[-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology

[magnus lawrie]

Hi All,

Ruth asked:

> One of the things I'm interested to know about ChIT and Chateau is
> how
> they connected with impacted on the local people and spaces at the
> time.
> Also your ideas about what the longer term impact of these places
> has
> been on the people who were involved.

ChIT and Chateau had connections to various local organizations and
smaller projects that people undertook away from The Chateau. In this
sense The Chateau was something of a test bed. Perhaps there was some
sense of talent leaking away from the place because there was simply
no money in it, but many of us remained throughout. I think The
Chateau did have an indirect impact locally: in my experience there
were some community and social enterprise projects that people
undertook in response to their passing through The Chateau: for
example a community computer resource and artspace called Radius. This
existed for a time with the support of a city housing association and
engaged with Access Space's "Grow Your Own Media Lab"
(http://www.access-space.org/?c=gyoml, http://ur1.ca/vvpc). I myself
gradually got engaged in IT contracting for small organizations.
Others went on to be represented by galleries in Glasgow, London and
Berlin. At the time artist-led galleries (as well as participatory
agendas) were gaining currency and these were invariably represented at
larger art fairs. To my knowledge, The Chateau never got the invites
for these events, so I would say its credibility extended only so far;
though for a while it was a keyword for anyone in the Glasgow scene.

ChIT was somewhat in the shadow of all this and dipped in and out of
conversations with activist dimensions (in and around Glasgow, in the
UK and further-a-field on mainland Europe), lending out computers for
exhibitions, gifting recycled machines to people in our network for
shared use and helping to set up temporary labs. In some cases, ChIT
participants had contact to G8 protest groups and indymedia in
Scotland (all of which to my knowledge were already well organized).

It was through attending a meeting in Lancaster
(https://www.knowledgelab.org.uk/Main_Page) that I got contact to the
activist group Blogxpopuli (http://blogxpopuli.org/) and was later
invited to work with them on the Blogmail project in Catalonia
(http://en.blogxpopuli.org/wiki/FAQs_about_BlogMail). This led to
assisting in local wireless network activities
(http://www.xsf-coop.net/) and visiting local autonomous spaces in
Barcelona (http://infoespai.org/ and also no-longer-existing spaces, but
see for examples http://hackerspaces.org/). The Blogmail project had a
particular emphasis on being both a social and a technical project
and this was played out in the range of activities that went on
alongside developing the software. The main feature of the software
(which is still loosely under development) was to expose a public side
in email communications (engaging networks of intimmacy?).

During this time, management of ChIT in Glasgow passed with relative
ease to other very capable folk who maintained and extended the
facility (starting a computer museum) whilst The Chateau building fell
into worse repair. Meanwhile ChIT members were among a number involved
in establishing The Electron Club (http://www.electronclub.org/). This
was a project that has roots in much besides ChIT, but as The Chateau
began to (literally) fall in on itself around this time, ChIT members
gravitated towards building up The Electron Club (and eventually a lot
of ChIT computer gear was saved by being used in the new clubroom). Of
course, most of my input in establishing The Electron Club (EC) was remote
(as I was still abroad), but I think through ChIT a level of mutual
trust had been established between eventual EC founder participants that
definitely enabled constructive mailing list exchanges and it was
great to have this contact and be more or less in the picture on my
return to Glasgow after some months. Though I am now less involved
with EC than previously, there are others who continue to have
much greater responsibility for this venture and who succeed in
remaining fairly unobtrusive. EC, of course, has a mailing list which
seems to rumble on without too much interference from anyone.

Of course this is no doubt my very partial view and I know there have
been other activities led by other Chateau people in and around
Glasgow. Equally The Chateau must have been the main recipient in
many interactions and I think strongly depended on such dialogue.

Best wishes,

Magnus