Dark Matter Archives

30 Dark matterthough intentional non-productivity) is materializing in places both familiar andunexpected, from the shantytowns of the imagination, to the depths of corporate,governmental, and institutional structures. It is fundamentally altering the formalartistic culture, or what is often simply called “art.” It is also transforming thenature of the popular spectacle that dominates global society and all that remainsof the public sphere. One can hardly escape an encounter with this vast andheterogeneous bounty of imaginative activity today as it radiates from homes,offices, schools, streets, community centers, artistic venues, and in cyberspace,especially in cyberspace, which uniquely marks the point of contact betweenthe dark, surplus archive and the everyday. And it harbors its own forms ofcommunity and collectivism that are simultaneously new and archaic. So far thisdecentralized fraternization can only be represented by the jumbled profusionof symptoms it displays—community as dispersed networks, a love of mimicry,bathos, vulgarity, distraction, and resentment, a lack of interest in abstractioncoupled with a fondness for everything that was once considered inferior, low, anddiscardable. Qualities that were anathema to modernist notions of serious art areessential to this informal cultural production as it ranges from the whimsical to theinspired, from the banal to the reactionary, and from the obscene to the seditious.This vast, irregular congregation includes pattern-swapping knitting circles, Flickrphoto clubs, garage-kit sculptors, fantasy role-play gamers, devotees of Gothculture, open-source programmers, mash-up music samplers, right-wing groupsand militias, and eBay pages filled with the work of both serious and Sundaypainters. An example of this odd mix of old and new artistry is the Nike BlanketPetition, essentially a crazy-quilt made from dozens of hand-knitted fabric panelsthat called on the multinational apparel maker to adopt fair labor practices. Thepanels were submitted by anti-sweatshop crafters across the US and beyond tomicroRevolt, a “craftivist” group founded in Rhode Island by Cat Mazza, andjust one example of an expanding network of artists weaving together early orpre-industrial technologies and digital media. 18There are also clusters of amateur archeologists digging up abandoned StarWars props in the Tunisian desert, and individuals who share information aboutthe government’s alleged remote-control over their thoughts, as well as a hostof sometimes ambiguous art collectives, public art interventionists, politicallyinformed media activists, and an increasing number of professionally trainedartists simply in search of “community” beyond what they can (not) find in themainstream art world (Paper Rad being a case in point). Like a vast archive ofeverything previously omitted from cultural visibility suddenly spilling into viewthis shadowy productivity spreads across, rather than sinks deeply, into the broadersocial firmament. Meanwhile, cultural critics, curators, policy wonks, politicians,even “cutting-edge” management theorists and CEOs sprint to keep pace.