AA Bronson in conversation with Paul O’Neill

Pallas Projects are delighted to present as the first event in our upcoming programme celebrating 30 years of Pallas: AA Bronson in conversation with Paul O’Neill, in association with IMMA Talks.

Paul O’Neill (artist, curator, educator, director of PUBLICS, Helsinki) is joined by internationally renowned artist AA Bronson to discuss collective practice, artistic self-organisation, his roles in General Idea, Art Metropole and Printed Matter, and their impacts on contemporary art and artist-run culture.

Together they will explore the role of collaboration, consensus, and collective working methods in shaping artistic practice, alongside the histories and futures of artist-run culture and self-organised spaces. Drawing on the long-standing dialogue between AA Bronson and Paul O’Neill, including materials in the Paul O’Neill Archive at IMMA, the talk will consider collective artistic practice, group and solo work and its entangled relationships.

This rare discussion with AA Bronson will survey his enduring influence as an artist, healer, curator, educator and ally. From early beginnings in a free school and commune AA Bronson has spent over six decades developing work through collaboration. A founding member of artist collective General Idea, he spent 25 years working alongside co-founders Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal presenting projects that embodied the spirits of punk protest, queer theory, and AIDS activism. 

As a writer AA has contributed several important essays on artist-run practice. ‘The Humiliation of the Bureaucrat’ (first published in Museums by Artists, edited by AA Bronson and Peggy Gale, by Art Metropole, 1983), and its companion piece ‘The Transfiguration of the Bureaucrat’ were key references for Pallas Projects when researching their own publication Artist-Run Europe (first published by Onomatopee, Eindhoven, 2016), for which AA contributed the essay ‘Notes from Berlin’.

Through an expanded field of socially engaged projects – including AA Bronson’s School for Young Shamans and ongoing collaborations with younger generations – we will learn how AA Bronson’s practice remains tirelessly focused on the politics of collective decision-making and on living life radically as a form of social sculpture.

Presented in association with the Paul O'Neill Archive at IMMA, and as part of Pallas Projects/Studios 30th Anniversary programme, with the support of Dublin City Council and The Arts Council. This public talk and gathering is part of Dublin by Dusk series of events at IMMA.

Biographies:

AA Bronson (born Michael Tims, 1946) formed the artists’ group General Idea with Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal in 1969 and for the next 25 years they lived and worked together, undertaking over 100 solo exhibitions, and countless group shows and temporary public art projects. They were known for their magazine FILE (1972-1989), their unrelenting production of low-cost multiples, and their early involvement in punk, queer theory, and AIDS activism. In 1974 they founded Art Metropole, Toronto, a distribution centre and archive for artists’ books, audio, video, and multiples, which they conceived as the shop and archive for their Gesamtkunstwerk: The 1984 Miss General Idea Pavillion, a kind of meta-museum. From 1987 through 1994, they focused their work on the subject of AIDS.

Since his partners died in 1994, AA has worked and exhibited as a solo artist, often collaborating with younger generations, for example in his performance series Invocation of the Queer Spirits. From 1999 through 2012, while living in New York, he worked as a healer, an identity that he incorporated into his artwork. From 2004 to 2010 he was the Director of Printed Matter, Inc. in New York City, founding the annual NY Art Book Fair in 2005. He now lives in Berlin together with his husband.

AA Bronson and General Idea are represented by Esther Schipper, Berlin, and Maureen Paley, London. General Idea is also represented by Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich.

Dr. Paul O’Neill is an Irish curator, artist, writer, and educator based in Helsinki, Finland. He is the Artistic Director of PUBLICS, a curatorial agency, contemporary art commissioner, event and exhibition space with a dedicated library and reading room in Helsinki. Between 2013-17, he was Director of the Graduate Program at the Centre for Curatorial Studies (CCS), Bard College, New York where he also curated the extensive exhibition, We are the Centre for Curatorial Studies, at Hessel Museum, (2016-17) and The Visitor Talks Programme (2013-17). The Paul O’Neill Archives (1993-2024) are part of the Irish Museum of Modern Art Collection, Dublin.

Paul has curated over 80 shows across the world, is author of the critically acclaimed book The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s), (MIT Press, 2012), and has authored and co-edited numerous agenda-setting anthologies on curating such as: Not Going it Alone: Collective Curatorial Curating (Apexart, New York, 2024), and CURIOUS (Open Editions, London, 2024) co-edited with Gerrie van Noord.