The research project “Creating Commons” explores interstitial practices which open the space between art and commons. They are challenging established notions of contemporary aesthetic practice as well as of contemporary commons, requiring the development of a new theoretical and aesthetic framework for this emerging field.
The framing questions for the research are:
– how can new forms of organization and collaboration bring forth different kinds of cultural works and social relations?
– how are new property relations articulated?
– how can artistic practices contribute to the further developement of the commons as inclusive, diverse and democratic forms of organization?
– what role can art and an expanded understanding of aesthetics play in the advancement of the commons as a political project?
We think these are urgent questions, because commons constitute constantly evolving realities pointing beyond the growing commercialization of culture and its damaging effects.
The research project is located at the Institute for Contemporary Art Research, Zurich University of the Arts, financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant: # 100016_169419) and conducted in cooperation with HeK (House of Electronic Arts Basel).
Research is conducted by Felix Stalder, Cornelia Sollfrank and Shusha Niederberger. The project started in January 2017 and runs for 36 months.
Alessandro Ludovico is the co-founder of neural, a printed magazine established in 1993 dealing with new media art, electronic music, and hacktivism.
This interview focusses on two things. First, Alessandro reflects on his experience of how print publications changed over the last 25 years and their potential in a fully digital universe. They are now less about providing access, but more about providing a filter and stability against the very dynamic overflow of information. The second major theme of the interview is the “temporary library”, a collaborative practice to create short-term specialized libraries in the context of cultural events (festivals, exhibitions, etc.). After the event, they are donated to established libraries, thus contributing to making underrepresented aspects of (digital) culture available in the long-term.
Sebastian Lütgert & Jan Gerber are two artists and programmers who developed the movie database 0xdb and its underlying software pan.do/ra. The more than 15,000 films in the database are objects that cover films hard to find online. 0xbd is not just a database for films but treats film as a veritable digital object, which allows new ways of dealing with films.
The project offers a number of special features such as the visualization of the timeline, time-based annotations, additional information and interlinking with other objects and information, and allows for in-depth search. The project stands in the tradition of autonomous archives and other critical media practices and has collaborated with artists and political activists worldwide. The software, as well as the movies, are available for free.