There already seems to be a tradition of applying open source and free software principles to art, maybe not as a framework but as a tool; curating however seems problematic as a term, not only in this context. Self-organisation. The tradition is older than the terms. Mail Art for example developed at Ray Johnson’s New York Correspondence School in the 1960’s. The Mail art network had its own coded system – decentralized, international, open participation. They produced non-juries exhibitions and festivals of earlier avant-garde movements forming a historical pretext to consider.
Against the confusion and urban myths the fact is its about decentralisation. But the problem lies when a decentralised system becomes hierarchical, when the inevitable networked control system becomes the clear empirical indicator. Its clear that open distributed development processes are technically far superior to closed processes but they come with risks.
An Illustrated Introduction to Ray Johnson 1927 – 1995
Michael Morris – Ray Johnson: An Appreciation (1999)
