Hi CRUMB list lurkers
February is approaching with planning for our upcoming theme -  
"Writing about the ephemeral / the ‘live’ / the broadcast" -   
progressing.... sorry about all the announcements and lack of engaged  
discussion of late.

In the meantime I thought I would post some thoughts from this past  
weekend's conference in Amsterdam - Video Vortex - where I spoke on a  
panel about Curating Online Video.

The panel was moderated by Vera Tollman, and a synopsis/blog of the  
conversation can be read online here:
http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/2008/01/20/video-vortex-curating- 
online-video/

I think some key ideas emerged in the discussion we tried to generate  
in an effort to move attention away from simply either the aesthetics  
of online video nowadays or the questions of video blogging as  
socially engaged practice. Patrick Lichty very cleverly commented  
that it felt strange to him, as a committed new media producer/artist/ 
curator/theorist, to 'welcome back' video to the forefront of  
activity, simply because of the proliferation of opportunities to  
share video online. I tried, in my presentation, to look at how  
artists had, before the advent of sites such as YouTube, been  
'curatorial' in their efforts to create platforms for other artists  
to share (or broadcast) their online work, which wasn't just about  
linear narrative video streaming, but about a range of new media  
activity, from live performance to the use of networked data (such as  
the collaborative project curated by Northern Art Prize winners Nina  
Pope and Karen Guthrie -- TV Swansong). Thomas Thiel from ZKM gave a  
very useful talk which included breaking down how the web platforms  
such as YouTube might be (or are) used by curators or the  
administrative end of the art world -- for marketing and gossip,  
exhibition walkthroughs, video documentations and interviews -- and  
thus might less confusingly be understood as a resource, not  
necessarily a collection of work itself, or even a platform for  
curatorial projects themselves. Tom Sherman asked from the floor  
whether the role of the curator had on one hand become more  
endangered as artists were able to publish/promote/distribute their  
video work themselves using these platforms, but on the other hand  
had become all the more vital for the role curators have always held  
- in contextualizing, reflecting upon, critiquing, the work itself.  
Our panel agreed we were now having to be even more sharp in our  
roles as 'filter feeders' (ref. Anne Marie Schleiner) or  
'popularisers' (ref. Regine Debatty) - highlighting through our  
choices some work and not other pieces, as for instance in the case  
of Emma Quinn and what she described as part of her role at the ICA  
London, separating art out from advertising/marketing or amateur  
efforts often found in the same context.

Not meaning to be glib on this dull grey day, but I wonder if there  
is now scope for us to put the generation gap often evident in new  
media curating to good use -- those curators who worked so hard in  
the early days to get video accepted as a new art form, can now  
reclaim that territory and move forward with all this online video  
work, helped by the knowledge they've gained inbetween by continually  
tracking the new (god knows the state of online video projects could  
use your critical help!). and those curators who came to new media  
art after video was already established, can continue to push for  
alternative ideas of culture online (for instance).

provocatively (and yet tiredly) yours,
sarah