Summercamp Symposia - 6 August

About

For our second Summercamp series we have invited Furtherfield to develop and lead a day-long symposium, entitled Do It With Others - Art and Solidarity in the Age of Networks. 

Furtherfield create online and physical spaces and places for different kinds of people to come together to get involved with contemporary arts and digital technologies. It was founded by artists Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett in 1996. Furtherfield is a dynamic, creative and social nerve centre where upwards of 26,000 contributors worldwide have built a visionary culture around co-creation – swapping and sharing code, music, images, video and ideas.

Do It With Others - Art and Solidarity in the Age of Networks will explore art as a commons (defined as the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society) in the age of networks and neoliberalism. It will ask how practices, circulation, appreciation and stewardship of arts be emancipated for all. Presentations and discussions include work drawing on the summer programme at Furtherfield's Gallery and Commons lab, exploring tensions between digital inclusion and cultural diversity in the digital global hegemony.

Schedule

12pm- Arrival. Wysing has a café onsite which will be open throughout the day for food and drink  

12.20pm - Introduction to the day by Ruth Catlow  

The first part of the day will address the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society 

12.30pm - Marc Garrett, Unblocking proprietary systems. Marc Garrett, presents his research into different types of grassroots culture and the ways in which they actively re-examine, critique, and hack their way around the controlling conditions of black boxes, proprietary systems and techno-cultural production. These cultures (their tactics and strategies)  return control to the users and remodels relationships between the individual and the institutional edifice: in academia, in the arts, technological fields of practice, and as part of everyday life.

1pm -Tim Waterman, Situating the Commons.Tim Waterman, landscape architect and theorist, will discuss how the negotiation of the commons takes place in two distinct realms that are increasingly reaching into and shaping one another: the long history of the landscape commons both in cities and in the countryside, and across digital networks. In both realms we find the continued project of the enclosures, appropriating forms of collectively-created use value and converting it, wherever possible, into exchange value. 
 

1.30pm - Ruth Catlow, DIWO to DAOWO - Collaborative arts and the blockchain. The DIWO (Do It With Others) campaign for emancipatory, networked art practices was instigated by Furtherfield in 2006 and it is informing an artistic engagement with new blockchain technologies; to organise, cooperate, p2p and at scale to transform approaches to contemporary economic and social challenges.

2pm - Open discussion moderated by artist and curator Gretta Louw

2.30pm - Break

This part of the day will draw on the summer programme at Furtherfield's Gallery and Commons lab, exploring tensions between digital inclusion and cultural diversity in the digital global hegemony.

3pm - Gretta Louw, Networking the Unseen. Networking the Unseen, which is currently on view at Furtherfield gallery, is the first exhibition of its kind to focus on the intersection of indigenous cultures and zeitgeist digital practices in contemporary art. Featuring art works – installations and digital media – made in collaboration with artists from the Warnayaka indigenous art centre in Central Australia. Artist and curator Gretta Louw, will discuss postcolonial digital arts practice in relation to the exhibition and event series that brings together concepts and experiences of remoteness and marginalised cultures, with art-making in contemporary society.
 

3.30pm - They Are Here, Finsbury Park Network. Combining DIY digital culture with socially engaged activity, Helen Walker & Harun Morrison of They Are Here are collaborating with local residents and organisations across Finsbury Park. Working with recently published open source software, they will establish an online network independent of cellular networks and the World Wide Web. They are exploring ways of integrating this network with local community garden activity; enabling data from these microhabitats to affect the communication system.  

4pm - Open discussion moderated by Ruth Catlow  

4.45pm - Closing remarks by Marc Garrett  

5pm - End of the day