Philadelphia originally?

AS: I've been here a little over three years.

AG: How have you seen Vox change in that time?

AS: Vox is growing a lot and has been growing pretty significantly over the past three or four years, I mean we started receiving Andy Warhol Foundation funding, and the reach of our guest programming has extended a lot and we've experienced a lot of increased interest in people from outside wanting to show at Vox. I've also definitely seen Philly change in the three years that I've been here.

AG: For the better?

AS: Yeah, there are more people, there are more artists moving to the city, either directly from school or people sort of migrating from New York, so there is a lot of energy here now. There are new spaces that are popping up all over, like small artist run spaces-just lots of activity.  

AG: Are there any sort of models that are member based, that you sort of relate Vox too?

AS: We find that very hard (LAUGHS). We are always looking to other models, to try and sort of figure out how to do what we do best, but it's really hard to find spaces that are run like ours. There is another space in Philadelphia that is a member collective, its called Nexus, but they do not show outside works.

AG: ...And they don't have as interesting of a name.

AS: (LAUGHS) No. But it's hard to find a space that operates in the same way we do. Its pretty singular.

AG: Is there anything that always comes up that you cannot get a majority on?

AS: No, we usually sort of duke it out until someone wins. And it's a good community, and people get along well. I don't think it's always been that way; I think there were probably times in Vox's history where things didn't run so smoothly. But for the past three or four years, it's just been a great group.

AG: Is there a reason that the history of the space is so sort of dubious?

AS: I don't think that any of the people involved in the beginning expected Vox to last so long, so good records weren't kept. There are some people in Philadelphia who were involved with the space very early on and we have been talking to them to try to get information from them, but it's all based on. Over the years Vox has probably been in five or six different locations in Philadelphia, and we don't even know where all the spaces are.

AG: Dould you send me some group photos of the 25 people?

AS:  I don't we have one, but maybe I can take one.

Vox Populi is located at 319 North 11th Street, # 3, Philadelphia.

It's almost a parable: Two people leave their desk jobs and have the option to decide their space in whatever way they choose; they decide to set up yet another office—in a storefront, no less. Then it's a paradox: They set up shop on a small, primarily residential space on the Lower East Side, where their best customers are skater kids, not collectors, or even other business people. But that's the melodrama of Howie Chen and Gabrielle Giattino of Dispatch, formerly of the Whitney and the Swiss Institute in New York, respectively. They've triumphed over both parable and paradox by balancing solid programming with idiosyncratic risks—see, for instance, their next show, a collboration of artist Kai Althoff and music journalist Brandon Sosuy. When we spoke with Chen, he'd just returned from Basel where Dispatch had a booth at Liste, the Young Art Fair for the first time. Has the international market changed the way he and Giattino run their office? Only slightly.

ALEX GARTENFELD: Hi, Howie. What are you doing today?

HOWIE CHEN: I'm going to catch up with Gabrielle [Giattino, co-proprietor] at Dispatch and see how it went at Liste. I was there for 11 days.

AG: What a terribly long time to be in Basel—

HC: Well it's seven days there. And then setting up...

AG: You're not a non-profit. But did you imagine your space in the context of an art fair?

HC: No, but I wouldn't say we would have never ruled it out. We're testing the waters. The idea behind Dispatch was to be flexible enough to do an art fair like the Liste. This was intense, though. We did Artissima last year; we did a solo project in their showcase area equivalent to Basel's Statements. This, at Liste, was the first time we set up a group presentation. I think it represented what we've been doing. Meeting collectors-that was new to us. We don't exactly have collectors knocking down the door in the Lower East Side. It gives us profile and visibility, and we can try to get a few backers to follow us and keep our doors open.

AG: How did you and initially Gabrielle meet?

HC: I'm involved with a group called New Humans, and we did a  performance at the Swiss Institute, where Gabrielle worked. Gabrielle ended up curating a small show of Mika Tajima's work. At the time I was working at the Whitney Museum, at the Branch Museum at the Altria. It was the last branch space the Whitney had; I was there for six years, and when the Branch closed, it was a natural way to fade away, and start up Dispatch.

AG: Why the name Dispatch?

HC: Gabrielle lives above a car service dispatch office and we were always amazed by how much activity is generated in a small office with a fat man and his fleet of cars driving around New York.

AG: How did you find your storefront?

HC: We'd worked together on a number of collaborative projects, and always batted around the idea of working beyond the institutions we were in, and continuing the rigor and work in a more flexible way. When the current space popped up  we jumped at the chance.

AG: What changes did you make to the space when you moved in?

HC: We painted the floor black. We wanted a few visual markers. The other is our clock: We wanted to maintain the environment of an office since we didn't have real office jobs anymore. We could clock in when we got in to work, and clock out at the end.

AG: How do both of you incorporate your other projects, as curators and artists, into the space?

HC: We don't put Dispatch on everything we do. But a lot of time it helps our other projects, and it provides a place so that people can people anchor our activities to something material.

AG: God fear the freelancer.

HC: Exactly. Gabrielle does a lot of independent projects. But all our collaborative and independent projects end up being connected to Dispatch in someway—the space really functions as a premise and a name.

AG: Did you base Dispatch on any other models? Miguel Abreu Gallery on the Lower East Side also has an office space in front.

HC: Obviously early on we looked at Reena Spaulings, Dexter Sinister, Orchard Gallery. But we really wanted to focus on the office aspect. Sometimes the process as a curator is more interesting than the product. You're walking into our office. We can't offer white walls and clean floors, but it's an office and things are happening.

AG: What's the ideal show for your space? Or how does the space, either its strengths or its limitations, determine what you put in it?

HC: Since space is so limited, we look more at an ideal string of shows and how they inform each other. We want each show to be strong individually, but we also want it to function in a sequence of shows. One shows ephemeral works; the next show's something else.

AG: Do you think that sequence gives Dispatch a specific narrative?

HC: Gabrielle and I have different ideas about how it works out, and that's good for me. The space is a canvas for me to figure out things I don't understand—like Expressionist paintings or something, and how people resist formalism or specific categories. (LEFT: ITEMS FROM HANNE MUGAAS' "SECONDARY MARKET")

AG: So what are you bringing to the X Initiative?

HC: We are presenting a project by curator Hanne Mugaas called "Secondary Market" which is an exhibition of art ephemera, paintings, sculptures, and artistic objects that she buys on eBay—like a Picasso T-shirt. They're awesome objects.  All of this is for sale, and there's a series of commissioned Artist Edition Coffee Mugs by Mugaas. She's done the "Secondary Market" project before at Ooga Booga in Los Angeles, and showed it in Europe ion a gallery setting. It gains more by having an exhibition history. And of course it's a play on the secondary market.

AG: So did you bring home any lessons from your art fair experience at Liste?

HC: Well were hanging around with a lot of other gallerists—well, they generally prefer that title over "dealers." We were staying in the immigrant neighborhood of Basel, and there was a Turkish café in we passed every day called Agora, which comes from the Greek word for "marketplace." It was nice to think of Agoraphobia as not just the fear of open space, but the fear of being in the market place.

AG: Now you have no fear.

HC: I have no fear, just anxiety.


Dispatch is located at 127 Henry Street, New York.

For a survey of the storefronts participating in No Soul For Sale, click here. For Art in America's coverage, read on.