Dave Beech & Mark Hutchinson

Dear Fellow Participants in Coalesce,

This is an invitation. As our contribution to the Coalesce project, we propose to produce a special issue of our very occasional journal, The First Condition. This is primarily a website (www.thefirstcondition.com)

but for the exhibition it will be a photocopied, A5 booklet available free at the gallery. The journal will consist entirely of writing, which is to say theory, history, analysis and so on. There will be no photographs, illustrations, etc...

This is an invitation to all the participants who might be involved in the Coalesce project to contribute to the journal. All contributions should deal directly with the Coalesce project: concerns, ideas, problems, etc., arising from the ideas and the structure of the project as set out by Paul. We are open to suggestions as to what this might mean in practice but we are not interested in expositions of individual works or practices. Contributions can be as short or as long as they need to be. However, we will retain editorial control.

If you are inviting anyone else to be involved in the project, please could you pass on this invitation. Deadline for contributions is 6th May. Please send all contributions as RTFs or unlocked PDFs to: theeditors@thefirstcondition.com

Sarah Pierce

Additionally, Pierce will explore the possibilities of 'Coalesce' as a meeting place for a series of one-to-one conversations about surroundings, production and collectivity. This will entail non-public exchanges with invited guests, which will be made public at the end of the week in the form of a CD archive; to join for an hour long conversation on May 17, 18, or 19. There will be no audience present. It is planned to hold eight meetings over the course of the week. The sessions will be audio-recorded. Each conversation will be available in a CD archive at the end of the week. Pirece see this as a casual conversation based on the invited guest's reading of the exhibition, and how it relates (or not) to their own interests. Without an 'agenda', there will be room for u-turns and getting off track. The invited guests will be listed in the exhibition press materials in relation to Pierce's own involvement by O'Neill.