diy in the gallery

DIY gets into the gallery in a new show on now at the A+D Gallery of Columbia College in Chicago. Pass It On: Connecting Contemporary Do-It-Yourself Culture explores a range of DIY projects from zines to podcasting to crafting and beyond. It's not just a showcase of stuff you can make yourself, the exhibition also talks about the significance of DIY culture(s). From the mission statement:

"Do-It-Yourself” as an activity and as a concept has been fueling individual and collaborative creativity for centuries [...] One can easily trace, throughout the history of humanity, a continuous desire to adapt and improve existing conventions, tools and practices, so that they may better fit each individual’s purposes. We share not only the need to learn from others’ experiences but also the desire to hand down instruction sets to others, so that they in turn may use and alter them in their own unique and creative ways.

Politically subversive in its inherent rejection of pre-formulated consumer culture, DIY philosophy has taken roots within many aspects of social and personal relationships, within the visual and applied arts, the sciences and within innumerable technological developments of the last decades.

The impact of DIY is also explored in a map of the DIY landscape.


Participants in Pass It On include Cat Mazza of Microrevolt, Lisa Ann Auerbach of Steal This Sweater, Temporary Services, Graffiti Research Laboratories, Giana Gonzalez of Hacking Couture, Scott Wolniak, Design for Democracy and others.

Here's a flickr set with some photos of the show - which includes an awesome flashlight in a tic tac box! Also check out this great pinhole camera hidden in a book.

The show runs until April 14 , 2007 and will accompanied by lectures and workshops on topics like bookmaking and sewing workpants.