Transparency and clarity in organisational processes is always a good
thing - whatever titles people start off with, or adopt during the
evolution of a project. I understand the curator of a symposium to be
the initiator, selector, programmer, and to take creative responsibly
for the concept and structure of the event. Organisers may simply work
to the instructions of the curator, or they may be invited to 'curate' a
part of it. Depending on the individual, their knowledge and
aspirations, they may contribute to the evolution of the concept of the
event, thus taking on a more co-curatorial role.

I think Sarah's question of context is one that is often neglected. All
the curatorial thought goes into the inviting and order of speakers, and
little attention paid to the context in which the audience become
participants in the discourse taking place. As an Independent Curator
working with an institution it's important to find the right staff who
can let things happed in the way you want. This may be easier working
with the Education Dept, than the Exhibitions Dept, but again it depends
on the individuals and their understanding of the project.

An event based symposium that includes art itself, in the form of live
events, participatory projects and small discussions allows space for
the audience to develop their ideas. Johnny Golding's event sounds like
an amazing success because it presented ideas through the work, and
allowed space for the discussion to develop around the work. Ditto
Sarah's event at Baltic in November.

I've recently been to 2 events that did this very well: Art What is it
for? At Dartington College of Art in Devon which presented live art
events, a film programme and speakers presentations with lots of time to
talk with everyone, including the speakers. Secondly, B+B curated a day
event called 'Representation or Action' as part of their 'Trading
Places' exhibition at the Pump House Gallery, London, which was run
extremely well run by a facilitator, and everyone was able to contribute
and discuss the work with the artists. www.welcomebb.org.uk

The common experience of these two events was the lack of discussion
about terminology and definitions. Instead there was an intense debate
about the content of artwork and a wider discourse through shared
experience and ideas.

I'd like to hear more about creating contexts for content production...

Ele Carpenter


-----Original Message-----
From: Curating digital art - www.newmedia.sunderland.ac.uk/crumb/
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Sarah Cook
Sent: 09 June 2004 09:13
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] curating a symposium

I think this discussion brings us back to an earlier one (and one I
found myself using in my dissertation to explain the 'practice' end of
my research as a curator) -- that organising conferences, symposia,
seminars, or online forums and generally allowing for these other kinds
of situations in which artists can present their work for discussion
and engagement in front of and with an audience, is in some way (what
Christiane Paul and others have called) context creation. Whereas the
more traditional notion of curating, of organising exhibitions and
more-controlled presentations where the artist might not be on hand to
talk about their work (but communicates their ideas through their
work), especially when the work is a new commission, is content
creation. These are hardly set categories, and get pretty blurry in an
online sphere, moreso than in actual space, but they do suggest a
difference between two modes of engaging audiences with art. To speak
of content versus context creation or production (especially as regards
new or emergent media) might be one way to discuss what we do without
presupposing that "curators" have more creative intellectual rigor
behind their methods than "organisers". what do you think?

sarah