Type A: An Interview

“Collaboration is competitive” – this is the tag line for the artist collective Type A, composed of Adam Ames and Andrew Bordwin. Their projects stretch across the mediums of video, photography, sculpture, and installation – using different formats less for their own sake and more for their appropriateness in relation to a given idea. This malleability allows them to stage installations that are more like interventions in various non-art spaces such as the city streets or a high school gym. This dialogue details the impetus behind these works, which, more often than not, is a slightly antagonistic back and forth between the two men. It is of no surprise then, that the tropes of authority, masculinity, and even homoeroticism surface in their engagement and their artistic creations.

The two maintain, however, that the collaborative energy – in whatever way it precipitates – is the crux of their work. And this energy extends and diffuses into the places where the work is exhibited. The idea of “charging a space” with action, though performance for example, brings the collaborative energy to the viewer. In doing so, the viewer’s perception of the field in which everything is occurring – art space or not – fundamentally alters. This multi-level interactivity, between the two men as well as their audience, has been a hallmark of Type A.

— Nicolas Holt, 2016

Interview by Sarah Schnadt in 2011, edited in 2013.