Yawn: Art Strike 1990-1993, 1-45 (1989-1992)

“YAWN was an anonymous publication devoted to the Art Strike 1990-1993 and related issues. YAWN came out of several P.O. Boxes in the period from 1989 to 1992, sporadic in response to the responses and additional submissions that it had received to the issue before. Subtitled ‘A Sporadic Critique of Culture’, its scope was actually narrower than this would imply, if simply because its contributors came largely from the Mail Art, Neoist, and even more obscure networks which were internationally active at the time. The contents of this archive reflect this somewhat narrow focus.” (publisher)

“Campaign launched in 1986 by Stewart Home which called upon all artists to cease their artistic work between January 1, 1990 and January 1, 1993. Unlike the art strikes proposed by Gustav Metzger and the Art Workers Coalition in the 1960s, it was not merely a boycott of art institutions through artists, but a provocation of artists addressing their understanding of art and their identity as artists.

The Art Strike 1990-1993 campaign received next to no attention in contemporary gallery and museum art, but resonated chiefly in artistic subcultures, above all Neoism and Mail Art. “Art Strike Action Committees”, often run by single activists, existed in London, Ireland, Baltimore, Albany/NY, San Francisco, Montevideo, and Uruguay. An Art Strike newsletter “YAWN” was anonymously published by Lloyd Dunn in Iowa City and appeared in forty five issues during the strike period.” (wikipedia)

Most of YAWN was published anonymously, however, the following persons and organizations did get explicit credit for works that appeared in the publication: Agressive School of Cultural Workers — Iowa Chapter, Karen Eliot, Scott McLeod, Word Strike Action Committee NY, Anticopyright, Monty Cantsin (Istvan Kantor), Theatre of Sorts, Tim Ore, Smile, Andrej Tisma, Void-Post, Géza Perneczky, Lettre Documentaire, Pseudo-Karen Elliot, Liz Was, T. Marvin Lowes, Anatoly Zyyxx, Ralph Johnson, Stephen Perkins, Neal Keating/Bob Black, Eleutheria, Plaster Cramp Press, Leisure, Ben G. Price, Dumpster Times, The Exploding Cinema, T. Hibbard, Art Abolition Committee, Hakim Bey, International Art Dump, Gudgefuck, Sadie Plant, Institute for Research in Neoism, Turner Scientific, Geoff Huth, Bob Grumman, Art Strike 1990-2000, Keter Elyon, John Kennedy, I.M.I., Von Lechner, Dharma Combat, Lang Thompson, Fri-Art/Inexistent/Iput-ruine, Cracker Jack Kid, Blaster Al Ackerman, Decentralized Spanish Art Congress, Media Fast, ASAC UK, ASAC Eire, ASAC Baltimore, ASAC Latino America, ASAC CA.

The Art Strike Papers (online version of the book edited by Stewart Home)

Wikipedia
Authors

PDF (single PDF)
PDF (PDF issues)
HTML

N.O. Cantsin (ed.): A Neoist Research Project (2010)

“A Neoist Research Project is the first comprehensive anthology and source book of Neoism, an international collective network of mostly anonymous and pseudonymous subcultural actionists and speculative experimenters.

It collects more than one hundred Neoist texts and two hundred images, documenting – among others – Neoist interventions, the Neoist Apartment Festivals, definitions and pamphlets of Neoism and affiliated currents, language and identity experiments and Neoist concepts and memes such asthe shared identity Monty Cantsin.

Here’s a fistful of titles from the content: ‘What is an uh, uh, Apartment Festival??????’, ‘Blo-Dart Acupuncture &/or Ear-Piercing’, ‘Impractical Seriousness’, ‘Krononautic Divector Field Didaction’, ‘Chronicle of the Neoast Observer at the So-Called Millionth Apartment Festival’, ‘3 part action’, ‘Neoist haircut’, ‘non-participation’, ‘Philosopher’s Union soapbox stand’, ‘anything is anything’, ‘language constructions’, ‘Dyslexia’, ‘Continuity Poem (cinematic version)’, ‘A note from the editors of SMILE’, ‘Street performance actions against false infinity ‘, ‘Neoist Parking Meter Action: Pay Me to Go Away’, ‘Neoism 101: Thought Projection’, ‘Our Tactics against Stockhausen’, ‘Seven Scripts for One Week of Neoist Activity’.”

Publisher OpenMute, London, 2010
ISBN 9781906496463
246 pages

Video (moving images from A Neoist Research Project)
Audio lecture (Netzwerk Neoismus, by Florian Cramer, 98 min, in German)

Distributor

PDF, PDF
EPUB, EPUB

Tatiana Bazzichelli: Networked Disruption: Rethinking Oppositions in Art, Hacktivism and the Business of Social Networking (2011)

“The objective of this research is to rethink the meaning of critical and oppositional practices in art, hacktivism and the business of social networking. The aim is to analyse hacker and artistic practices through business instead of in opposition to it. By identifying the emerging contradictions within the current economical and political framework of Web 2.0, my aim is to reflect on the status of activist and hacker practices as well as those of artists in the new generation of social media (or so called Web 2.0 technologies), analysing the interferences between networking participation and disruptive business innovation.” (author)

PhD Dissertation
Department of Information and Media Studies, Aarhus University, December 2011
Supervisor: Søren Pold, Department of Information and Media Studies, Aarhus University
Co-supervisor: Fred Turner, Communication Department, Stanford University, California
Peer Production License
272 pages

Author

PDF (4 MB, updated on 2016-2-17)

See also Networked Disruption exhibition catalogue, 2015.