The Ostracon: Dispatches from Beyond Contemporary Art’s Center

2020 – 2021

Created with support from a 2019 arts writers grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Creative Capital, The Ostracon is an art writing site by Paul Schmelzer and Nicole J. Caruth that aims to elevate figures and ideas outside the mainstream of contemporary art—from public policy, indigenous rights, and folklore to community organizing, historic preservation, environmental science, journalism, and food justice—that may offer insight into new forms of making art that are more responsive, relevant, and connected to the way we live now as individuals and communities. Taking its name from the pottery shards used in ancient Athens when voting to ostracize community members, the site aims to celebrate, instead of push out, voices from art’s periphery.

Although contemporary art draws on a multitude of thinkers and modes of making, contemporary art narratives still tend to focus on one person (e.g. the myth of the creative genius or the hero-industrial complex) rather than affirming the interconnectedness of people and ideas—an ongoing cycle of knowledge and information exchange. Through this site, we seek to give homage, authorship, and credit to the people who inspire artists or influence contemporary thought but whose stories aren’t told often enough.

https://theostracon.net/