Autonomy Project Newspaper, 1-3 (2010-2012)

Autonomy Project Newspaper, 1: Positions, 2010

The Autonomy Project is an international collaboration between art/education/research institutes and organisations, practitioners and thinkers. The project began in 2010 and seeks to redefine and redress the issues around autonomy in the fields of art, design, theory and cultural policy today. From a multi faceted geographic and political context, the project will facilitate a number of events, exhibitions and publications in an ongoing discussion, which brings the notion and practice of autonomy back into debate.

The first edition is entitled ‘Positions’ and maps the ground work of the last months from the perspectives of established educators, thinkers and practitioners in the field.

Contributions by Becky Shaw, John Byrne, Jeroen Boomgaard, Juan Cruz, Sven Lutticken, Thomas Lange, Steven ten Thije, Freek Lomme, and Clare Butcher.

Edited by Clare Butcher, John Byrne, Steven ten Thije
Publisher Onomatopee, Eindhoven, 2010
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommerial-Share Alike 3.0 Dutch License

PDF (4 MB, updated on 2017-12-2)

Autonomy Project Newspaper, 2: Frameworks, 2011

Contributions by Derk Alberts, Laurie Cluitmans, Jasper Coppes, Martine Derks, Charles Esche, Michelle Franke, Marijke Goeting, Sean Harvey, Brian Holmes, Tobias Karlsson, Joanne McClellan, Joana Ozorio de Almeida Meroz, Emilio Moreno, Kerstin Niemann, Hannah Pierce, Sarah Pierce, Charlotte Rooijackers, Jennifer Smailes, Paul Sullivan, Jort van der Laan.

Editorial team: Steven ten Thije, John Byrne, Clare Butcher
Publisher Onomatopee, Eindhoven, 2011
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommerial-Share Alike 3.0 Dutch License

PDF (9 MB, updated on 2017-12-2)

Autonomy Project Newspaper, 3: At Work, 2012

Editorial team: Steven ten Thije, John Byrne, Clare Butcher
Publisher Onomatopee, Eindhoven, 2012
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommerial-Share Alike 3.0 Dutch License

PDF (10 MB, added on 2017-12-2)

Project website

Reclaim the Spectrum catalogue (2006) [Spanish/English]

The radio spectrum – the electromagnetic space through which radio and TV broadcasts, mobile phone and GPS signals and WiFi networks circulate – is the real estate of the information society. Its invisible infrastructure is the largest engineering project in the history of man; its gradual colonisation and conquest throughout the 20th century has radically transformed the structure of society, the shape of cities and the relationship between individuals.

In spite of this, there’s a lot we don’t know about the spectrum: who owns it, how it’s managed, who decides how it’s used. Although supposedly a scarce and valuable resource, discussion about the spectrum is not a political priority and its regulation is rarely subject to public scrutiny. While the “Lords of the Spectrum” (the military, broadcasting industries, telecommunications providers) have enjoyed exclusive rights to the most useful frequencies for decades, the comparatively insufficient public frequencies have produced some of the most socially beneficial innovations, such as wireless Internet networks. From many different areas, there is an increasing demand that we begin to understand and manage the frequency system as public space, because we are increasingly taking more and more social processes and dynamics out of the streets and into the airwaves.

Now that contrary standards such as third-generation mobile phone services and wireless are competing for the same users, it is becoming an urgent priority to reclaim the right to make decisions about the most socially fruitful uses of the spectrum. Are more TV stations and video messages on our mobiles really what we need? Do we want technologies that allow us to be participants, or just consumers?

Artists, designers and activists are being the first to make the leap to appropriate Hertzian space and rework it to subvert its ends. Sometimes, by making what occurs in the realm of the airwaves visible, and mapping it to show how in the spectrum the borders between public and private space blur. In other cases, by encouraging the use of wireless networks to create active location-based communities, as used to happen in public squares or parks. And in almost all cases, by showing how our current use of the spectrum depends more on political and commercial decisions than in the full reach of its technical potential.

Somewhere in between the utopian discourse of those who want a commons of the airwaves and those who subvert and hack communication protocols and devices in total rejection of the controlled use of this technology, those who reclaim the spectrum are anticipating a political and social debate that was missing in the 20th century and cannot be postponed in the 21st.

Texts by José Luis de Vicente, Erich Berger, Julian Bleecker, Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Usman Haque, Anab Jaim, Jill Magid, Michelle Teran, and Rubén Díaz ZEMOS98.

A project by José Luis de Vicente for zemos98.
Catalogue edited by Rubén Díaz
Published under a Creative Commons BY-NC 2.5 license.

authors

PDF

La Monte Young, Jackson Mac Law (eds.): An Anthology of Chance Operations (1963)

A source-book of early Fluxus classics. A collection of scores, poetry, dance constructions, and other avant-garde work. Includes Henry Flynt’s first essay on concept art.

When the poet Chester Anderson, publisher of Beatitude, exited New York for California in 1959, he asked La Monte Young to edit Beatitude East, composed from the performance scores Young had collected in Berkeley and New York. In this he was aided by Jackson Mac Low, who had attended Cage’s composition course at the New School for Social Research and worked at the Living Theater with Julian Beck and Judith Malina.

Mac Low and Young provided Maciunas with connections to “beat” ideology, encouraging him not only to present radical programming at AG Gallery, but to design An Anthology, and to organize the initial 1962 Fluxus Festival in Wiesbaden, Germany. All of this was contemporaneous.

Maciunas supplied the paper, design and some money for the publishing of An Anthology, according to Henry Flynt, and had it ready for printing by October 1961. It was finally published by Young and Mac Low in 1963 as:

AN ANTHOLOGY of chance operations concept art anti-art indeterminacy improvisation meaningless work natural disasters plans of action stories diagrams Music poetry essays dance constructions mathematics compositions, BY GEORGE BRECHT, CLAUS BREMER, EARLE BROWN, JOSEPH BYRD, JOHN CAGE, DAVID DEGENER, WALTER DE MARIA, HENRY FLYNT, YOKO ONO, DICK HIGGINS, TOSHI ICHIYANAGI, TERRY JENNINGS, DENNIS, DING DONG, RAY JOHNSON, JACKSON MAC LOW, RICHARD MAXFIELD, ROBERT MORRIS, SIMONE MORRIS, NAM JUNE PAIK, TERRY RILEY, DITER ROT, JAMES WARING, EMMETT WILLIAMS, CHRISTIAN WOLFF, LA MONTE YOUNG/LA MONTE YOUNG – EDITOR/GEORGE MACIUNAS – DESIGNER.

The first edition (it was reprinted in 1972 by Hundermark, Germany) contains 67 leaves and three inserts. It includes multicolored and onionskin paper, card stock and two envelopes. The text was printed in offset with a heavy paper cover, collated manually with a staple and perfect binding.

Self-published, New York, Spring 1963
Layout by George Maciunas
120 pages

Wikipedia

PDF (36 MB, updated on 2012-7-9)