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

ARTBASE (1)
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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.
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DISCUSSION

Website linked to far right hit list


Website linked to far right hit list
Home secretary under pressure to clamp down on fascist groups. Matthew
Taylor on a campaign of violence via the internet
Matthew Taylor
Wednesday December 17, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/race/story/0,11374,1108566,00.html
The home secretary, David Blunkett, is coming under increasing pressure to
shut down an extreme rightwing website following the discovery of a secret
hitlist of targets - including social workers, journalists and politicians.
The Guardian has seen documents from a secure email network which show
hardline fascists are planning a campaign of "violence and intimidation" and
are swapping information on bomb-making and details of possible targets.
The group is linked to the Redwatch website which carries hundreds of
pictures and details of anti-fascists - many taken during protests against
the British National Party - alongside the slogan "Remember places,
traitors' faces, they'll all pay for their crimes."
Only a handful of known neo-Nazis have access to the network which has been
infiltrated for the first time by researchers at the anti-fascist
organisation Searchlight.
Many of those featured on Redwatch have already suffered threats,
intimidation and physical assaults and campaigners fear the discovery of the
new email group, nicknamed Mole Intelligence Bureau, signals a worrying
escalation in far right violence.
A dossier on the website has been compiled by the National Union of
Journalists in Leeds and sent to the police and a local MP who passed it to
the home secretary.
A spokesman for the Home Office told the Guardian: "We are very aware of the
anxiety caused by the presence of such material on the internet. The Home
Office has had representations from many MPs about Redwatch and we will be
responding to their concerns very soon."
Unions, anti-fascist groups and MPs are looking at ways of closing the site
and prosecuting those involved.
"This email network is a very sinister development," said a spokesman for
Searchlight. "There are explicit threats against people who have stood up to
the far right and this is nothing more than political intimidation and
classic fascism."
Many of those featured on the site are people who have spoken out against
the rise of the British National Party in the north of England. During
anti-fascist meetings and protests in the runup to last year's local
elections many BNP activists took pictures of anti-fascist campaigners which
appeared on Redwatch.
Next June the BNP, which has sought to position itself as a respectable,
mainstream political party under the leadership of Nick Griffin, is expected
to field a record number of candidates in the local and European elections.
In many parts of the country all the seats on local councils are being
contested following boundary changes and anti-fascists are predicting the
biggest electoral push by the far right in recent British history.
In the private email network fascists list names and addresses of targets
and plan attacks on anti-racists in their homes or during public meetings.
One subscriber, who calls himself MIB, wrote: "Redwatch has accumulated many
names and addresses along with pictures of the targets, many of whom have
had nothing done to them. Now's the time to start a proper campaign of
violence and intimidation towards those who seek to see us silenced or
imprisoned for our beliefs."
The site has details of how to make plastic explosives and bomb designs.
One of the targets of the Mole Intelligence Bureau has been Yorkshire
Evening Post journalist Peter Lazenby, who has campaigned against racism and
fascism in Yorkshire. He was singled out after an expose of the British
National Party in the runup to last year's local elections.
Numerous addresses for Mr Lazenby were posted on the site for members to
"check out." One message read: "We need to find this reporter fast. If we
can scare this cunt off then we might get an easier time instead of being
slagged off and made to look a bunch of muppets."
The National Union of Journalists said Mr Lazenby was one of many members
who had suffered at the hands of Redwatch. "The site is about intimidation
and it's intended to stop our members doing their job, particularly when
they are exposing fascism. We have talked to our lawyers about trying to get
this site closed down but it is very difficult legally."
The MP for Reading West, Martin Salter, received a death threat from a BNP
supporter this summer after speaking out against the far right, and believes
it is crucial to tackle Redwatch.
"There are sinister elements within the far right of British politics who
are prepared to use violence and intimidation in order to silence and
discourage their opponents. They are the new model army of fascism and
Redwatch is at the centre of this evil."
In Leeds last year two teachers, Sally Kincaid and Steve Johnson, had their
car firebombed after their details - including photographs, address and car
registration number - were posted on the site. Another target was an
Anti-Nazi League activist from Halifax.
A couple of months later a leaflet including the man's home address was
distributed in his neighbourhood trying to link him and other local
activists to the mass murderers Fred West and Dennis Nilson.
In another message, posted by a BNP supporter from Batley, the people behind
Redwatch are asked if they have any intention of attending an anti-racist
meeting in Dewsbury in June. The event, which was addressed by Leon
Greenman, a Holocaust survivor, was described as a "Holohoax meeting".
One respondent advised: "The best place to attack the reds [is] just after
the meeting finishes as they are walking to catch their buses or going for
their cars." Police attended the meeting and ensured there was no trouble.
In early August, a message on the Mole Intelligence bulletin board listed
dozens of people in Yorkshire for further research, including the divisional
police commanders for Dewsbury and Huddersfield, the chief executive of
Kirklees Council, the director of a West Yorkshire health authority and
housing officers.
The Redwatch website, which also lists the home addresses of some MPs and
councillors, was launched in 2001 and has more than 1,000 photographs. In
most cases the pictures are unidentified but names, addresses, car
registrations, phone numbers and even workplace details are linked to
others.
It operates under the auspices of Combat 18, the neo-Nazi group, and takes
its name from a news sheet that C18 leaders in London produced in the early
1990s. Like now, it listed names and addresses of anti-racists and
encouraged other rightwingers to ring them up or pay them a visit.
To prevent internet attack and police action, Redwatch is hosted on three
separate sites all based abroad. One is registered in the name of the
National Front and the other two in the name of the White Nationalist Party
which is thought to be the political wing of Combat 18.
Alec McFadden, president of Merseyside TUC, appeared on the site with his
name and address after being followed home last month.
"In 1988 the fascists tried to kill me when my car was fire bombed," Mr
McFadden told the Guardian.
"Since then I have lived in secrecy and sometimes under police protection.
But now they have got my details again I'm having to have CCTV installed and
I have two children to think of. My wife, who has died, was a German Jew and
I speak to her family about this and, as they say, it is classic fascist
tactics and they know more than most that we mustn't give in to these
people.

DISCUSSION

Vision Bender/gravity


Vision Bender/gravity

Angle-less does despise - it does over emphasize
my physical loss of movement, jailing thy scope
I am groping for room for breath, it does grope

Dangerous eyes do meander - they gander any gender
a vision sender and life bender, sight dispenser
emotional inventor of what I have not yet comprehender

It rests in most corners, sitting like a friend
lingering, sniggering. It mingles everywhere
sharing its endless innards - sublime, all the time

Killer of my space, rapid, invading space and I am
a star homing into its Cyclops eye. Caught among the
flicker, flickering its emotional maze, trapping

Bulger's last testament - our mutual haze is collected
spliced and then it becomes part of the visual noise.
Squeezing blurred info, info radical, it spies

Whether calamity or vanity, it is here, there, no care
for path tredders, concrete pacers, measured am I.
Sought by dangerous eyes, it does despise my own eyes

Dead, wired into my life and yours, and it is our life
it desires. It wants, my situation is clocked.
Planted, stunted is one's growth, choking my mind

It rewinds the motion, a constant assault teeeezing
thy emotional glands. It does marginalize my action,
my movements. Jailing thy scope, limiting hope

Outer eye, evil eye, watching my personal growth, out
here. Consuming one's space, no grace, in yer face,
our race is traced, and then reinvented, displaced...

http://www.furtherfield.org/otmonkeys/docs/gravity.htm

DISCUSSION

Double Speak - Ouch Those Monkey's


Double Speak - Ouch Those Monkey's
Independent CDR Album

Constantly innovating and prolific in their free downloads, OTM have once
again shattered all pre-conceptions with the release of their debut album
'Double Speak'. Whilst retaining their off beat quirkiness, OTM have
nurtured a subtlety and space in their music which was perhaps understated
in previous tracks. Musically the sounds on this album are as diverse as
they are uncompromising, melding dark square sine waves with casio-esque
beatbox manipulations, bringing broken tempo's to heel before splintering
into grooves that will have your feet grinding. Their palette of sounds is
primarily electronic and doctored samples, evidenced by the many
instrumental & vocal manipulations. Time stretched, reversed and sampled
back in again, they create ideal textures for the playful poetics of OTM
mainstay and vocalist Marc Garret, who's deadpan delivery is a great
contrast to the lyrical, heartfelt themes of sexuality & humanity. However,
it's not long before he is expounding darker more gritty sentiments, some of
which could be interpreted as veiled messages for the net world. There are
many layers to this production and something new reveals itself on each
subsequent listen but always with humour and poignancy. (Roger Mills -
Skunkmonkey.co.uk)

This release is available at - http://www.skunkmonkey.co.uk/shop.htm

http://www.furtherfield.org/otmonkeys/

DISCUSSION

New work & reviews on Furtherfield - Nov 03


New work & reviews on Furtherfield - Nov 03
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://www.furtherfield.org All recent works can be accessed via front page.

Le Catalogue - h-arn.org

In Le Catalogue, the mastermind behind h-arn.org has created a database of
documentary images (an archive) of art projects between 1990-1996 available
for public access. Every time an image is viewed, a horizontal and vertical
line forming a cross is added to the archived image, which is then again
stored for access by another user. The more the images are accessed, the
more they are abstracted or -- if one is thinking of preservation --
destroyed.
Review by Eduardo Navas - Net Art Review.
http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_ide

Let it Beep - Pink Twins

The Finnish duo Pink Twins, the brothers Vesa and Jusu Vehvilainen, started
to work together in 1997. Since then they have been exploring visual and
sonic noise combined in a most physical experience. Sampling the everyday
images and tearing them apart to pixels then putting them together again to
a chaotic and blasting unity.
Review by Bjorn Norberg, curator of the nonTVTVstation.
http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_idd

Mark Cooley - WarProductWar.

A sobering net journey, declaring news information about corporations such
as Exxon gaining record breaking profits of $7bn during the start of the
three-month period of the war in Iraq. This is net art as information
offering a political subjectivity. For declaring subjectivity is to declare
context, if that is eliminated, cut up and pared down by the corporate media
via divisive means in the form of propaganda, then the real substance,
spirit and essence of humanity is much easier to deny.
Reviewed by Marc Garrett.
http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_idY

Confrontation - Abrahams/Clement Charmet.

'Confrontation' is a collage of 3 elements, variously constructed and
channelled by Annie Abrahams/Clement Charmet. They have worked with PHP (the

source code is available on request) and Flash, to pull in images from the
web, to allow viewers to interject their texts, and to stream an audio
recording to the theatre of the web page.

This work is a cycling, multilingual, taxonomy of human intention at war.
Visual and textual language harvested from the web and input by visitors to
the site are fodder for an algorithm that intertwines corporate, promotional
and news content with the interior world of the viewer/contributor.

Reviewed by Ruth Catlow.
http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_idX

Information Works - Ricardo Miranda Zuniga.

The term "Information Age" suggests that the most important thing being
produced now is information in the form of knowledge, data and formulas as
opposed to things made of bronze or steel. Likewise, the economy is said to
be one trafficking in services, like data processing and telemarketing,
rather than the manufacturing of cars and kitchen appliances. Of course, as
some (if not enough) have pointed out, the complimentary myths of the
"Service Economy" and "Information Age" are dependent on a highly selective
field of vision that excludes the simultaneous existence of "older"
economies. The "Information Age" is the surface of Fritz Lang's Metropolis
where the machines of production are working well beneath the surface.
Article by Ryan Griffis FurtherCritc on Furtherfield.
http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_idc

Interview with Ricardo Miranda Zuniga by Ryan Griffis.

"The majority of the work I do draws from current sociopolitical issues
that I feel must be publicized and protested. In so far as creating art that
attempts to approach activism, I question the relevance and potential of
on-screen virtual/networked art. I believe that in order to create work that
embraces activism the work presents greater potential when embodied in the
physical space, more importantly the public space to create dialogue between
diverse individuals. Of course, I can't negate the web's power as a
communication and dissemination vehicle, therefore, nearly all the projects
that I do have a web component in which information, creative visualization
and related links are presented to support the sculptural elements of a
given project."
http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_idb

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and archiving of adventurous digital/net art work for public viewing,
experience and interaction.

Furtherfield creates imaginative strategies that actively communicate ideas
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Furtherfield collaborates with artists, programmers, writers, activists,
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DISCUSSION

Re: Hello Rhizome! Welcome to DC forum!


Hi T.Whid,

I thought that this was the sepreate email list thang
mailinglists@switchstance.com

That's whom I'm writing to...

marc

> Hi,
>
> is there a separate mailing list for this discussion or it will take
> place on Rhiz?
>
> If we post to Rhiz, it shows up in the DC forum?
>
> sorry, slightly confused :-)
>
> thx
>
>
> On Nov 26, 2003, at 10:01 AM, Joline Blais wrote:
>
> > Hello Rhizome members!
> >
> > We are eager to have you join us for week 3 of the Distributed
> > Creativity Forum.,'Digital Karma: Innovation in Ethics,