DIWO

Do It With Others (DIWO), what is it? It is based on the idea to co-create, where the focus is to co-produce and collaborate across the network instead of a chain of command downwards. Beginning as an individual, one opens up ideas, knowledge, experience, skills and more to adding towards a network. The idea is collaborative platform for like-minded people to work together rather than as a DIY task or project.

As with the nature of DIWO, it can be crowdsourcing to focus on a specific task, and the lack of direct control of a single authority will not restrict the creativity and abilities of individuals. However in the same sense there will be more chaos in creation and hence it is not commonly used as it might be hard for stakeholders to have a say or control the project.

Marc Garrett believes “the practice of DIWO allows space for an openness where a rich mixing of components from different sources crossover and build a hybrid experience”, to be able to renegotiate power roles between artists and curators, and rather than the outcome, what is important is the process. He mentions taking an interest in different ideas instead of crossing them out. Hence to create a platform for a larger creative collaboration together, which may result and a larger creative outcome. When various levels of experience and skill for creative collaboration are involved, an approach that views and solves a problem at different levels can be formed. The improved and integrated pool of knowledge and abilities would thus benefit the projects in the long run.

However I would think there would be setbacks to the DIWO concept as well. While projects may work and better at certain aspects, the lack of direct control by an authority could create troubles if opinions conflict. To have everything go through the process of collective creation might also be time consuming and easily agreeable or obvious matters might take a few more steps than required as the process goes through a network of minds to get done. It is like micromanaging for a large project, while everything might be done and a manner than satisfies everyone, too much time and effort may be consumed in the process, which could delay or even wear out the morale of everyone.

So while DIWO seems like a good concept to create higher levels of work, I believe it should be used sparingly to be able to utilise the benefits the most, while encountering hindrances the least.