Dear List,
Regarding Beryl's posting on the Trojan Horse protest in Quebec, I'd be
interested in hearing what the curators on the list have to say about
projects of this nature. Putting aside for the moment the art/not art
question, what is the role or relevance of curatorial practice to these
sorts of activist practice? In some ways it seems like the pedagogical,
conservative/archival, and publicity functions that museum-based curating
typically performs are made redundant by some net-based projects (e.g.
RTMark), to the extent that 1) they often don't assume the same kind of gap
between the museum-goer and "advanced" art that is the basis for wall-texts,
explanatory catalog essays, etc. 2) they can be easily "archived" without
capital-intensive storage space and 3) they can be cheaply publicized on the
net. Aside from using the accumulated economic resources of a museum to
commission net-based activist works (bearing in mind the potential problems
that might raise), what role does the curator play here? Or are curators
interested in this sort of work in the first place? I'm sure there are
projects/examples that I'm ignorant of here that other list members can
share...
Thanks
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