The way in which we all use the term curate these days seems to me to
to say more about the way that language is constantly modified than
about providing us with descriptive or precise term.
Whether it is about curating process-based work or curating
pre-existing web sites or curating symposia, the common thread seems
to be about stating that there is a creative intelligence and an
authorial voice engaged in making these things happen, that it is not
just administration, management and organisation (though it will
probably be those things as well). In many ways, the term curating
seems to me to have been needed because the art practices we are
working with are (or were) emergent or the projects too idiosyncratic
for anyone outside the new media arts sector to recognise what is
taking place (let alone what it takes to make work such projects
happen). So borrowing conventional terms like 'curate' makes a lot of
sense in that context, even though we may have to load them with
footnotes and explanations to define exactly what is taking place. It
gives a recognition to something that isn't otherwise recognised and,
by implication, it argues for this activity being seen as some new
form of practice. And I draw on that trajectory when I might organise
a symposia or event which is the culmination, or part of, of a series
of creative activities, (which is pretty much what i do mostly) and I
would think of myself, like Sarah, as curating the event because I
am playing a very complex creative role in its development,
presentation and representation to the external world.
Personally, though, I am cautious about using the term curating
though when I dont think I am. And this would include organising
symposia or conferences in a conventional one-off way (though they
may be highly planned and selected). Nor if I put on the work of a
solo artist or a group and I may have selected, fundraised, managed
and produced, but I havent contributed any original creative research
to the exhibition/presentation. And this is in spite of the fact that
I am partly employed as a 'curator'. I guess I want to save the term
for when I 'really' am doing it, in my eyes.
So I dont think it is really the question is about choosing or not
choosing participants for symposia, or the level of integration in
the presentations, or the way the mood of the conference has been
constructed through the scheduling of speakers. The use of the term
curate is just a signal that indicates that we want to be thought of
as doing something slightly different or with greater consequence,
and as the receivers we read the term as such - because its not a
precise and descriptive term any more. And i think often we are
extraordinarily good at reading the context and subtext of terms,
what it means for a museum to call someone a curator, as opposed to a
performing-media-arts organisation; when someone is bull-shitting for
status and when someone is underplaying a really different
contribution. Conventions differ from artform to artform, anyway,
let alone from country to country, and that all goes into the mental
filter too.
So I'm all in favour of the people saying curate in any cultural
context in which they want to underline their contribution. It may be
imprecise, and it can make them term seems rather nebulous, but
that's how we make language serve our needs rather than the other way
round.
Peter Ride
>Interesting food for thought here... thanks
>
>Marlena's question: Is there any way to organize a symposium without
>choosing the participants? is an interesting one, because of course the
>common-sensical answer is No.
>
>However in an institutional context (which is where the majority of
>symposiums take place) 'selection' of speakers is often not authored as
>such. Sitting in the audience or up on the podium we can ofetn find no
>easy answer to 'who invited me/him/her?', and therefore 'why are we
>invited?'. Indeed, on the international symposium circuit the same
>faces, positions and ideas come up again and again, much like artist's
>lists at Biennale's. A close look and one starts to suspect a kind of
>selection by search-by-theme approach, a default line-up...
>
>So to change the question to
>
>Is it possible to organise a symposium without considering the critical
>responsibility tied to the choice of participants?
>
>my answer is Yes, we see it all the time.
>
>Whether substituting 'curate' for 'organise' in this altered question
>would change the answer remains unclear. But for Dorothee and myself
>the questions of who and why were very much in our minds as we
>organised the symposium, and it was these logics of 'who we might be'
>and 'why we might all be there' that we authored, and consequently
>termed curating.
>
>cheers
>
>Barnaby
--
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Peter Ride
Co-Director & Senior Research Fellow
Centre for Arts Research Technology and Education (CARTE)
University of Westminster
http://www.wmin.ac.uk
and
Artistic Director
DA2 Digital Arts Development Agency
http://www.da2.org.uk
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