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NEW-MEDIA-CURATING  2006

NEW-MEDIA-CURATING 2006

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Subject:

Re: Some personal thoughts on NODE.London.

From:

marc <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

marc <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 23:38:39 +0000

Content-Type:

text/plain

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Parts/Attachments

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Hi Saul and all,

 >Marc, it's full of the word 'curator', after your own name as
much as anyone else's :)"

I openly mentioned to Geoff that I was a curator amongst other things, 
disucssing about paradigms. Which are really paradigm shifts, 'The 
Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn wrote that "Successive 
transition from one paradigm to another via revolution is the usual 
developmental pattern of mature science." (p.12) yip!

"everyone involved were not just curators. In fact, the NODE.London 
experience highlights various paradigms, reflecting what many people are 
- not all just curators, artists, writers, designers or techies, in the 
singular sense. I myself for instance make art, curate, write and make 
music." extract from text to Geoff.

 >How to join a
motley, rowdy argument half way through, when you've only heard half the
story.."

I don't agree with this and I do not think that it is fair, but will 
move on...

 >I think it will be very successful because putting aside qualitative
 >discussions about programming and politics, the primary difference
 >between NODE.London and other media arts festivals is that it has managed
 >to mobilise a *huge* amount of voluntary labour and as such has been an
 >incredibly efficient and lean festival, put on for a fraction of the cost
 >of equivalently sized events.
 >

I think that it is obvious to all that you and I see a completely 
different animal here...

There is a Sufi fable in which a group of foreigners sit at breakfast, 
excitedly discussing their previous night’s exploration. One starts 
saying “…and what about that great beast we came across in the darkest 
part of the Jungle? It was like a massive, rough wall.” The others look 
perplexed. “No it wasn’t!” says one, “It was some kind of python”. 
“Yeah…” another half-agrees, “…but it also had powerful wings”. The 
shortest of the group looks bemused- “well it felt like a tree trunk to me.”

"As such, our descriptions of this collectively authored project are 
inevitably incomplete and contestable, with a complete picture emerging 
only in negotiation with others." 
http://www.mazine.ws/NODE.L_Interdependence

Yes, one of many differences explored is :-

 >I think the difference you're pointing at was simply that there wasn't a
 >figurehead curator with control over curatorial minions.

 >was a pseudo consensual process (pseudo because it certainly wasn't
 >adhered to strictly in any meetings I attended, thank God)

non pseudo = strict?
pseudo = non strict?

....that allowed
 >curator/practitioner factions to debate each other into submission.

What you seem to be saying here to me is that 'curator/practitioner 
factions to debate each other out of the equation'.

I think that there was much more collaboration, especially during the 
last 3 months of the project - everything just pulled together very well.

Very interesting...

marc




. I think the process and practices of NODE.London
have been extremely curatorial - a process of accumulating and
contextualising immaterial culture in a very rigorous and discursive way.
I think the difference you're pointing at was simply that there wasn't a
figurehead curator with control over curatorial minions. Rather, there
was a pseudo consensual process (pseudo because it certainly wasn't
adhered to strictly in any meetings I attended, thank God) that allowed
curator/practitioner factions to debate each other into submission.

Having been involved in NODE.London at an early stage, and now having a
little bit of distance after dropping of the map for a few months, I
think I would like to use that perspective to address what I see as some
misconceptions that could easily be propagated/mythologised - to
NODE.London's detriment. Needless to say, this is my opinion about
NODE.London, there are many like it, but this one is mine...

I don't think NODE.London is exclusively 'grass roots', 'self-organised',
or non-curated. It's very much a hybrid of those things and established
mainstream cultural institutions and processes. It was Arts Council
funded from the first, and can be seen as a strategic development after
the funding of what ACE saw as five key media arts agencies in the late
90's early 00ies: (Mute, SPC, Digital Guild (formerly Artec), Audiorom
and Media Arts Projects) - which (from ACE's point of view) culminated in
the DMZ
(http://web.archive.org/web/20040213210123/http://www.dmzlondon.net/index.html)
in late 2003. Many were dissatisfied with DMZ (though it was successful
in ACE attendance terms and had some good critical discourse surrounding
it), many thought it was stuck in far East London, where it attracted
usual suspects, but didn't really spread out to embrace London in all
it's gory glory. NODE.London took on this fund and the remit was
basically to get loads more new people involved - small agencies,
individuals, funders and sponsors, institutions, curators... *everyone*.

Having said that, the first push of the project was to insist that the
process would not be mono-curatorial, but would develop as an open ended
discussion with a large group of 'voluntary organisers', who would have
final say on as much as possible. However, given the basic
inflexibilities of fiscal responsibilities and the strings (safety
lines?) attached by ACE, this bottom line of the project was never
entirely devolved to the VO group in a contractual sense, although in
practice, it has worked towards that quite successfully.

Rather than using these kinds of old new-economy labels
('self-organising' sticks out as a Kevin Kellyism, particularly), I'd
rather look deeper at NODE.London, and previous efforts, and see how the
pressures of funding, accountability, and attempts to devolve fiscal
decision making played themselves out as a discourse in the project, and
might develop in following years. There has also been a lot of
navel-gazing talk (which I'm fascinated by) about the needs to
constitutionalise the process to avoid the dreaded 'Tyranny of
Stucturelessness' that has limited 'grass roots' efforts in the past.
Maybe this is a question for 2007, when the birth pangs have waned and
results of the evaluation process are available. More on that some other
time.

But I suppose what concerns this list most closely is the curation
question. I really don't think NODE.London is un-curated. Look at the
programme, Marc, it's full of the word 'curator', after your own name as
much as anyone else's :) . I think the process and practices of NODE.London
have been extremely curatorial - a process of accumulating and
contextualising immaterial culture in a very rigorous and discursive way.
I think the difference you're pointing at was simply that there wasn't a
figurehead curator with control over curatorial minions. Rather, there
was a pseudo consensual process (pseudo because it certainly wasn't
adhered to strictly in any meetings I attended, thank God) that allowed
curator/practitioner factions to debate each other into submission.

I think NODE.London is breaking ground - but not as part of the reductive
subculture/mainstream binary discourse, it's far more complex, messy and
interesting than that. Observing this churning processes from a (small)
distance, I can really understand why people are hesitant to get involved
at this stage. How to position oneself critically in relation to
something that moves when you poke it or look at it? How to join a
motley, rowdy argument half way through, when you've only heard half the
story..

You're both right when you say that next year will test this model.

I think it will be very successful because putting aside qualitative
discussions about programming and politics, the primary difference
between NODE.London and other media arts festivals is that it has managed
to mobilise a *huge* amount of voluntary labour and as such has been an
incredibly efficient and lean festival, put on for a fraction of the cost
of equivalently sized events.

Art needs curators like the web needs Google. I don't like using Google
for various reasons, but I do, all day, every day.

Cheers,

Saul.

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