By Temporary Services with Doro Boehme, Lindsay Bosch, Kevin Henry, Heatherlie Allison, Jude Vachon and texts by Guerrilla Art Action Group and Jean Toche, and Mess Hall.
Half Letter Press, Fort Wayne, IN and Chicago, IL, 2023
Pages: 48
Format: PDF

Interviews and responses on DIY culture, community, work, and booklets (2006-2013)

Temporary Services has written quite a lot as a group over the years and a number of those writings have taken the form of lively responses to interviews and other requests for us to share our thoughts. This booklet (the first of at least two we plan to make like this) shares four writings created in response to prompts from curators Doro Boehme, Lindsay Bosch, and Kevin Henry, a graduate writing student Heatherlie Allison, Triple Canopy and Peter Russo who asked us to write about the Occupy movement, and the late public librarian Jude Vachon. We also incorporated short texts by Guerrilla Art Action Group and Jean Toche, and Mess Hall. 

From the introduction:

As we enter our 25th year of working together as Temporary Services, we’ve been digging through old writings, interviews, and responses we’ve given to various inquiries, in search of material we’d like to publish. Some of these texts were printed before in various publications or online. Others came from private email exchanges. 

Throughout our history, Temporary Services has made it a concern to be as publicly accountable and available as possible. We like to demystify our work, or simply make work that isn’t particularly mysterious to begin with. We have never had a gatekeeper like a communications manager or gallery representative, so when people email us, that’s who they get. We have always tried to stay on top of email and respond to every relevant thing people write us. There have been periods where this has probably occupied our time as much as making our creative work. Essentially, all of it becomes our work and the positive results of this have been a long digital and printed paper trail that can’t be easily lost or erased. This practice of writing back has also helped us cultivate a large community of people who have stuck with our work and stayed in touch with us for many years. We have grown alongside each other. People who were once curious students or fans, have become colleagues, friends, and collaborators. We’ve tried to treat every request with a similar measure of thought and respect, whether it’s for a book, a national newspaper, or a college student’s homework. 

This selection of texts from 2006-13 was produced while the group was composed of Brett Bloom, Salem Collo-Julin, and Marc Fischer.