[iDC] Introduction - Sean Dockray

[Sean Dockray]

Hello idc list!

My name is Sean Dockray and I'm an artist living in Los Angeles. Ed  
Keller invited me to co-chair the track, "DIY U: Learning Without a  
School," and I'm looking forward to working with him and David  
Goldberg on this. Like everyone, I've been asked to introduce myself,  
so here goes nothing...

What is probably most relevant to the conference track are two  
projects that I initiated several years ago: The Public School (http://all.thepublicschool.org 
) and, before that, AAAARG. In the most simple terms, one is a school  
and one is a library, where both have been generated by their users  
and they both make use of the internet to organize activity (people  
propose classes that they would like to happen, people upload scans of  
texts and sort them into lists).

Obviously, both projects operate on a terrain characterized by  
technological change, public cuts, externalized labor, growing debt,  
and shifting conceptions of property. I suppose my interest has been  
less in how we reinforce our existing institutions to survive (by  
making them more flexible and responsive), and more in the question of  
what possibilities there are for collectively articulating other  
social forms based on sharing, forms that would support the needs and  
activities of people.

As far as biography, I am the Curatorial Director of Telic Arts  
Exchange (http://telic.info), a non-profit organization that aims to  
produce a critical engagement with new media and culture. I've taught  
at UCLA, UCSD, and SCI-Arc, but have been acadmically unaffiliated for  
the last few years while spending time with The Public School, which  
operates in Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Juan, Berlin,  
Durham, Helsinki, and Brussels.

Last summer, Caleb Waldorf, Fiona Whitton, and I co-organized a 13-day  
itinerant seminar in Berlin called "There is nothing less passive than  
the act of fleeing" (http://thepublicschool.org/thereisnothinglesspassive/thantheactoffleeing.html 
) which somehow led through the UCIRA State of the Arts conference and  
to this condensed essay that Matteo Pasquinelli, Jason Smith, Caleb,  
and I wrote for the journal ...ment: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11464360/MENT01-web-tpsla.pdf
I'm currently working on a Public School project in collaboration with  
Caleb and Fiona for the upcoming Encuentro Internacional de Medellin  
("Teaching and learning: Places of Knowledge in Art").

Finally, a few more links if anyone is interested:
http://www.metamute.org/en/articles/in_the_paradise_of_too_many_books
http://127prince.org/2010/10/04/sean-dockray-interview-by-randall-szott/
http://blog.sfmoma.org/2009/08/four-dialogues-2-on-aaaarg/
http://blog.art21.org/2009/11/12/looking-at-los-angeles-the-public-school/
http://spd.e-rat.org/writing/david-elliott-interview.html

I am a long-time, lurking fan of the idc list and I'm looking forward  
to the conference as well as the swelling of activity here in the time  
leading up to it.

Sean