As the roles and responsibilities of those associated with the ‘art world’ are continuously shifting, expanding, and transforming, we see many artists adapting their practices into what can be considered ‘curatorial’ roles. Works like “The Play of the Unmentionables” (1992), by Joseph Kosuth or the more recent “Fabiola” (2009) by Francis Alÿs are prime examples of how artists, through an appropriation of the work of other artists, act in very much a curatorial mode, selecting and organising art as a means of producing art. Why? Is it a reflex of the artist to act out the conditions that we operate within? After century’s of the artist or the art being exposed to the processes of curation in traditional gallery and museum contexts, are we as artists ready to move on, move past the conventional art world activity of curation. Art seems to have reached a climactic reflexivity as the conventions of institutional art are replacing themselves by canceling themselves out; when the activity of art references its conventions as a means of progression. Is it time to consider where curation is headed? Why, as artists do we feel the need to be curatorial in our practices? What is the role of the curator in today’s open-source world?
In May 2009, the Positions in flux: On the changing role of the artist and institution in the networked society took place in Amsterdam, Netherlands at the Netherlands Media Art Institute (NIMK). This symposium spearheaded much needed discussion on these very questions concerning the transformation of curatorial roles in contemporary arts and media practice. A series of three panels featuring discussion by international artists, academics, theorists, and curators addressed the issues of the media culture and art institutions, contemporary media/art and political action, and art production and curation. According to an overview of the symposium, a major topic was the idea of open source networking in media and information technology and the relationships with curatorial processes. Presented by Joasia Krysa founder of KURATOR, “a cultural organisation operating as a curatorial agency and research platform at the intersection of art and technology. It has a particular interest in an emerging discourse and practice that links curating with software and networks.”
Aligning the processes and responsiblities of art curation with those of the software programmer provides an interesting angle on the placement of the purpose and function of contemporary curation (and conversely programming). With the potential for closing off cooperative and egalitarianistic development in a closed-sourced system, the necessity of open-source concepts, as demonstrated in Linux operating systems or creative commons licensing increasingly applied to media, are absolutely crucial for the productivity and advancement of the Web or the Net, as well as the practices involved in the critical and conscious development of these media structures.
It is this very concept of an open source, a source of information and its design that is open and accessible for use and more importantly concerted cooperative revision, that in the advent of new technology drives innovation to its fullest potential. Within the institution of artistic practice there is a similar open-source ideal that spurs interactivity, dialogue, collaboration, and other shared forms of cooperative experience. In many ways it is a trans-evolutionary activity, the conversations that take place through artists inspiring each other, or especially artists inspiring non-artists, i.e. curators, viewers, collectors, critics, etc.
Coming back to the process of curation, it becomes important consider how, through this lens of open-source activity, the conversation between the concpets of art curation and of art production. In today’s media saturated atmosphere, the processes of how is art made vs. how these processes are communicated become important in this discussion.
While the idea of curating is in essence a specialisation in the selection, presentation, and composition of cultural collection and exhibition, it can succinctly be summed up as a process of controlling and managing the boundaries of individual and social identifiers, thus communicated through cultural forms.
So how is the act of curation, in institution, in individual practice, in its many cultural forms, moving beyond this at present, how is this evolving? While the NIMK symposium considers art presentation in its proximity to the design, development, and distribution of software and other new media, there is also a more social or even political orientation of curation that is linked to interactive and relational artistic activity. Looking forward to this contemporary concept of ‘open-source’ media, it is the methods by which these relationships can produce new possibilities for the creation and exhibition of art and ideas.
The Netherlands Media Art Institute describing a session at the Positions in Flux conference, questions these relationships between artist and curator, media and art, production and presentation as follows:
“This session deals with the concept of open source for art production and its presentation. The open source movement is driven by the idea of collective, process-based, sustainable production and improvement. In software development this strategy has already proven to be valid; however can this model be applied to other products such as artworks or even exhibitions? In how far does the open source model differ from other forms of artistic collaboration? Is there a new role model for both the artist and the curator in the future? Which (economic) value and impact has expertise in open source production? How could institutions and organisations respond to this trend? How could institutions and organisations respond to this trend and create public domains?”
Responding to ideas about interactivity, selectivity, social modeling, media development, and communicative practices, my artistic practice can be used as a means of focusing some of these questions. Recently, I have moved into this curatorial mode through the development of a community pirate radio station, FAIR FM. This radio station was set-up in an art gallery and project space in the city. Passerbys, viewers, and gallery-goers were invited develop programming, host a radio show, or volunteer for the station. In many ways, as the artist coordinating the project, I was required to act in a curatorial capacity; acting as a conduit, a mediator, a selector and organiser (at least initially), working with the users, helping them become the artist in a sense, initiating them into their role as producer, radio host, or actor. In many cases, those interested in working with the project, developing content for broadcast, were artists, musicians, and active creative-types. My role was really more of an initiator and facilitator, thus adapted roles of the curator.
My initial interest in the project was not so much to define what was exhibited, but rather to allow a space for this collective exhibition, or rather presentation to evolve. The idea of exhibition vs. presentation comes into play.
The FAIR FM project allowed for the development of communication through the opening up of communicative spaces. In this way the project was an open-source situation in its practical accessibility through artistic interaction, an open-source art event. The outcomes of FAIR FM fostered an adaptation of a certain type of curation of what was to become art within the interactive model provided through the project. In other words, my process of allowing other to be “the DJ selector” on air developed wholly out of a sensitivity of traditional media (and art to a degree) censorship.
Thinking again about the relationships between curation and open-source programming, and the statement that “The open source movement is driven by the idea of collective, process-based, sustainable production and improvement”, the FAIR FM project superimposes this “collective production” over the act of curating content for the radio station and its programming. Curation in this context is altered, under the same conditions that enable open-source in media programming and production. Imagining for a moment that all products of art culture and the ‘art world’ are open-source, the code of the artist-in-culture, that of the curator-in-art or the viewer-in-art culture, we as participants in this world collectively, processually, and sustainably produce and improve these programs. It is simply a matter of selection, or actually election, picking and choosing.
As the artist, it seems as though we are always enduring processes of selection. It is our compositional nature that perhaps requires us to select parts of our lives consisting of parts of others lives and compose these, exhibit or present these in a way that allows other others to see them as part of a different collection. It is the act of continuous collection and the proximity between individuals that is exposed through the components of the collection, as Alÿs is exhibiting, in part, through his curatorialesque project “Fabiola”. For Kousth, it is the otherness, in its unmentionable form, that is collated through his exhibition-as-art-as-exhibition.
