US English exists in a continuum alongside our work as critics, organizers and curators, operating as founders of The Luminary, an incubator for new ideas in the arts based in St. Louis, MO, and initators of a range of public programs, both credited and collective. James is a co-founder and editor, along with Sarrita Hunn, of Temporary Art Review, a national platform for art criticism focused on artist-run and alternative projects in disparate locales, as well as a founding member of Common Field, a new national network of artist-run spaces. Rather than seeing these each as disparate activities, we consider our artistic practice as embedded within diverse concerns: the artist as laborer, as activist, as organizer; as curator, as citizen, as failure.
What emerges is, at times, texts, objects, exhibitions or performances. At other times, however, it is an enactment of legal structures, experimental publishing platforms or anonymous actions that disappear into other publics. US English is a pseudonym and form of speaking, but it is also simply a name for activities without one. The question, then, is how to continue speaking?
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US English has presented exhibitions, talks and lectures in various forms at venues such as the Walker Art Center, Queens Museum, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation with Ballroom Marfa, Vox Populi, Cannonball, INCA, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Transformer, Louise Dany, Laumeier Sculpture Park, Corniolo Art Platform, Carnegie Mellon University, (e)merge art fair, Moore College of Art and Design and more. Our disparate work has appeared or been discussed in the Washington Post, Art F City, Artnet, Artspace, Chicago Tribune, Hyperallergic, and more and are a 2015 recipient of a Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Award.
We aren’t describing ourselves, simply inscribing ourselves into a system, a vitae; a course of one’s life.
A full curriculum is available by request.
us@usenglish.us