A Brief Introduction to Temporary Services
For a decade, this Chicago-based group has been helping us to reimagine the spaces of possibility and escape directly in front of us
by Nato Thompson

When it snows in downtown Chicago, many residents set to work on their public art. They exit their homes and apartments, grab snow shovels, and dig their cars out, after which they gather materials from the surrounding area (a safety cone, a broom, a plastic deck chair, a two-by-four, an old mattress) and build a barricade to reserve their parking spot.

Innocuous on the surface, these place-holding structures become fascinating anthropological specimens when seen side by side in photographs. An art historian with an interest in the vernacular who is unaware that they weren’t made by artists might be tempted to describe them as assisted readymades, found-object sculptures, or assemblages. The Chicago-based Temporary Services refers to them as “public phenomena,” and in more ways than one these temporary sculptures are an appropriate metaphor for Temporary Services themselves, a group that I think has become the inspirational core for what might be the most important underground movement in American art in the last decade. Their exhibitions, public interventions, events, and publications—which reflect an overarching interest in people’s efforts to transform their environments by manipulating the raw material of their existence—provide a cultural model that escapes the trappings of gallery-driven, taste-based aesthetics.

Temporary Services started in 1998 in a storefront space, opened by Brett Bloom and located at 2890 North Milwaukee in Chicago. I visited the storefront in the summer of 1999 during an exhibition of work by French artist Nicolas Floc’h. Bloom greeted me at the door and immediately demonstrated the use of one of Floc’h’s collapsible multiuse chairs. In his eagerness, he nearly broke one in two, but I appreciated the enthusiasm. We then talked earnestly about Temporary Services’ projects and I realized immediately that he was deeply invested in the social implications of the work on display. Shortly after my visit, Temporary Services shifted its emphasis from running a storefront to being a group that conceives or facilitates projects. Initially, the group consisted of Bloom, Marc Fischer, Kevin Kaempf, Lora Lode, and Lillian Yvonne Martinez, but it soon settled into its longtime arrangement of Bloom, Fischer, and Salem Collo-Julin. Though they still maintain a storefront-like space in Chicago—Mess Hall—that they co-run with eight others, Temporary Services’ activities are now worldwide. Among other cities, they have done projects in Vilnius, Bangkok, and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Temporary Services has a range of interests that makes encapsulating the entirety of their oeuvre a gargantuan endeavor. However, certain tendencies shine through...

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