[NetBehaviour] Is it art?

[dave miller]

thanks simon - I've never heard of samizdat before - but that's
fascinating. Will read more about this. I think what I'm doing is
different though - it's not censored material - but I do feel an urge
to spread information that is largely suppressed in the mainstream
media - so am sure I'll face strong disapproval. I suppose I think of
the booklets as "underground" though there's nothing illegal about
them.

all the best
dave


On 4 October 2011 08:46, Simon Mclennan <mitjafashion at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Well samizdat could describe it. Often the best interventions may not be considered art at all. Poetic terrorism, stating an obvious truth to challenge the big lie. It's importance is it's content. Keep it up.
> Simon
>
> Sent from my shyphone
>
> On Oct 3, 2011, at 6:05 PM, dave miller <dave.miller.uk at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Last saturday I stood outside the Camden Centre, where the ‘Europe
>> against Austerity’ conference took place. I handed out my hand made
>> booklets, my “Instructional Guides for Difficult Times”, to anyone who
>> would take one. I didn’t dare try to charge, I just wanted people to
>> take them. I thrust them into their hands. It felt good when people
>> took my “art”.
>>
>> But I’m not really sure where the art is in what I’m doing. Have I
>> actually stopped doing art? Am I now a political activist? Or
>> worryingly, because I don’t belong to any political group or
>> organisation, have I become like that man who used to walk up and down
>> Oxford Street each day, predicting the end of the world? Or the man
>> who used to hand out leaflets warning us all not to eat eggs?
>>
>> As the financial crisis has got increasingly urgent and desperate, I
>> have been sucked into it. I feel a moral duty to understand the
>> subject, and to do something about it, to fight back. The best way,
>> the natural way, for me is through my creative skills – to inform and
>> explain and empower. In this way I’ve become obsessed with making
>> critical commentary on the financial and political crisis.
>>
>> For me, this is both political action and artistic expression, but I’m
>> not sure if it’s art I’m making.
>>
>> What do you think?
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