[Reader-list] [Announcements] CURATING IMMATERIALITY

Thu May 18 20:02:59 IST 2006

Thanks for your response, Marianna. Im having a bit of an oh, why didnt
know that about meeting you last fall  otherwise I would have been
harassing you about how to find a copy of the De-, Dis-, Ex-, -
Immaterial Lobouer : Work, Research, And Art that you and Melanie edited
which Ive been trying to find.

The argument you make here and elsewhere about how these issues relate to
changes in forms and regimes of labor, are involved in varying circuits of
social (re)production is really interesting. For example the point you
make in the Precariat issue of Republicart:

conceptual art heralded the de-materialisation of the art object,
focusing instead on the symbolic mediations that instantiate art as an
event and mode of communication... it could be argued that the
de-materialised object is actually information, as it is subject to the
same forms of proprietary relations.

Or in other words there are ways that avant garde art practices create
practices that will later be taken on my marketing and other aspects of
capitalism (the advent of interaction design and what not). Making this
argument and exploring such issues is different from addressing them only
as they apply to art, to the institutionalzied art world.

So I guess what I was trying to get at in my admittedly not so well
written and thought out message was the gulf between the contents of the
book which explore this broader issue  and how that doesnt seem to be
relfected in the announcement ( I slightly fibbed when I said I hadnt
seen the book  I flipped through Matteo Pasquinellis copy for a little
while a few weeks ago [were in the same PhD programm], but I didnt get a
chance to do more than a cursory glance through  which is why I dont
feel that I have read enough of the book to get a grasp on it  but Im
still surprised by what seems to be this gap between content and the way
the announcement presents it).

As for the process that led to the printing of the book  I have no idea.
Ive only been working with Autonomedia since spring 2004  and Im
guessing the decision to publish the series was made before then  because
it didnt come up at any meetings. I didnt hear anything about the books
until they came out.

Having said that  sorry if my message was put together hastily and not as
well thought as it could have been Joasia. Im not skeptical idea about
the idea of radical art  but I am not quite skeptical that gallery spaces
in radical art. As for the comments about curation / care  that is true,
that word derives from care in the sense of caring for a parish, i.e.
caring for ones religious flock. That seems more like a Foucauldian
notion of pastoral power rather than the sort of care which is discussed
by feminist thinkers, people like Precarias a la Deriva, etc

Cheers
Stevphen

PS  Marina, are you still in NYC?

> Hi Stevphen -
>
> Great to see your post.  We met in New York last November (friend of
> Marianna's, who's a friend of Erika's), and I'm really annoyed to have
> missed the Occupying the Social Factory discussion event in Leicester last
> week.
>
> As a contributing writer to this most recent Data Browser anthology, I'm
> glad to see your response on this list and hope some of the other
> contributors are motivated to take up some of your points.
>
> I completely agree that a reconsideration of curation instigated through
> posited changes in the technological and social infrastructure of cultural
> production isn't worth the paper, or plasma, it's printed on unless there
> is that skepticism and interrogation of the function of curating in such a
> system(s) and in general artworld/market terms.  I think it also ties in
> to questions around value production, and the double-bind of 'curating
> immateriality' would seem to be that curation ipso facto adheres to a
> certain model of value, inscribed in the production of symbolic capital,
> which is then translated into actual capital, etc. so it can't
> dematerialise, only become more pervasive, (like value) if it holds on to
> the administration of taste as a founding principle of curation which is
> associated with institutions, display and property, while 'immateriality'
> seems to evoke a re-consideration of those regimes of value (one of
> negri's most contentious theses of course).  Sorry this is so garbled, but
> I have to write fast!
>
> Anyway, this is some of the terrain I try to maneuver around in my text,
> but have to shamefacedly admit that haven't had a chance to read the other
> pieces yet.
>
> Also, out of interest, as you're an editor at Autonomedia, and this book
> has been published by Autonomedia, how does it fit into the Autonomedia
> programme ( know it's not that unitary) and what was your role in the
> decision to publish it?
>
> Best,
> Marina
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 13:09:34 -0400 (EDT)
> From: "Stevphen Shukaitis" <stevphen at autonomedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Reader-list] [Announcements] CURATING IMMATERIALITY
> To: reader-list at sarai.net
> Message-ID: <49709.85.156.168.240.1147367374.squirrel at mail.panix.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> pleae forgive for the rudness of this question - but, curating, who
> cares?
>
> maybe this is just some sort of knee jerk pseudo-situationist response,
> but to me there seems something deeply unsettling and bothersome about
> the
> notion of curating itself. the very word seems inseperable from the
> process of capital-A Art as an appartus of capture. The idea of
> distributed forms of curating existing in an almost self-perpetuating
> system strikes me as deeply distutbing.
>
> I would hope that considering the new possibilities and dynamics of
> curating through digital and distributed means would explore the
> profoundly ambivalent nature of curating and Art itself. one can have an
> open source networked participatory media pantopicon - and that wouldn't
> make it a good idea.
>
> but then again I haven't seen the book so maybe I'm just reading this is
> some funky manner or something . . .
>
> just wondering . . .
>
> cheers
> stevphen
>
>
>
>>
>> The third volume in the DATA browser series is now out - focusing on
>> curating in the context of technological networks (Internet and
>> software).
>> Introduction to the book available for download from the Data browser
>> website at: www.data-browser.net/03
>>
>>
>> ---
>>
>> DATA browser 03
>> CURATING IMMATERIALITY
>> THE WORK OF THE CURATOR IN THE AGE OF NETWORK SYSTEMS
>>
>> Edited by Joasia Krysa
>>
>> Publisher: Autonomedia (DATA browser 03)
>> ISBN: 1-57027-170-4
>> Pages: 288, Paper Perfectbound
>> Price: $15.95 US / ï¿½15 in UK
>>
>> The third book in the DATA Browser series of critical texts that
>> explore
>> issues at the intersection of culture and technology. The site of
>> curatorial
>> production has been expanded to include the space of the Internet and
>> the
>> focus of curatorial attention has been extended from the object to
>> processes
>> to dynamic network systems. As a result, curatorial work has become
>> more
>> widely distributed between multiple agents, including technological
>> networks
>> and software. This upgraded 'operating system' of art presents new
>> possibilities of online curating that is collective and distributed -
>> even
>> to the extreme of a self-organising system that curates itself. The
>> curator
>> is part of this entire system but not central to it. This book reflects
>> on
>> these changes and examines the work of the curator in relation to a
>> wider
>> socio-political context articulated through two key issues:
>> immateriality
>> and network systems. It considers how the practice of curating has been
>> transformed by distributed networks beyond the rhetoric of free
>> software
>> and
>> open systems.
>>
>> Contributors:
>> 0100101110101101.ORG & [epidemiC] | Josephine Berry Slater | Geoff Cox
>> |
>> Alexander R. Galloway & Eugene Thacker | Olga Goriunova & Alexei Shulgin
>> |
>> Beryl Graham | Eva Grubinger | Piotr Krajewski | Jacob Lillemose |
>> low-fi
>> |
>> Franziska Nori | Matteo Pasquinelli | Christiane Paul | Trebor Scholz |
>> Grzesiek Sedek | Tiziana Terranova | Marina Vishmidt
>>
>> For more information see <http://www.data-browser.net/03/>
>>
>> All texts released under a Creative Commons License 2006.
>>
>> The DATA browser series presents critical texts that explore issues at
>> the
>> intersection of culture and technology. The editorial group are Geoff
>> Cox,
>> Joasia Krysa, Anya Lewin, Malcolm Miles, Mike Punt & Hugo de Rijke
>> <http://www.data-browser.net/>. This volume is produced in association
>> with
>> Arts Council England and University of Plymouth.
>>
>>
>> ------ End of Forwarded Message
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>>
>
> _____________________________________________________________
> More contemporary art at
> http://www.art-online.org_________________________________________
> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
> Critiques & Collaborations
> To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with
> subscribe in the subject header.
> List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>

-- 
Stevphen Shukaitis
Autonomedia Editorial Collective
http://www.autonomedia.org
http://slash.interactivist.net

"Autonomy is not a fixed, essential state. Like gender, autonomy is
created through its performance, by doing/becoming; it is a political
practice. To become autonomous is to refuse authoritarian and compulsory
cultures of separation and hierarchy through embodied practices of
welcoming difference . . . Becoming autonomous is a political position for
it thwarts the exclusions of proprietary knowledge and jealous hoarding of
resources, and replaces the social and economic hierarchies on which these
depend with a politics of skill exchange, welcome, and collaboration.
Freely sharing these with others creates a common wealth of knowledge and
power that subverts the domination and hegemony of the masters rule."
-subRosa Collective