Articipation.se is a research blog to publish reflections and results for the project "Performative strategies and participation at the edge of networks society". The project was a three-year artistic research project supported by the Swedish Science Council (VR) and Linköping University, conducted between 2012-2015. See the full application here.

The research is summarized well in Gregory Sholette's concept of Dark Matter.

"Yet, just as the physical universe is dependent on its dark matter and energy, so too is the art world dependent on its shadow creativity. It needs this shadow activity in much the same way certain developing countries secretly depends on their dark or informal economies."

According to Sholette, Dark Matter is sourced from many different areas and play an ambiguous role, it is:

"all work made and circulated in the shadows of the formal art world, some of which might be said to emulate cultural dark matter by rejecting art world demands of visibility, and much of which has no choice but to be invisible."

"To paraphrase the cosmologists: there is perhaps no current problem of greater importance to cultural radicals than that of “dark matter.“ Collectives that operate within the contradictions of the bourgeois public sphere, openly and playfully expose its imaginary fault-lines dividing private from public, individual from collective, and the light from the dark matter. But while such groups offer a important models for cultural resistance, it would be disingenuous of me to suggest that the art collectives and dark activities touched upon in this paper provide a totally satisfactory solution to the radicalization of creativity now or in the future. Instead, these groups and practices are characterized by their overdetermined and discontinuous nature, by repetitions and instability. Their politics privilege spontaneity. Some favor anarchic forms of direct action over sustained organizational models. What is effective in the short term remains untested on a larger scale."

"Clearly, more research is needed on how alternative or counter economic forms link up with collective patterns of engaged art making as well as how one measures the relative autonomy of critical art practices in relation to the culture industry. One thing is clear however; the construction of a counter-public sphere will necessitate that we move away from the longstanding preoccupation with representation and towards an articulation of the invisible."

Artforum Magazine, 1973. DARK MATTER - Gregory Sholette. (n.d.).
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