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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