Wow Alan. I was all set to start the crossword this morning when I checked the site and saw your article. Now I know why you left the ABC No Rio benefit so suddenly last night, without saying goodbye to either me or Steve Englander. You really had to sit in front of a keyboard and get this off your chest. Somehow my touting of BHQF months ago left you feeling adrift and betrayed after viewing the exhibition at Inglett. Still, it prompted you to write this passionate critique, and elicited my response, so all is not lost. I hope you like the edits. Nothing major. Just some punctuation and paragraphing, and the addition of images from the gallery website.

I have not yet seen the show you reviewed. It just opened at Inglett on Tuesday. I returned from Art Basel Miami on Thursday. (The Bruces also had a presence there, by the way, with a rambling show installed in a hotel ballroom, organized by Vito Schnabel.) Right now I am buried under a backlog of mail, both e- and snail, and it's freezing cold in NY. But I plan to view the BHQFU show at my earliest opportunity. It's on my must see list.

I understand how someone like yourself, who has been fully engaged for years with issues of alternative pedagogy, squat culture, collective artists organizations, and other grassroots initiatives aimed at abetting the creation of an egalitarian, anti-capitalist new world order, could find the "humorous" approach of the Bruces a bit off putting, perhaps even a slap in the face to those who work earnestly for change. From your perspective, the Bruces might come off as overfed, overly entitled, downtown NY art world brats, who have suckled too long at the nurturing teats of Cooper Union, and who have now regurgitated the expected vomitus of half digested, spoiled milk, "fun art" for the delectation of other similarly minded brats and effete cognoscenti. Perhaps you find their orientation a bit jejune, simplistic, immature, unevolved. Perhaps you see them as wet behind the ears, a sort of Gelitin redux but watered down and less threatening, without a strong anarchist cachet.

Strangely enough, your misgivings are echoed by Charlie Finch, who in a recent ArtNet rant called them the "Low Quality Douche Brigade", found their work "derivative", and opined that their recent success "is indicative of the desperation of the munchkins in our tiny world to associate with any low spark of potential creativity." His words are perhaps more caustic than yours, but that's Finch's MO. Still, the critique is similar. It must feel strange to be sitting on the same side of the fence as The Great Curmudgeon.

Could be I really am "too susceptible to the charms of cynicism". But while I have not seen the current show, I remain an advocate for the Bruces and would still "pump" them to you on the basis of what I have previously observed. What you find sophomoric or lacking in proper seriousness, I might applaud as harnessing the revolutionary power of laughter. I have followed BHQF over the years, and enjoy their blend of performance and lecture formats, their take on NY art world historiography (with an emphasis on Cooper axioms Allan Kaprow and Hans Haacke), their critical examination of the marketplace and of arts education, plus their penchant for public advocacy and their ability to harness great creative powers at fairly short notice. Their better side is possibly revealed in the arena of live, collective action rather than in the simple, inert blackboard pieces and jerrybuilt sheet rock desks that you decry.

This past summer, I saw them organize, in a short but concentrated burst of activity, a grand art extravaganza in Ray Smith's cavernous Brooklyn studio just off the Gowanus Canal. The "Smithumenta" poked gentle fun at the pretensions of haute art institutions like Documenta, while presenting hundreds of paintings; sculptures; drawings; installations; vitrines; water, neon and automobile-based pieces; performances; musical acts; acrobats and the like, drawn from a heady, extended underground of NY based artists. It was a four day barbecue and beer blast, an unforgettable statement of community and communality.

The Bruces also previously produced "CATS on Broadway", a low rent version of the long running Broadway play. It was rehearsed, set dressed, costumed, staged, scored and presented within their ramshackle Bushwick/Bed-Stuy storefront, coincidentally located on Brooklyn's own Broadway (under the elevated J,M,Z train), and survives as a collectible, feature length CD that includes rehearsals, interviews with participants and audience, behind the scenes footage, and a full length version of the play culled from several nights of performance. It can be viewed here.

BHQF originally came to my attention in 2005, when they insolently conflated two art world shibboleths, chasing Robert Smithson's posthumously realized "Floating Island" project around Manhattan's rivers in a small motorboat with a replica of one of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's "The Gates", its miniature saffron fronds fluttering balefully but pathetically in the wake of an ever receding tug boat/island. It was one signifier doggedly pursuing another signifier (but decidedly falling short of the signified), eliciting - at least in this observer - a great absurdist snort of dry eyed hilarity.

There are numerous other examples, testifying to BHQF's brilliant conceptual repertoire and their engaging, caustic humor, including the zombie film you mention, "Isle of the Dead/Summer of '69", viewable here, which was screened this summer as part of Creative Time's Governors Island initiative.

And of course there is the ongoing pedagogical experiment on West Broadway, the Bruce High Quality Foundation University. The blackboards and desks at Inglett are merely a physical representation, perhaps purposely metaphorical or fanciful or naive, of the daily activities at this unaccredited institution, with an ever expanding schedule of lectures, courses, symposia and other activities. Everyone is welcome.

My point is there is more to BHQF than the current gallery exhibition. Their website might be instructive in this regard. But even the show at Inglett seems to be provocative enough. It certainly provoked your text and my response on these pages.

Yeah, well... It's all about the photographs anyway, and that's a generous spread you gave them. I'm happy also to poke the pile a little. That clatter can be a joyful noise. I'll look over your comments in hard copy, but my main impulse to sling some mud here came about because I feel artists should be using their unique positions as interdisciplinary, intermodal creatures, burrowers within the episteme -- worms, if you will -- to really make change possible... to aerate the soil of general affect. Also, call it the passion of the long-term unemployed, but I believe in education; I buy it that those pedagogical relationships can be a source of great strength, renewal, and, yes, the basis of people power. We are going through a period where public education is being privatized, turned into a profit center. Students worldwide are mobilizing to resist this, and -- blah blah. I said that already. But artists I think owe a debt to social change, especially when they are working themes in a crucial area. Neo-infantilist (as opposed to neo-conceptual) takes on art school at this moment are simply exhausting in their uselessness.

1. I like pics on a blog. Each one theoretically saves me the expenditure of 1000 words.

2. The infantile and the "unlearned", even when they feel somewhat rehearsed or strained or cutesy, are just fine with me. As an overall strategy for creative endeavor that allows for play, chance and intuition, they are aces above the high dudgeon of the committed ideologue, or the dreary protocols of formal academic debate. When the administrators control the parameters of discussion, art can easily arrive stillborn. That's one problem with overly earnest political art: it is so convinced of its righteousness that it forgets to provide some tangible aesthetic satisfaction or sensory blandishment. Entertain me, please.

3. I believe the Bruces are quite cognizant of their status as "burrowers within the episteme". So they do not mind when you "poke the pile" a bit, as they are engaged in the same process of "aerating the soil of general affect." (Great turns of phrase, by the way.) And their program at BHQFU deals with the tendency for education to be "privatized, turned into a profit center". Their alternative, free form, not-for-profit "university" is in fact a questioning of the status quo and a direct challenge to MFA-ism, to the process of turning out expensively trained, fully accredited professionals as grist for the art world mill, much the same as your critique of Bologna Process standardization. Their experiment in pedagogy is trying to find other pathways that veer away from an "industry standard", employing simple but effective parameters: collapsing the hierarchy between teacher and student, opening the discourse and curriculum to constant and fluid revision, and most of all eliminating the deadening measurements of grades, tuition, credits etc.

4. When I recommended BHQFU to you, I was not thinking of the work made for gallery exhibition and sale, the blackboards accessorized with toys and video monitors, the collaged banners, altered photos and pathetically devolved school desks - although I like all of these quite a bit - but rather the overarching pedagogical experiment. I was actually suggesting, some months ago, that you drop by 225 West Broadway, nose around, and see if you could collaborate with them.

5. In the interest of full disclosure, I asked BHQF some months ago to collaborate on this site. I suggested they become contributors, like the other artists who post projects and texts here. Thus far they claim to have been far too busy, as their many activities clearly attest. But perhaps as the holiday season approaches they'll have a moment to catch their breath and log in. So how about it, Bruces? Care to pile on now?

BHQF's "The Sack of Rome", at Y Gallery's booth at the NADA Fair, Miami Beach