I am sorry to intersperse/sidetrack the main topic of this discussion to correct at least temporarily a historic misperception showing up in Domenico's email.
It is absolutely wrong to state that the examples of activities, festivals and exhibition Andreas listed are "specialized media art events, usually attended by media literate people".
The majority of the audiences who came/come to such exhibitions/performance/festivals are not people as Domenico categorizes them. Certainly this in-crowd of experts does come and carry the exchange at such events on the content level – but there are large number of "locals" (non-art-sand-media-literates) who attend such events/exhibitions (unless it is really a conference for experts). You may just not notice those "regular" people because you only see the faces you know from the previous "thing" you attended as expert (human condition).
The curatorial debate (non-museum) I have been involved in since the oh say late seventies/early eighties (mind you in the "digital domain" - just to distinguish it for the moment from the "non-digital domain" – a non-sensical discrimination, but one which might make sense under a certain perspective …) was always hot since then. There was a time before the late nineties.
And if I dare to say "mainstream contemporary art institutions" is a rather wondrous characterization – does the mainstream characterize the visitors or the curators or the contemporary art (I guess institutions are always mainstream?)? Or are we talking about a socio-economic model?
And indeed, being in the process of hiring a curator for "time-based visual arts" exposed to me critically how little the "mainstream academic curatorial programs" actually teach about the "reality" of the art, which CRUMB list is focused on. And I mean"reality" in the sense of beyond or before reflection (which certainly is part of reality), but knowing about the "ingredients", the "how and what" which hopefully curatorial practice in this part of the arts world should be as informed about as much as the curator for Renaissance sculpture might or should know about types of stones, Carrara or not,chisels, hammer, guilds and dust. This specific knowledge might or should be specific to curating "new media art".
Cheers,
Johannes
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