[spectre] DIWO (Do-It-With-Others): Artistic co-creation as a decentralized method of peer empowerment in today’s multitude.

[marc garrett]

DIWO (Do-It-With-Others): Artistic co-creation as a decentralized method 
of peer empowerment in today’s multitude.

By Marc Garrett
http://s.shr.lc/14BjgJ1

Furtherfield originally created the term DIWO in 2006, to represent and 
reflect its own involvement in a series of grass root explorations. 
These critical engagements shift curatorial and thematic power away from 
top-down initiations into co-produced, networked artistic activities; it 
is now an international movement and it has grown into something much 
larger than we imagined.

The practice of DIWO allows space for an openness where a rich mixing of 
components from different sources crossover and build a hybrid 
experience. It challenges and renegotiates the power roles between 
artists and curators. It brings all actors to the fore, artists become 
co-curators alongside the curators, and the curators themselves can also 
be co-creators. The ‘source’ materials are open to all; to remix, 
re-edit and redistribute, either within a particular DIWO event or 
project, or elsewhere. The process is as important as the outcome, 
forming relationally aware peer enactments. It is a living art, 
exploiting contemporary forms of digital and physical networks as a mode 
of open praxis, as in the Greek word for doing, and as in, doing it with 
others.

This study investigates why these critically engaged activities were 
(and are) thought of as essential nourishment not only for ‘individual’ 
artists, but also as an effective form of artistic collaboration with 
others, and to a wider culture. It explores the differences between 
‘collaborative’ trends initiated by established art (mainstream art) and 
design institutions, the creative industries, corporations, and 
independent projects. It examines the grey areas of creative (idea) 
control, the nuances of power exchange and what this means for 
independent thinking artists and collectives working within 
collaborative contexts, socially, culturally and ethically. It also 
asks, whether new forms of DIWO can act as an inclusive commons. Whereby 
it consists of methods and values relating to ethical and ecological 
processes, as part of its artistic co-creation; whilst maintaining its 
original intentions as a decentralized method of peer empowerment in 
today’s multitude?