Ideas around The Art of Organising

In the art project The Art of Organising, several artists are invited to comment personally on the art of organising in general. Due to a lack of funds, we were forced to limit these comments to sketches. Some of these ideas already exist, some are fully feasible, and others should probably not be attempted. Together, they describe the art of organising.

Victor Petrovs idea of a new world order is inspired by an ordinary hamburger. Hamburgers are still quite rare in Belarus today. In Organise Civilisation, a blueprint for a better world, he develops his theory with the help of illustrations showing how the top half of the hamburger is amalgamated with the lower half into a cosmic whole.

In the Utopian World Championship, a competition in utopian thinking was arranged by the members of SOC. In the Utopian W.C. 2001: the intensified section, Jon Brunberg, Annika Drougge and Johan Malmström explore the issue of utopias from a personal and interdisciplinary perspective.

A related study has been done by Bongi Jarne MacDermott and Paula Stenström. In Dream of Organising, they have interviewed people about their dreams, and how they organise their actions to achieve their goals. Is it possible to organise your dreams? Can dreams be realised? Are they still dreams if they can?

In The System, by Love and Ottillia Homström, one can find everything one needs in the consumer’s dream world. The project takes its material from the bevy of "on-line communities" with which marketers want to replace our friends. In this cynical game of market communication, hordes of behavioral scientists are used to find the weak points of canny and cynical advertising consumers. The System is neither a better nor a worse world; it is simply impossible to escape from.

It is just as impossible to escape from The Trial. Denis Romanovski uses his own experience of the legal logic of totalitarian societies to build his web project. The trial can come at any time, and you must be ready to attend. You are always guilty. Don’t ask why.

In Questions & Answers, on the other hand, you can find the answer to any question. Anna Kindgren challenges search engines such as Yahoo and Google. Here, she takes the organisational concept for the network to its extreme: by always supplying a question to fit your answer, this service will eventually answer all your questions, although it will take some time.

Björn Bjarre has chosen to answer one organisational question with his The Artists with Children Club (TACC). How does one combine the roles of artist and parent? Those who have tried it say that it is difficult. TACC is an organization idea that will try to open up a social space of recreation, theory and time swapping by creating a community/network of artists with children. If you don´t have a satisfactory social network: Join the club!

Art itself is difficult enough to organise. Carina Gunnars has a broad experience of organising avant-garde art projects, through among others the artist network Swe:de. In TAO according to Carina, she has collected her thoughts on how to succeed in this enterprise.

Katastro.fi also organises several creators in a network. The question of how this is possible is still not fully answered, but in the Art of Organising I, II, and III, Lassi Tasajärvi, Laura Turkki and Juha Huskonen supply us with a graphic analysis of the question as well as their reflections over the situation as a whole.

Åsa and Christoffer Andersson Broms are developing a tool which will make it easier to research networks. By installing the program Communication Controller on your computer, you can get a graphic overview of your email relationships.

Udo Noll’s project idea describes a structure through sound instead of visually. FM walks creates, collects, and organises sound, in order to create a soundscape which is continually updated over the Internet by a myriad of users.

Rachel Baker offers us Irational.orgs 1:1 (one all) toolkit. Everything one needs for networking, in practice and theory, on the net and in the real world. Adapted for independent art, media, and social activism.

Karin Hansson taken a look at the Temporary Art School from a historical perspective, coming to the conclusion that the concept is gaining in popularity. Also, she gives a simple recipe which can be adapted to different motives and situations.