marc garrett
Since the beginning
Works in London United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

ARTBASE (1)
PORTFOLIO (3)
BIO
Marc Garrett is co-director and co-founder, with artist Ruth Catlow of the Internet arts collectives and communities – Furtherfield.org, Furthernoise.org, Netbehaviour.org, also co-founder and co-curator/director of the gallery space formerly known as 'HTTP Gallery' now called the Furtherfield Gallery in London (Finsbury Park), UK. Co-curating various contemporary Media Arts exhibitions, projects nationally and internationally. Co-editor of 'Artists Re:Thinking Games' with Ruth Catlow and Corrado Morgana 2010. Hosted Furtherfield's critically acclaimed weekly broadcast on UK's Resonance FM Radio, a series of hour long live interviews with people working at the edge of contemporary practices in art, technology & social change. Currently doing an Art history Phd at the University of London, Birkbeck College.

Net artist, media artist, curator, writer, street artist, activist, educationalist and musician. 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.

Our 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.
Discussions (1712) Opportunities (15) Events (175) Jobs (2)
DISCUSSION

Furtherfield Blog - Recent Posts of Interest on Media Art Practice and Culture (Feb 09).


Furtherfield Blog - Recent Posts of Interest on Media Art Practice and Culture (Feb 09).

The Furtherfield Blog is a shared space for personal reflections on Media Art practice: making it, curating it, translating it.

Here is a selection of recent Blog entries below,
to read more visit - http://blog.furtherfield.org

WikiPedia art?
Submitted by Patrick Lichty.
On WIKI as Art - On Valentine's Day 2009, Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern launched the Wikipedia art page, which resonated with the history of media art, authorship, and media formalism on many levels. Has this particular piece updated Beuys' admonition of the openness of art? Not only that, does art based on open Web 2.0 standards like the Wiki define art that is a palimpsest by definition? What is interesting yet disturbing about this is not only the obliteration of discrete authorship, but the total indeterminacy of intellectual ownership whatsoever.

For example, what happens when the conceptual work of art is left open, such as Douglas Davis “World's First Collaborative Sentence”, but is allowed to be opened to anyone, without “gatekeeping”, and the work is open to repetitive writing and re-writing to the point where it is possible that the only remnant is the gesture itself. I'm sure that Kildall & Stern, and their initial collaborators will be documented as the progenitor of the form, but the destination of the vector is by no means assured.
permlink - http://blog.furtherfield.org/?q=node/267

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How creatively bad can it get?
Submitted by Aileen Derieg.
When I received the invitation from the Chamber of Commerce (of which I am automatically a member, because I have a business license) to a presentation and discussion of "Creative Community Linz" followed by a "creative buffet" and "networking", everything about it seemed to be sending me alarm signals, so it was a real challenge not to reach a negative judgment too quickly. Concerned about what kinds of plans might be underway, which could conceivably have a longer-term impact on the field I work in, I sent an RSVP via email (since there was no card in the invitation) that I would be coming. I never received confirmation, but at least my name was on the list when I got to the Ars Electronica Center last Tuesday afternoon.
permlink - http://blog.furtherfield.org/?q=node/266

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scanz, collective intelligence, and another disappearing body
Submitted by Helen Varley Jamieson.
I am about to leave the house to drive up to new plymouth and the SCANZ symposium, where i'm presenting with several remote collaborators the performative presentation "Enacting Collective Intelligence", in UpStage (you can join in online - there will be live links from the UpStage site half an hour before the show, which is sunday 8th at 11am for us here in nz, probably saturday night for many of you. there is a time converter on the UpStage site).
http://blog.furtherfield.org/?q=node/265

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Eco Fury and Man with Head in a Box.
Submitted by Ruth Catlow.
Eco-scope (http://terranode.org/ecoScope/) is a communication tool that provides a context for discussing environmental affairs, acknowledging "by its structure the importance of participation in any meaningful solutions that can be imagined". Last week Marc and I were interviewed by Andy Deck of Transnational Temps - http://www.transnationaltemps.net/ (creators of Eco-scope) about our take on media art and ecology. It is currently featured in a touring exhibition called Ecomedia - Ecological Strategies in Today's Art - http://www.edith-russ-haus.de/english/ecomedia.html . The variety of ways in which conversations can be retrieved and redistributed via Eco-scope is very powerful. The viewer of the archive can read a straight transcript of the conversation or they can control the speed of the chat replayed through the interface- this allows them to speed-read for an impression of the discussion or to take their time and follow up links.
Permlink - http://blog.furtherfield.org/?q=node/264

More Info:
This multi-blog is a place to intuitively explore media arts practice, together, as it occurs, to develop understanding and to learn, without any pressure to formulate complete arguments or to come up with answers. The blog was set up in Autumn 2006, initially as a place for informal,
day to day exchange between members of the Furtherfield.org (www.furtherfield.org) team, including editors/reviewers. The team discovered that this format suited some people more than others and are now open to new contributors. The Furtherfield blog is not intended as a platform to promote particular projects. Instead bloggers explore their own perspectives on their own terms; personal thoughts, emotional responses and critical intentions that are rarely publicly discussed elsewhere in such detail.


EVENT

Transmediale.09 Deep North


Dates:
Tue Feb 03, 2009 00:00 - Tue Feb 03, 2009

Review By Giles Askham.

The Transmediale.09 Deep North Festival purports to construct an impression of the polar regions as a place that can be "imagined but never truly captured". In seeking to move beyond prevailing notions of catastrophic environmental change and to examine its broader cultural consequences, the festival aims to adapt and explore creative technologies and point the way to political transformation and creative sustainability.


DISCUSSION

turbulence sustainability


Hi Annie & all,

Myself & some of the Furtherfield crew have already donated last week.

I have no hesitation in supporting them, they are simply magnificent - not only because they think beyond typical top-down, old fashioned, nationalistic clich'e protocols/behaviours that, most other media art, orientated groups fall into unimaginatively, as in the 'profile' above creativity 'syndrome'. But also, because they are genuine people who actually respect and believe in the artists that they work with, now that is value! The REAL STUFF!

Wishing Turbulence and Networked_Performance well - pleae survive, for all our sakes...

marc

Furtherfield - online media arts community.
http://www.furtherfield.org

HTTP Gallery - physical media arts Gallery (London).
http://www.http.uk.net

Furthernoise - online media arts music community.
http://www.furthernoise.org

Netbehaviour - email list community for discussion.
http://www.netbehaviour.org

Furtherfield Blog - shared space for personal reflections on media art practice.
http://blog.furtherfield.org

VisitorsStudio - real-time, multi-user, online arena for creative 'many to many' dialogue, networked performance and collaborative polemic.
http://www.visitorsstudio.org


EVENT

Interviewing The Crisis - Art Is Open Source interviews Marc Garrett.


Dates:
Sat Jan 10, 2009 00:00 - Sat Jan 10, 2009

image

Marc Garrett from Furtherfield.org interviewed by Art Is Open Source.
"His interview is an incredible text that shows more than “art”, accessing dimensions that show how new practices can create a physical and networked-to-a-human-scale critique to the world that is around us. A use of networking that is centered on human beings that need/want to act/react. A form of life. Technology, network, sociality and positive attitudes as the necessary set of tools to confront the contemporary era." Art Is Open Source.

In this interview Marc discusses how the finacial crises and how the cuts in arts fundng has been and is continuing to affect art freedoms in the UK, Canada the USA and elsewhere. With reference to how the Olympics, nationalism, art cuts and wars are from the same source of neoliberalist strategies, "Many of our institutions have been committed in taking on and implementing their own global and local versions of neoliberalism, where it has seeped into the very infrastructures and consciousness of our entertainment industries, the arts, academia, business, governments and broadcasting media, news publications; where corporate agendas (and governmental schemes) matter more than the health of the planet, human contexts and social needs. Where the value of human life has been worth less than product and fanciful ideologies. In a world when genuine concerns are expressed, they are constantly ignored systematically, or at best paid lip-service and treated as annoying irritants. Together, we need to rethink things and negotiate ways out of these cul-de sacs. To be concerned and thinking about these things really should not be seen as extremist or radical, it is simply common sense." Marc Garrett.

Furtherfield believes that through creative and critical engagement with practices in art and technology people are inspired and enabled to become active co-creators of their cultures and societies. We provide and collaborate with platforms for creating, viewing, discussing and learning about experimental practices at the intersections of art, technology and social change.

Italian & English version here:
http://www.artsblog.it/post/2803/intervistando-la-crisi-con-marc-garrett-part-2

Art Is Open Source:
http://www.artisopensource.net


DISCUSSION

Reminder - Exhibition at HTTP by Doron Golan and Michael Szpakowski - Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent...


Reminder...

Exhibition at HTTP by Doron Golan and Michael Szpakowski - Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent...

WHEREOF ONE CANNOT SPEAK,

THEREOF ONE MUST BE SILENT:

DORON GOLAN AND MICHAEL SZPAKOWSKI

HTTP Gallery
16 January-1 March 2009
Open Friday-Sunday 12-5
Private View: 16 January 7-9pm

Furtherfield.org and HTTP Gallery are pleased to publish a new essay by critic and historian Edward Picot about Golan and Szpakowski’s work on the occasion of the exhibition, available at http://www.http.uk.net

Collaboration is working together. Can two people work together without ever having met?

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent, at HTTP Gallery demonstrates that they can. The exhibition takes its title from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by the philosopher of language Ludwig Wittgenstein. It explores a collaboration between two artists across distance through the ineffable language of image. Israeli video artist and film-maker Doron Golan and British artist, composer and educator Michael Szpakowski both make digital films, which they share through websites and email lists, exploring the mystery of everyday life and of being a human in this place and this time. Over the years, the two artists have developed a dialogue and friendship through the exchange of their work. Since 2005 they have collaborated to found and curate DVblog.org, a ground-breaking early platform for art films on the Internet. And yet they've never met face to face .

HTTP Gallery in North London is pleased to host the first meeting between Golan and Szpakowski and their art, in real space. Making their online collaborative process physical, the central installation has three elements: a new silent film by each of the artists with a new musical composition by Szpakowski. Bearing their shared sympathies in mind, the artists have independently determined the length and subjects of their films. As a result, the correspondences and resonances between the works are as yet unknown, and will change constantly. The collaborative installation will be accompanied by elements of their independent practices, including a new installation by Szpakowski utilising video and silver birch branches and a selection of Golan's recent videos, engaging with elements of life in the Middle East and his native Israel, to which he has returned after many years in New York City.

Doron Golan lives and works in and Tel Aviv. He works primarily with digital video and computer animation. Golan has shown extensively internationally, including recently at the Haifa Museum of Art, Israel, ART BASEL - Miami Beach, USA, Museu da Imagem e do Som, São Paulo, Brasil, and The Academy of Electronic Arts, New Delhi, India. He is founder of computerfinearts.com, an online collection of Internet art. Christiane Paul of the Whitney Museum of American Art wrote that "the 'holdings' of the Computer Fine Arts collection are a microcosm of Net art that perfectly illustrates the breadth of artistic practice on the Web."

Michael Szpakowski has exhibited in galleries in Europe, the US and Australia and his short videos have been screened all over the world. His music has been performed in Russia, the United States and the UK, at venues including the Purcell Room on London’s South Bank and Birmingham Symphony Hall, and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and the World Service. Szpakowski’s work in diverse educational and community contexts helps participants to engage with human and social content though tools, techniques and processes of media arts, often resulting in accessible and genuinely enjoyable works co-created by all participants.

For more information about the artists please visit:
Doron Golan: http://www.the9th.com , http://computerfinearts.com
Michael Szpakowski: http://www.somedancersandmusicians.com
both run http://dvblog.org

Contact:

Lauren Wright, HTTP Gallery
laurenAfurtherfieldDOTorg
HTTP Gallery
Unit A2, Arena Design Centre,
71 Ashfield Rd, London N4 1NY.

http://www.http.uk.net

HTTP Gallery is Furtherfield.org’s dedicated space for media art. Furtherfield.org provides platforms for creating, viewing, discussing and learning about experimental practices in art and technology. Furtherfield.org and HTTP Gallery are supported by Arts Council England, London.