DIWO At the Dark Mountain: A Mail-Art project across physical and digital networks in collaboration with the Dark Mountain Project; to question the stories that underpin our failing civilisation and to craft new ones for the age ahead.

Join us for the DIWO co-curation event 12-3pm at HTTP Gallery Friday 27 November 2010 and Online here http://www.livestream.com/furtherfield. Log on at noon for a 12.15 start.

Join us to view the work and discuss the concepts and approaches explored and make decisions about how the work can best be displayed in the gallery.

From the webpage you will be able see and hear what we’re doing in the gallery and contribute to the discussion via instant messaging.

If you experience any problems, email aleATfurtherfieldDOTorg.

A Mail-Art project across physical and digital networks in collaboration with the Dark Mountain Project; to question the stories that underpin our failing civilisation and to craft new ones for the age ahead.

This was the second Do It With Others (DIWO) E-Mail-Art project initiated by Furtherfield. The first DIWO experiment in 2007 extended the Do-It-Yourself ethos of early net art, characterised by curiosity, activism and precision, towards a more collaborative approach, using the Internet as an experimental artistic medium and distribution system to foment grass-roots creativity.

The Dark Mountain Project is ‘a new cultural movement for an age of global disruption.’ It aimed to ‘question the stories that underpin our failing civilisation, to craft new ones for the age ahead and to write clearly and honestly about our true place in the world.’ Do It With Others (DIWO) at the Dark Mountain, a mail-art project at HTTP Gallery, is a cultural collaboration for this age. “Uncivilisation,” the Dark Mountain Manifesto, called for a cultural response to our current predicament. Its challenge was offered to network-minded artists, technologists, writers and activists as a provocation – to work together to re-envision the narratives and infrastructures that govern our relationships with the natural world, and how they might be unravelled and rewoven to reconfigure our place in it. As “Uncivilisation” concludes, ‘the end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop.’

Artists, technologists, writers, activists and all other living beings were invited to correspond with each other across physical and digital mail networks, and the exhibition at HTTP present the results of this process. These have been gathered and the presentation devised during an Open Curation event, involving collaborators in real and virtual space. Transmissions shown in the exhibition include collaborative image-threads, net artworks, digital videos, drawings, paintings on wall and paper, sound works, and the full text of the discussion generated on the NetBehaviour list presented in numerous forms. The opening also featured a performance representing a central controversy arising during the project. The exhibition offered new myths and maps for future uncivilisation at HTTP Gallery.

More about The Dark Mountain Project and Furtherfield

The Dark Mountain Project is curated by Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine. http://www.dark-mountain.net

Paul is the author of One No, Many Yeses and Real England. He was deputy editor of The Ecologist between 1999 and 2001. His first poetry collection, Kidland, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry.

Dougald writes the blog “Changing the World (and other excuses for not getting a proper job).” He is a former BBC journalist and co-founder of the School of Everything, and has written for and edited various online and offline magazines.

This project is part of Furtherfield’s on-going Media Art Ecologies programme, which aims to provide opportunities for critical debate, exchange and participation in emerging ecological media art practices, and the theoretical, political and social contexts they engage.

For details about the project, visit: http://http.uk.net/diwodarkmountain

For information about past events: 2009 | 2010

Do you want to Do It With Others in the future?

E-Mail: go to http://netbehaviour.org, subscribe to the NetBehaviour email list, correspond and join the explosive discussions in image, text, sound, movie and code.

An E-Mail-Art project on the NetBehaviour email list culminating in an exhibition at the HTTP Gallery in London.

Open Call for contributions from 31 January to 28 February 2007 via NetBehaviour email list.

Images from the show are – https://www.flickr.com/photos/http_gallery/albums/72157624491759868

Exhibition at HTTP Gallery in March 2007

The Do It With Others (DIWO) E-Mail-Art project aims to highlight the already thriving imaginations of those who use social networks and digital networks on the Internet as a form of distribution. Just like Mail Art, E-Mail-Art bridges the divide between artists and non-artists to share a freely accessible form of distribution.

The Mail Art projects of the 60s, 70s and 80s demonstrated Fluxus artists’ common disregard for the distinctions of ‘high’ and ‘low’ art and a disdain for what they saw as the elitist gate-keeping of the ‘high’ art world. They often took the form of themed, ‘open calls’, in which all submissions were exhibited and catalogued. Mail Art has always been a useful way to bypass curatorial restrictions for those who wish to create active and imaginative exchange on their own terms; this form of activity usually flourishes outside of the gallery system.

This E-Mail-Art project intends to follow the spirit of past Mail Art endeavours by asking those submitting their works to open themselves to a shared dialogue as part of the process and medium on the NetBehaviour mail list, as a playful platform for experimentation together at the same time.
The theme of this E-Mail-Art project is Do It With Others (DIWO).

This project suggests that we extend the DIY ethos of some early net art and tactical media (said to be motivated by curiosity, activism and precision) towards a more collaborative DIWO approach. Peers connect, communicate and collaborate, creating controversies, structures and culture using both digital networks and shared physical environments.

You are invited to contribute and curate text, images, sound, net movies, physical objects, installation plans etc. on the theme of DIWO, only via the NetBehaviour email list, towards an open exhibition at the HTTP Gallery in London that opens in March ’07.

To participate in Do It With Others (DIWO): E-Mail-Art at NetBehaviour please join the NetBehaviour email list: http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
What Will Happen?

All posts to the NetBehaviour email list between 31st January and 1st April 2007 will be considered part of the artistic and curatorial project. In the spirit of early Mail Art Do It With Others (DIWO): E-Mail-Art at NetBehaviour is completely open. For the HTTP Gallery contributors are be invited to propose works for networks, computers, screens, projection, sound, print…

31 January 2007: Contributions to Netbehaviour email list begin.
List members are invited to devise their own ordering and selection strategies for the exhibition.

25 February 2007, 2 – 5pm GMT: Collaborative Curation Event
Open review of contributions and discussion about the exhibition. The event will be available for viewing and interaction from the HTTP gallery. List contributions thus far will take physical form as an exhibition. Discussions using IM (chat) between Furtherfielders and other active contributors. Documented and posted to the list.

1 March 2007: Gallery Opening of Do It With Others (DIWO): E-Mail-Art at NetBehaviour

1 March – 1 April 2007: Continue to shape the exhibition via the email list by contributing more work, suggesting things be taken down, put back up, rearranged, anything!

1 May 2007: All contributions documented in a catalogue available as a pdf download.

The project will also be documented in the NetBehaviour email list archive and a blog maintained by Furtherfield newcomer Lauren Wright – LaurenDIWO’s Blog.

Do It With Others (DIWO): E-Mail-Art at NetBehaviour project by Ruth Catlow, Marc Garrett and Lauren Wright for Furtherfield in collaboration with all contributors to the NetBehaviour email list.