Dr Marc Garrett
Dr Marc Garrett recently completed his PhD at Birkbeck University, London, UK. His work explores postdigital contexts of working-class culture as part of an intersectional enquiry. He co-founded the arts collective Furtherfield as a collaborative platform online in 1996 with artist Ruth Catlow. It has two physical venues, a gallery and a Commons lab, both situated in the park in Finsbury Park, London. Garrett has curated over 50 contemporary Media Arts exhibitions, projects nationally and internationally.
Garrett is editor of the Furtherfield web site and has written many critical and cultural essays, articles, interviews, and books about art, technology and social change. Two key recent publications include co-editing: ‘State Machines: Reflections & Actions at the Edge of Digital Citizenship, Finance, & Art’, edited by Yiannis Colakides, Marc Garrett, Inte Gloerich. Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam 2019. ‘Artists Re: thinking the Blockchain with Ruth Catlow, Nathan Jones and Sam Skinner 2017, Torque. This year, ‘Frankenstein Reanimated: Conversations with Artists in Dystopian Times’, edited by Marc Garrett and Yiannis Colakides, 2020, Torque. Currently editing the book ‘Furtherfield: 25 years of Radical Friendships’, for 2021, Torque.
His art and activist history began in the late 80′s on the streets of Bristol, UK, 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 90s, I was co-sysop (systems operator) with Heath Bunting on the art and anarchist 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, hacktivism, and processes of self-education and peer learning, in an art, activist and community context.
Link to CV – https://marcgarrett.org/cv/
Marc Garrett | Exploring Class in Postdigital Cultures.
https://marcgarrett.org/
Furtherfield disrupts & democratises art and technology through exhibitions, labs & debate for deep exploration, free tools & open thinking. http://www.furtherfield.org
DECAL Decentralised Arts Lab is an art, blockchain & web 3.0 technologies research hub for fairer, more dynamic & connected cultural ecologies & economies now. http://decal.is/
Phone: +447533676047
Garrett is editor of the Furtherfield web site and has written many critical and cultural essays, articles, interviews, and books about art, technology and social change. Two key recent publications include co-editing: ‘State Machines: Reflections & Actions at the Edge of Digital Citizenship, Finance, & Art’, edited by Yiannis Colakides, Marc Garrett, Inte Gloerich. Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam 2019. ‘Artists Re: thinking the Blockchain with Ruth Catlow, Nathan Jones and Sam Skinner 2017, Torque. This year, ‘Frankenstein Reanimated: Conversations with Artists in Dystopian Times’, edited by Marc Garrett and Yiannis Colakides, 2020, Torque. Currently editing the book ‘Furtherfield: 25 years of Radical Friendships’, for 2021, Torque.
His art and activist history began in the late 80′s on the streets of Bristol, UK, 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 90s, I was co-sysop (systems operator) with Heath Bunting on the art and anarchist 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, hacktivism, and processes of self-education and peer learning, in an art, activist and community context.
Link to CV – https://marcgarrett.org/cv/
Marc Garrett | Exploring Class in Postdigital Cultures.
https://marcgarrett.org/
Furtherfield disrupts & democratises art and technology through exhibitions, labs & debate for deep exploration, free tools & open thinking. http://www.furtherfield.org
DECAL Decentralised Arts Lab is an art, blockchain & web 3.0 technologies research hub for fairer, more dynamic & connected cultural ecologies & economies now. http://decal.is/
Phone: +447533676047
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Papers by Dr Marc Garrett
Actively building and learning through combined ambitions to explore, change and study the world through art production has been a fascinating way of existing.
For nearly thirty years, this has evolved through being connected to various grassroots entities and enterprises, using technology and local (physical) environments and places. The research is gathered from events, exhibitions, and projects. Belonging to a small-scale group brings an interdisciplinary set of skills where the politics of scale is all too realistic concerning survival.
The phrase 'anyone can do it' was widely used within the punk underground and decades since. This simple philosophy reached a mass of individuals and groups who no longer accepted the given order of the day. They found solidarity and established tools to claim cultural territory, creativity, and social context on their terms.
It takes us back to the violent beginning as part of the Gordon Riots in 1780. The emergence of King Mob and similarly motivated riots in the late 20th century, linking them with the British faction of Situationists in the 60s and 70s and Malcolm McLaren and Punk.
It also asks what is a failure in terms of individuals and groups actively struggling to build agency in a world ruled by the privileged, and what can we learn from these passionate, dedicated, very creative people pathing the way for us now to build our own independent and grounded intentions today?
To unpack the above questions we look at different types of proprietorial systems, some locked and unlocked, and consider their influence on creative forms of production across the fields of the traditional artworld, and media art culture. We look at how artists are dealing with these issues through their artistic agency: individually, collaboratively, or as part of a group or collective. This includes looking at the intentions behind the works: their production and cultural and societal contexts, where different sets of values and new possibilities are emerging, across the practice of art, academia, and technology, and thus, the world.
Each artist(s) featured in this chapter delivers his or her own particular unofficial and official mode of art intervention at the Tate Gallery. Whether these interventions concern economic, social or political conditions, they all connect in different ways. Less in their style or genre than as contemporary artistic practitioners exploring their own states of agency in a world where our public interfaces are as much a necessary place of creative engagement, as is the already accepted physical ‘inner’ sanctum of the gallery space. These artists’ and their artworks have become as equally significant (perhaps even more) than, the mainstream art establishment’s franchised celebrities.
In his vindication of those artists hidden away in places where the art establishment’s light rarely shines, Gregory Sholette observes that “when, the excluded are made visible, when they demand visibility, it is always ultimately a matter of politics and rethinking history.” (Sholette 2011) This draws upon a contemporary art culture and its audiences beyond the mainstream. These artistic discoveries and discourse arise from an independent art culture that is rarely reflected back to us. Instead, we receive more of the same, marketed franchises. The central, mainstream version of contemporary art has found its allies within a global and corporate culture, where business dictates art value. Meanwhile, a spirit of artistic emancipation thrives. It is self styled, self governed and liberated from the restrictive norms that dominate our mediated gaze.
This text by Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett is a reflection on the NODE.London "experiment", its context, its cultures and the make up of its events, infrastructure and organisation. It points to some earlier grassroots media arts festivals in London and gives a bareÂbones description of the components of the NODE.London 2006 season. Taking Felix Stalder's analysis of the difference between Open Source and Open Culture, this text looks at how different ideas and approaches to networks and openness were played out in the first season. With a focus on organisational matters, it further makes some judgements about where these were fruitful and where they were problematic. Finally it looks at the work of OpenOrganizations as one example of alternative frameworks for grassroots organisations and suggests that by directly addressing the particular problem of organisation, it might be possible and worthwhile to support the development of grassroots media arts infrastructure in London, including the possible iterations of a NODE.London season.
Books by Dr Marc Garrett
Imagined as a future-artefact from a time before the blockchain changed the world, and a protocol by which a community of thinkers can transform what that future might be, Artists Re: Thinking The Blockchain acts as a gathering and focusing of contemporary ideas surrounding this still largely mythical and wildly hyped technology.
The book comprises documentation of artistic projects engaged in the blockchain, including foundational works Plantoid, Terra0, and Bittercoin; Theorisation of key areas in the global blockchain conversation by writers such as Hito Steyerl, Rachel O’Dwyer, Rob Myers, Ben Vickers and Holly Herndon; and new poetry, illustration and speculative fiction by Theodorios Chiotis, Cecilia Wee, Juhee Hahm and many more.
Threaded throughout the book is Finbook a web-based project in partnership with Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. Finbook is an interface where readers and bots can trade on the value of chapters included in the book, rendering the book with an Internet-of-Things like interactivity, and imagining a new regime for cultural value under blockchain conditions.
Actively building and learning through combined ambitions to explore, change and study the world through art production has been a fascinating way of existing.
For nearly thirty years, this has evolved through being connected to various grassroots entities and enterprises, using technology and local (physical) environments and places. The research is gathered from events, exhibitions, and projects. Belonging to a small-scale group brings an interdisciplinary set of skills where the politics of scale is all too realistic concerning survival.
The phrase 'anyone can do it' was widely used within the punk underground and decades since. This simple philosophy reached a mass of individuals and groups who no longer accepted the given order of the day. They found solidarity and established tools to claim cultural territory, creativity, and social context on their terms.
It takes us back to the violent beginning as part of the Gordon Riots in 1780. The emergence of King Mob and similarly motivated riots in the late 20th century, linking them with the British faction of Situationists in the 60s and 70s and Malcolm McLaren and Punk.
It also asks what is a failure in terms of individuals and groups actively struggling to build agency in a world ruled by the privileged, and what can we learn from these passionate, dedicated, very creative people pathing the way for us now to build our own independent and grounded intentions today?
To unpack the above questions we look at different types of proprietorial systems, some locked and unlocked, and consider their influence on creative forms of production across the fields of the traditional artworld, and media art culture. We look at how artists are dealing with these issues through their artistic agency: individually, collaboratively, or as part of a group or collective. This includes looking at the intentions behind the works: their production and cultural and societal contexts, where different sets of values and new possibilities are emerging, across the practice of art, academia, and technology, and thus, the world.
Each artist(s) featured in this chapter delivers his or her own particular unofficial and official mode of art intervention at the Tate Gallery. Whether these interventions concern economic, social or political conditions, they all connect in different ways. Less in their style or genre than as contemporary artistic practitioners exploring their own states of agency in a world where our public interfaces are as much a necessary place of creative engagement, as is the already accepted physical ‘inner’ sanctum of the gallery space. These artists’ and their artworks have become as equally significant (perhaps even more) than, the mainstream art establishment’s franchised celebrities.
In his vindication of those artists hidden away in places where the art establishment’s light rarely shines, Gregory Sholette observes that “when, the excluded are made visible, when they demand visibility, it is always ultimately a matter of politics and rethinking history.” (Sholette 2011) This draws upon a contemporary art culture and its audiences beyond the mainstream. These artistic discoveries and discourse arise from an independent art culture that is rarely reflected back to us. Instead, we receive more of the same, marketed franchises. The central, mainstream version of contemporary art has found its allies within a global and corporate culture, where business dictates art value. Meanwhile, a spirit of artistic emancipation thrives. It is self styled, self governed and liberated from the restrictive norms that dominate our mediated gaze.
This text by Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett is a reflection on the NODE.London "experiment", its context, its cultures and the make up of its events, infrastructure and organisation. It points to some earlier grassroots media arts festivals in London and gives a bareÂbones description of the components of the NODE.London 2006 season. Taking Felix Stalder's analysis of the difference between Open Source and Open Culture, this text looks at how different ideas and approaches to networks and openness were played out in the first season. With a focus on organisational matters, it further makes some judgements about where these were fruitful and where they were problematic. Finally it looks at the work of OpenOrganizations as one example of alternative frameworks for grassroots organisations and suggests that by directly addressing the particular problem of organisation, it might be possible and worthwhile to support the development of grassroots media arts infrastructure in London, including the possible iterations of a NODE.London season.
Imagined as a future-artefact from a time before the blockchain changed the world, and a protocol by which a community of thinkers can transform what that future might be, Artists Re: Thinking The Blockchain acts as a gathering and focusing of contemporary ideas surrounding this still largely mythical and wildly hyped technology.
The book comprises documentation of artistic projects engaged in the blockchain, including foundational works Plantoid, Terra0, and Bittercoin; Theorisation of key areas in the global blockchain conversation by writers such as Hito Steyerl, Rachel O’Dwyer, Rob Myers, Ben Vickers and Holly Herndon; and new poetry, illustration and speculative fiction by Theodorios Chiotis, Cecilia Wee, Juhee Hahm and many more.
Threaded throughout the book is Finbook a web-based project in partnership with Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. Finbook is an interface where readers and bots can trade on the value of chapters included in the book, rendering the book with an Internet-of-Things like interactivity, and imagining a new regime for cultural value under blockchain conditions.
Over the last decade artists have taken the engines and culture of digital games as their tools and materials. In doing so their work has connected with hacker mentalities and a culture of critical mash-up, recalling Situationist practices of the 1950s and 60s and challenging and overturning expected practice.
This publication looks at how a selection of leading artists, designers and commentators have challenged the norms and expectations of both game and art worlds with both criticality and popular appeal. It explores themes adopted by the artist that thinks and rethinks games and includes essays, interviews and artists' projects from Jeremy Bailey, Ruth Catlow, Heather Corcoran, Daphne Dragona, Mary Flanagan, Mathias Fuchs, Alex Galloway, Marc Garrett, Corrado Morgana, Anne-Marie Schleiner, David Surman, Tale of Tales, Bill Viola, and Emma Westecott.