Networks of Autonomy: Opening Up Spaces For Critical Engagement

The research field is graphic design outside of mainstream commercial production and distribution.

‘Networks of Autonomy: Opening Up Spaces For Critical Engagement’ appears in Personal Views, an electronic resource that brings together the different viewpoints on graphic design that have been expressed in the ‘Personal Views’ conferences held at the Escolla Superior de Artes e Design since 2004.

This is an enterprise that sets a brief, usually just one word such as Mayday, and a size restriction, and then seeks contributions to a ‘publication’ from across its network. It eschews editing and censorship. It does not impose values. The material is collected, packaged and sent to contributors and other in the network. There is not an audience in the traditional manner of a ‘target’. In this sense it is an open practice, a network of autonomy.

‘Networks of Autonomy’ describes the activities of Cactus Network which was founded by the researcher and Glenn Orton in 1989. It highlights the motivation of the enterprise, particularly the distance it has adopted from the dominant values and practices of institutions and commerce. It also places Cactus Network in the tradition of Fluxus and draws links with Punk, Mail-Art, Zines and Open Source developments.

Currently I work in London, as a Lead Tutor on the MA Graphic Design programme at the London College of Communication and as a print-based graphic designer. Co-organiser of the "Cactus Network" http://www.cactusnetwork.org.uk which manifested itself as a mail-art magazine, and later the poster magazine "Feeding Squirrels to the Nuts", Graduated from Portsmouth University, Chelsea School of Art, Central St Martins, London and later studied at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. I continue to be active in grassroots politics in London, working collectively with the local Indymedia network in the UK, and recently co-edited a book "We are everywhere; the irresistible rise of global anticapitalism". http://www.weareeverywhere.org

• http://www.esad.pt/personalviews/
• http://anamorphosis-kate.blogspot.com/20...
• http://www.lcc.arts.ac.uk/Tony_Credland_...