Carl E. Loeffler
Carl Eugene Loeffler (14 November 1946, Cleveland - 5 February 2001) was an artist and art administrator.
He received his Bachelor in Art from the California State University, Hayward (1973). He worked as director of Art Com, San Francisco (1975-1991), director of virtual reality project at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh (1991-1995) and research director of Sim Laboratory at Carnegie (from 1996).
La Mamelle, Inc. / Art Com was a not-for-profit arts organization and artist-run space active from 1975-1995 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The organization’s first venture was publishing but it became involved in a multiplicity of activities including maintaining an artists’ space and presenting exhibitions and events of mail art, performance art, conceptual photography, video art production and screenings, a library, distributing artist-produced works, and creating one of the first artists’ online networks.
La Mamelle, Inc. / Art Com emerged in the 1970s during the proliferation of artist-run spaces across the country. In the San Francisco Bay Area this included Intersection for the Arts, Museum of Conceptual Art (active 1970-1984), Galeria de la Raza, SF Camerawork, Crossroads Community (the farm) (active 1974-1980), The Floating Museum (active 1975-1977), 80 Langton Street (later New Langton Arts active, 1975-2009), Site/Cite/Sight, and Southern Exposure.
- Publications
- editor, La Mamelle Magazine/Art Com, San Francisco, 1975-1995. Started out focusing on San Francisco Bay Area performance, conceptual, video, and multimedia and electronic art, but quickly expanding to cover international performance art. Renamed Art Com in 1980.
- editor, with Darlene Tong, Performance Anthology: Source Book for a Decade of California Performance Art, San Francisco: Contemporary Arts Press, 1980, xii+500 pp; 2nd ed., upd., Performance Anthology: Source Book of California Performance Art, San Francisco: Last Gasp, 1989.
- editor, with Roy Ascott, Leonardo 24(2): "Connectivity: Art and Interactive Telecommunications", 1991.
- Literature
- Give Them the Picture: An Anthology of La Mamelle and ART COM, 1975-1984, eds. Liz Glass, Susannah Magers, and Julian Myers, San Francisco: California College of the Arts, 2011.
- Archives
- Stanford University Libraries received primary La Mamelle, Inc./Art Com archives and papers
- Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive received the artist video archive of hundreds of videotapes. Includes works distributed by Art Com TV Distribution. [1]
- Links
