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Do or DIY

Since 2006 I have been one of three members of the artists's collective Information as Material [IAM]. We accepted an invitation to be the 2011-12 Writers in Residence at Whitechapel Gallery (London), during which our collaborative practice as research investigated the trans-disciplinary (print history, art practice, literary theory) history of self-publishing. The growing interest in networked technologies and idioms like 'art writing' have made the context for our research fashionable within Fine Art. IAM members or regular contributors have featured in or edited many of the scholarly works that have expanded that context beyond Fine Art, including Dworkin's No Medium (MIT UP) and Goldsmith's Uncreative Writing (Columbia UP).

Our residency culminated in a solo exhibition, Do or DIY, about the concealed history of self-publishing by authors now enshrined in the Western literary canon. It was commissioned for the Whitechapel Gallery, funded by them and Arts Council England (£10,000), and toured to The Laurence Sterne Museum (Coxwold) where it was re-curated. In both venues the show's run was extended, welcoming 33,318 and 612 visitors respectively. An eponymous publication was distributed in 3,500 copies, which has been translated into Spanish, French, German, and Italian [see folder]. The essay in the book was first commissioned as the foreword for the London Art Book Fair 2011 catalogue.

Our creative strategy produced and shared various new insights, most notably innovating the first revisionist history of this theme – which, in being self-published, performs its own findings. I discussed this insight during invited public talks at the ICA (London, 02/12) and Site Gallery (Sheffield, 09/12), and expanded on the politics of self-publishing in a long interview for Afterall (London, 08/12). General public discussion of the show and its themes included a two-page essay in the Independent Newspaper (18/08/12) and a BBC Radio interview (21/08/12).