I agree that the creation of context is a helpful way to look at this. But
this is an activity that artists are also involved in, so it doesn't
necessarily differentiate between the practices of the curator and the
artist. I suspect there are many artists, especially live artists, who do
not see themselves as creators of 'content' and who look at commissions as
an opportunity to investigate something, make or do something that engages
with different kinds of audiences and talk about something. Within the
visual arts the recent discussions about curating and artist-curators (see
recent issues of Art Monthly) have been exploring exactly this.
So here's another question. Are these questions about curating/creating
context different when online/digital tech is involved?
Lk
On 9/6/04 9:13, "Sarah Cook" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 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
>
>
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