Olivia Plender, Set Sail for the Levant, 2007
Disclosures II: The Middle Ages will explore the idea of ‘commons’ – both agricultural commons (the grazing of animals and growing of crops on shared land) and cultural commons: the shared production and free distribution of knowledge online and in culture in general. Disclosures II will be set in the unique Nottinghamshire village of Laxton, the last substantial surviving example of the medieval open field system of farming in England. In Laxton farmers farm individual strips of land in shared fields, now owned by the Crown, as they have done for centuries.
Research picture for Disclosures II: The Middle Ages.
Disclosures II asks to what extent Laxton’s survival through centuries of Enclosure of common land might suggest precedents for the various ways cultural producers and activists seek to enlarge the public domain of today’s ‘knowledge economy’. In the 1990s, the Internet was heralded in utopian terms as a new and limitless frontier of information that one day would be equally accessible to all. Since then, corporations and governments have sought to control, appropriate and charge for content. This threat has been met with an increasingly inventive and elusive opposition, whose aim is to increase and democratise the digital commons.
Disclosures II is the latest instalment of Nottingham Contemporary’s 2008 programme of pre-opening exhibitions and events, Histories of the Present. It is also a sequel to Disclosures, an international conference and exhibition held at Gasworks in London earlier this year. Disclosure examined what openness might mean, as an ethos and strategy, to both online action and cultural production at large. Openness was considered in terms of organisation, platform, content, authorship and distribution. It looked to apply lessons learnt from radical political collectives to our understanding of socially engaged cultural practices on and off line.
Disclosures II: The Middle Ages continues these investigations in a historical, rural situation. It reflects upon the open field system: its social advantages and economic viability historically and today. It will use these considerations as a backdrop to debate contemporary concerns around food production, and the use, ownership and control of land, notably in relationship to cultural production.
The day will consist of lectures, discussions, a guided walk, performances, meals and a party. Speakers and performers include Olivia Plender, Anna Colin (Gasworks), Neil Cummings, Jai Redman and Joe Richardson (Ultimate Holding Company), Eileen Simpson and Ben White (Open Music Archive), Prof John Beckett (historian), Chris Matthews (artist and historian) and Stuart Rose (Laxton farmer).
A symposium, performances and party
Saturday 6th September 2008
Laxton, Nottinghamshire
An exhibition by Olivia Plender
6th September – 5th October 2008
Nottingham Castle
http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org
Goldin+Senneby, John Barlow Gone Offshore. A staged enquiry into the undisclosable. Guided tour on Sunday 30 March 2008. A collaboration with Canal and the Whitechapel Art Gallery in the context of The Street.
Disclosures
Taking its cue from creative commons and open source initiatives on the Internet,Disclosures, which I co-curated by Mia Jankowicz, aimed to examine what openness might mean in both online activity and in cultural production at large. Disclosures took the form of an international conference, a library, and a series of artists’ commissions and events.
Openness was understood as an ethos and as an organisational strategy whereby rigid hierarchical social structures are replaced by more flexible, network-inspired working methods. Accordingly, Disclosures looked at ways in which the organisational methods of radical social and political action groups – particularly those for whom the Internet is a key tool and platform – could be applied to, or might inspire, the way cultural organisations are run. It also considered the widespread use of Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) as the technological underpinning of openness and models of collective authorship that re-negotiate the relationship between author, reader and text, or artist, viewer and work. Bringing together theorists, Internet activists, artists and tactical media practitioners, Disclosures investigated openness as a fundamental principle in the production and distribution of knowledge.
Anna Colin
Exhibitions Curator, Gasworks
is an online research tool commissioned by Gasworks to Electronest as part of the project Disclosures (2008-ongoing).
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