visualizing work.flows and (filtering-)processes | CONT3XT.NET #07.07

June 2, 2007

Type: discussion

The mailinglist [CC] "curating media/net/art–discussions" by
CONT3XT.NET is now open and starts with its first topic "visualizing
work.flows and (filtering-)processes". If you are interested in
participating from June 1st to August 31st 2007 please register at
http://lists.subnet.at/mailman/listinfo/cc - Excerpts of the
contributions to the mailinglist will be published in the forthcoming
catalogue presented in October 2007 in Vienna

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1 visualizing work.flows and (filtering-)processes

Curating on the Internet is a working process that wants to be
visualized in the same way as the processes frequently hidden behind
Internet-based art-forms. The curator, "who does not want to get
'inside' or 'outside' the system, but stays at her place to deepen her
knowledge" (1), acts not only as an intermediary in the presentation
of art but also of his/her own filtering-processes, choices and
decisions. The transparency of his/her work is more relevant for the
transparency of the presented artworks, too, and aims to get a broad
public involved in a collective discourse. "With the steady
incorporation of the Web into the mainstream arts scene, the launching
of exhibitions and the building of archives has become an increasingly
creative and authorial practice.

However, the act of curating used to be a clandestine affair. Those
holding the position would have once worked quietly within the
institutional archives, orchestrating their exhibitions anonymously
from 'behind the curtain,' but now in the past ten to fifteen years
the process of curating and the person who practices it have emerged
center stage in public discourse" (2). Spoken metaphorically, the
constant and ongoing publication of a "curator's notebook" contributes
to the visualization of a work-flow that does not only show the final
results of this process in shape of an exhibition. It unfolds the
existence of a network of non-linear thoughts, relational research and
deductive/inductive (filtering-)processes.

(1) SCHULTZ, Pit: The Producer as Power User. IN: KRYSA, Joasia (ed.):
Curating Immateriality: The Work of the Curator in the Age of Network
Systems. Autonomedia. Brooklyn / New York. 2006.
(2) WILLIAMS, Alena: Net Art and Process. Some Thoughts on Curatorial
Practice, http://switch.sjsu.edu/nextswitch/switch_engine/front/front.php?artc