I Blog, Therefore I Curate
One could cogently argue that blogging, a daily ritual for millions, is an essentially curatorial act. To blog is, after all, to stage--through selective inclusion, exclusion, and recontextualization--a performance of individual identity, to imaginatively order an inchoate universe through the re-centering lens of subjectivity. The blogger can reincarnate her- or himself as an authoritative and consequential presence, with a voice and purpose. Unflattering as the analogy may be to many curators of fine art, it holds, and Liverpool-based curator Michael Connor has playfully evoked it with what may be the first blogged art exhibition, 'Raiders of the Lost ArtBase.' Commisioned by Rhizome, Connor has delved into the platform's ArtBase--a nearly six-year-old online archive of more than 1,500 new media artworks--to excavate its 'buried treasures' in weekly blog postings. Connor's commentary is refreshingly de-jargonized and entertaining ('OK, turn the techno off, put Rod Stewart back on, and get back to work'), giving this curatorial project a wonderfully personal and decidedly non-institutional feel. There's an earnestness to Connor's manner that underlines and celebrates the ways in which curators have become visible pundits with personalities and agendas--or bloggers, if you will. - Andy Comer
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