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Wikipedia:School and university projects/Open Source Culture/The Interventionists

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The INTERVENTIONISTS

By Thompson, N. and Sholette, G.

Cambridge, MIT Press, 2004.


This book is the catalogue of an ongoing exhibition at the North Adams Mass MOCA. The book has the shape of an antique flea-market-style-book, but its internal is organized in the rule of a cool contemporary graphic design style. It presents the work of artists in the exhibition organizing them in four parts: nomads, reclaim the streets, ready to wear, the experimental universities. The realm of such works of art is based on an open source culture. The open source culture is considered in a perspective that came from International Situationism and from Fluxus, from Debord both with Beuys. Among the artists here represented there are Krzsztof Wodizczko, William Pope, The Critical Art Ensemble, Lucy Orta etc. Their way of working can be identified under the concept of Intellectual Activism considering both their political aspect and their aesthetic dimension. The subtitle of the book helps to identify what we are managing with. It is a survey of practices and theories to deconstruct the world, not only its form but the idea of the world itself. A world built up by few in the name of the masses, a world that produces illusions selling them as products.