Aaaaarg

The Public School, Los Angeles, 2010.

AAAAARG (originally AAARG, the acronym of Artists, Architects, and Activists Reading Group [1]) is an online text repository. It was created by the artist Sean Dockray in 2005 and serves as a library for The Public School, a framework supporting autodidact activities. Aaaaarg has grown into a community of researchers and enthusiasts from contemporary art, critical theory, philosophy, and related fields who maintain, catalog, annotate and run discussions relevant to their research interests.

Essays, interviews and statements

• David Elliott, "Interview with Sean Dockray / The Public School", c.May 2009. (English)

• Julian Myers, Sean Dockray, "Four Dialogues 2: On AAAARG", Open Space blog, San Francisco: SFMOMA, 26 Aug 2009. (English)

• Janneke Adema, "Scanners, collectors and aggregators. On the ‘underground movement’ of (pirated) theory text sharing", Open Reflections blog, Sep 2009. (English)

• Morgan Currie, "Small is Beautiful: a discussion with AAAARG architect Sean Dockray", Masters of Media blog, University of Amsterdam, 5 Jan 2010. (English)

• Sean Dockray, Matteo Pasquinelli, Jason Smith and Caleb Waldorf (The Public School Los Angeles), "There is Nothing Less Passive Than the Act of Fleeing", ...ment 1, 2010, PDF. (English)

• Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu, "The AAAARG.org Discussion of the Macmillan Threat", Mitochondrial Vertigo blog, Apr 2010. (English)

• Vivian Ziherl, "The Future And The Public School. Interview", un. Magazine 4:2, 2010, pp 22-26, PDF. (English)

• Randall Szott, "Sean Dockray Interview", 127 Prince, 4 Oct 2010. (English)

• Marcus Boon, "Uploading My Book to AAAAARG.ORG", In Praise of Copying blog, 15 Oct 2010. (English)

• Matthew Fuller, "In the Paradise of Too Many Books: An Interview with Sean Dockray", Mute, London, 4 May 2011. (English)

• Jeff Khonsary, "Browsing the AAAARG Library", Fillip 13, Spring 2011. (English)

• [Federico Campagna], "Interview with AAAAARG.org", in We Have Our Own Concept of Time and Motion, eds. Auto Italia, 2011, pp 17-18. [2] (English)

• "Partials That Can Circulate. Sean Dockray, Founder of Aaarg.org Interviewed by Charles Stankievitch", in Ex Libris: Commonplace Books, Berlin: K. Verlag, 2013, pp 1-2. Conducted via email in Jul/Aug 2013. [3] (English)

• Sean Dockray, "Openings and Closings", in Contestations: Learning From Critical Experiments in Education, eds. Tim Ivison and Tom Vandeputte, Bedford Press, 2013. Commentary by Jacqueline Bell. (English)

• Jodi Dean, Sean Dockray, Alessandro Ludovico, Pauline van Mourik, Broekman, Nicholas Thoburn and Dmitry Vilensky, "Materialities of Independent Publishing: A Conversation with AAAAARG, Chto Delat?, I Cite, Mute, and Neural", New Formations 78 (Aug 2013), pp 157-178. (English)

• Cornelia Sollfrank, "Expanded Appropriation", video interview with Sean Dockray including transcription and introduction, part of Giving What You Don't Have, 2013. (English)

• Pelle Snickars, "Publikationshack", in Universitetet som medium, eds. Matts Lindström and Adam Wickberg Månsson, Stockholm: Mediehistoriskt arkiv, 2015, pp 9-46. (Swedish)

• Sean Dockray, Lawrence Liang, "Sharing Instinct: An Annotation of the Social Contract Through Shadow Libraries", e-flux journal 56th Venice Biennale, 14 Aug 2015. (English)

• Sean Dockray, "What is the Relationship between Institutions and Counter-Institutions?", Post Digital Cultures symposium, Lausanne, 5 Dec 2015. Video, 36 min. (English)

• "aaaaarg lawsuit digest", Nettime list discussion, Jan 2016.

• Jonathan Basile, "Who's Afraid of AAARG?", Guernica, 25 Aug 2016. (English)

• Danny Butt, Scott McQuire, Nikos Papastergiadis, "Platforms and Public Participation", Continuum, 2016, pp 1-10. (English)

• Charles Stankievech, "Letter to the Superior Court of Quebec Regarding Arg.org", in Fantasies of the Library, eds. Anna-Sophie Springer and Etienne Turpin, MIT Press, 2016, pp 98-110. (English)

• Cornelia Sollfrank, "The Practice of Sharing Knowledge, Interview with Sean Dockray", Mar 2019, 28 min. Video. Conducted Oct 2017 at HEK, Zurich. Part of the Creating Commons project. (English)

• Olga Goriunova, "Uploading our Libraries: The Subjects of Art and Knowledge Commons", in Aesthetics of the Commons, eds. Cornelia Sollfrank, Felix Stalder and Shusha Niederberger, Zurich: diaphanes, Jan 2021, pp 41-61. (English)

Events

• The Public School (Paris), series of seminars, Bétonsalon, Paris, September 2009-March 2011.

• There is nothing less passive than the act of fleeing..., roaming seminar organised by Sean Dockray, Caleb Waldorf and Fiona Whitton, Berlin, 4-18 July 2010. [4] [5]

• AAAARG Library, site-specific installation, in conjunction with the fifth annual NY Art Book Fair, MoMA PS1, 5–7 November 2010. Commissioned by Fillip (Vancouver). Announcement, [6].

Links

• Website
• The Public School meetings archive, 2009-2016
• Aaaaarg on Memory of the World
• Twitter
• Wikipedia-DE