Dear CRUMB list,
I am less a New Media Curator and more a Nu-Curator in the sense that I am
not limited to working with artists or the arts. I approach the practice of
curating as I would when making what for now we could call an 'artwork', but
my working opinions and ideas emerge from those traditions in 20th century
art that would problematise the production/presentation of art - in fact
those that would seek to abolish/erase/destroy art through its own
mechanisms.

I am interested in how artists have also operated as curators in the 20th
century through to to the present, and how some of these practitioners were
essentially motivated by radical politics. One thread might be from Dada and
Anti-Art through Auto-Destructive Art, Behaviour Land, APG, FIU, Platform
and on into various art activist engagements today (many of which involve
the information technology as vehicle and form). Many others might be
incapable of understanding a possible relation between curating and these
oppositional (some anarcho) practices, primarily because they feel unable to
cut themselves free from the notion of the genealgy of the word 'curator'
being derived from the Latin 'curare' > 'to care for'. So many curators are
motivated by a love of art and yearn for their proximity to the art/artist.
But.... this idea of the curator as artist's 'friend' (at times
administrator, at times wet-nurse) is extremely limited and prohibits the
extensive politicisation of art into society. It is essentially a
naturalised form of closure on politics.

However, the history of curating is also linked to the 'Cabinet of
Curiosity' - the 'Wunderkammer' as proto-museum - in each of which (it was
accepted) could be found an entire system of the universe. This is key to
the possibility of a curating beyond the confines of tate (sorry I meant to
write 'taste'). Websites are heteroglossic - they involve a complex of
narrativity akin to the structured, intertextual experience of everyday life
(Bakhtin) and chronotopic - they are time-spaces (Bakhtin). In this sense
they are the present equivalent of the 'Wunderkammer'.

In recent years the curator has increasingly emerged as a performer in the
culture - he/she has become more visible and is eager to author an
exhibition/manifestation and 'show their hand'.

Now consider this:
The most interesting (politicised) practice does not require the gold
standard/quality criteria inherent in curating the canon.
It is generally and presently found, in-part, in the area of New Media and
linked to the current issues of virus and anti-capital/globalisation.
Within it the notion of artist is dissolved and the capacity of curator as
animateur/activist/mobiliser is brought to the fore.
Curating is Performance.

In this context, art, artists and their 'homes' are not that important any
more - curating is.

From: Tim Brennan, 'Curator as Performer' in forthcoming; ed. Simon Morris
'Interpretations'

Bring it on

Tim Brennan

http://www.46LiverpoolSt.org






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