Dear Andreas (and all)
I would take issue with your comment that reflection on the role of the 
curator is mostly absent from this list. In fact it is what we strive 
for with each of our chosen topics of discussion, and what we leave 
space for by allowing spontaneous threads, such as the one you've 
generated here, to take root. We pose the question again and again with 
every introduction to the debate at hand.
As Rosanne pointed out, contributing to a list meant for an 'artworld' 
audience is a form of information exchange amongst professionals. That 
is what this list for curators of new media is. It seems, in my 
opinion, that it is often in discussing the details of the individual 
work of art that the role of the curator does come in for the most 
reflection (see for instance, Honor's comment on this month's theme - 
the Audible and the Visible - about Gina Czarnecki's work, and Gina's 
reply, and how its qualities determined the curatorial decision of its 
location). It doesn't always have to be a stupid project - of all the 
art works you could have provoked critical reflection with, I was 
rather disappointed you chose this one (though not disappointed with 
the intelligence with which your posting was met).
As a post-script to Rosanne, I wonder how your point about navel-gazing 
stands against the 30+ year 'trend' of curating exhibitions/projects 
which are explicitly about the museum (Museums by Artists; Mining the 
Museum; Museum as Muse; Deep Storage, to name a few), or the incredible 
number of spin-off audiotours (a museum device) inspired by Janet 
Cardiff and George Bures Miller's work - many of which question both 
artworld spaces (museums, sculpture parks, festivals, theatres) and the 
curatorial remit of story telling. Janet's first big break - 
internationally - was at Sculpture Munster in 1997 - where one can 
safely assume a _huge_ part of the audience was art professionals / 
curators, doing the festival circuit from Documenta. So is there a 
bigger audience than we think? [There are nearly 700 of us 
'professionals' on this list -- I dare say a pretty big audience in 
comparison to that drawn in by your average local art gallery show.] 
This question came up recently at the Para-Sites discussion event at 
the ICA in relation to Node.London. I think it was Helen Sloane who 
asked how we might continually seek to programme media art for an 
audience bigger than the media art community, but the complexities of 
interpretation that come with 'explaining' the importance of 
participation in a network (essential to much of new media art) to an 
'artworld' audience that seeks to be passively entertained.
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming?
Cheers,
Sarah

On 27 Mar 2006, at 11:07 AM, Andreas Broeckmann wrote:

> dear rosanne,
>
> i completely agree with you that this is a clumsy project and bad art. 
> i did not post it to this list to raise its status, but to provoke a 
> sort of reflection which is mostly absent from this list. if 'crumb' 
> is about curating, why does it take such a bad art project to provoke 
> a statement like yours, esp. towards the end of the message? and who 
> is going to answer your questions?
>
> regards,
> -a


On 24 Mar 2006, at 4:33 pm, Rosanne Altstatt wrote:

> Another comment:
> Generally speaking, does a public audience care about all of our
> navel-gazing? Does it care about the artist-curator relationship? 
> Publishing
> books or writing on lists, which are specifially meant for an artworld
> audience, is exchanging information within an interested audience of 
> art
> professionals.
> Does anyone really think an audience, which hopefully includes 
> non-artbiz
> people, attends galleries and art events to hear about the artworld? I
> seriously doubt it. Most visitors want to take in something that will 
> enrich
> their lives. Self-reflections from and for the artworld generally 
> don't do
> it for anyone but ourselves.