Unlocking Proprietorial Art Systems – Presentations & Workshops 2017-2018

Marc Garrett,

I’m doing a series of presentations in relation my paper Unlocking Proprietorial Systems, from a chapter of my autoethnographic PhD research. It will be in the form of presentations and workshops, exploring how this learned knowledge can be used in ways that enhance and or bring about social and cultural change.

In it I ask if we can build fresh, independent places, spaces and identities, in relation to our own artistic and cultural practices individually and collectively – when the dominant narratives handed down to us via neoliberal elites, are typically in favour of their markets and technologies?

Does this mean artistic and cultural endeavours along with creatively led technological practices, are locked in a perpetual state of submission within a proprietorial absolute?

Garrett proposes that, in order to get around these locked systems we need to rediscover and reclaim our own narratives again. To do this, we need to reconnect to ‘older stories and histories, and new paths’ at the same time.

It means going back as far as The Diggers and The New Levellers, to rediscover the spirit of why we need to reclaim who we are, today. As well as looking at how artists, thinkers, activists, and hacktivists, can build grounded, social, artistic, and cultural, contexts in their own, and or collective terms.

It investigates what values will arrive and continue to exist as useful and in-tune, with our chosen states of autonomy in the 21st Century. ‘Unlocking Proprietorial Art Systems’ is about allowing all human creativity to be as free as free software.

It explores different forms of technical, social and permacultural hacking, off-grid, and alongside digitally networked critically informed adventures and initiatives. It includes ideas in relation hack values, artists hacking Infrastructures (on-line and off-line), Post-Situationist games, and Furtherfield’s recent, radical publication ‘Artists Rethinking the Blockchain’, as concrete examples in how to proceed in unlocking proprietorial systems.

Dates Places of workshops and Presentations

At each venue, the presentations/talks/workshops will be adapted in accordance to the context of the paper proposed, and an acknowledgment towards the methodology of the autoethnographic process.

IRL to URL. BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead. 24 – 25 November 2017. Leading a workshop in the practical advice session. What are the advantages and pitfalls to creating a virtual identity? http://bit.ly/2xdLPg0

transmediale/festival – face value. 31.01.—04.02.2018 HKW, Berlin. (TBC)
RESEARCH VALUES. Unlocking Proprietorial Systems – https://transmediale.de/

Published by Marc Garrett

Marc Garrett is co-director and co-founder, with artist Ruth Catlow of the arts collective Furtherfield, beginning on the Internet in 96. Furtherfield has two physical venues, a gallery and a Commons lab, both situated in the park, in Finsbury Park, London. Has curated over 50 contemporary Media Arts exhibitions, projects nationally and internationally. Main editor of the Furtherfield web site. Written for various books and articles about art, technology and social change. Two key Furtherfield publications include co-editing of 'Artists Re:Thinking Games' with Ruth Catlow and Corrado Morgana 2010, and recently on 'Artists Re:thinking the Blockchain' with Ruth Catlow, Nathan Jones and Sam Skinner 2017. Currently in the write up of last year of Phd at the University of London, Birkbeck College. Emerging in the late 80′s from the streets exploring creativity via agit-art tactics. Using unofficial, experimental platforms such as the streets, pirate radio such as the locally popular ‘Savage Yet Tender’ alternative broadcasting 1980′s group, net broadcasts, BBS systems, performance, intervention, events, pamphlets, warehouses and gallery spaces. In the early nineties, was co-sysop (systems operator) with Heath Bunting on Cybercafe BBS with Irational.org. Furtherfield’s mission is to co-create extraordinary art that connects with contemporary audiences providing innovative, engaging and inclusive digital and physical spaces for appreciating and participating in practices in art, technology and social change. As well as finding alternative ways around already dominating hegemonies, thus claiming for ourselves and our peer networks a culturally aware and critical dialogue beyond traditional hierarchical behaviours. Influenced by situationist theory, fluxus, free and open source culture, and processes of self-education and peer learning, in an art, activist and community context.