//The Curated

"What drives the expansion of this self-reflexive anxiety? By its nature, and as O'Neill's endlessly recursive Russian doll of curatorial-artistic repositioning suggests, it is not the preserve of professional or institutional curators as such, but has become a sort of critical reflex among those artists and curators for whom the traditional division of artist and curator appears suspect." (Charlesworth,Curating Doubt, Page 1)

Before making any headway on the ultimately good message of this particular sentence, one must wade through a swamp of unnecessary words and convoluted grammatical nuances. Whew. The analogy to nesting Russian dolls was especially vivid, both in a "self-reflexive" manner (as a representation of the writer's endless sentences and ridiculous flowery clarification) and as a critique of Paul O'Neill's equally obtuse comment, quoted by Charlesworth. Curators this, curators that, Charlesworth needs to get his head out of the gutter and realize that there is actually much less between the artist and the viewer than he might want to think. Whoever discovers the art, whoever is knowledgeable about the art, and whoever assumes the cost of acquiring art matter not to whoever may view the art. Perhaps there is a fantastic tale about the collection, but it has no place, nor does the role of a curator in the average viewer's experience. They will take in information as they will, and to have an order imposed on their thinking is a downfall of free interpretation.

"In each of these situations ["crowd-curating" or semi-randomness], the word curating is used to describe actions taken by members of the public who would not normally self-define as curators." (Kasprzak, For What and For Whom? Page 1)

It is no mystery why companies who listen to feedback from their customers do so well. Vigorous and exhaustive evaluation must be done before a decision is reached, and for that inquiry, there is no better group to study than the public. More and more projects are being turned into community-wide collaborative efforts, whether it be sustainable urban farming or a small piece of open source software. Not only does Kasprzak suggest with this one statement that members of a much greater expanse contribute to the curation of artwork, but that we all establish our own collections and constantly curate that evolving library of information. She goes on to point out that bloggers (like us!) even amass a collection of images and words from all corners of the bizarre art landscape. Putting a small piece of your own opinion into a showing of collected artworks can yield a far better representation of the available total than leaving it to just the "curators."

"I asked people real questions about their lives, their work, their histories, their favorite foods, etc. Sometimes this was perceived as invasive, but i tried to be very sensitive." (Fletcher, Towards a Tender Society of Thoughtful Questions and Answers, Page 1)

So few people realize the value in forging profound discussions with their frequent or infrequent company. With the sheer volume of useless "unformation" we might call it that is available on the internet about our friends, we begin to see what real interactions are simply missed as a result. I could hop on FaceBook and be alerted that it's Joe Plumber's birthday on Wednesday, but would I know from that what his most important experience was as a child, or when his first internal realizations of existence occurred? Of course not, unless he wanted to broadcast that personal information for the world to see. The author makes a good point in that the questions they asked could very well have been made to sound prying, but the reality is that we have just grown unaccustomed to these traditionally rich inquiries.

Cass Elliot - Make Your Own Kind Of Music

//The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away

"The entire room, from floor to ceiling, was filled with heaps of different types of garbage. But this wasn't a disgusting, stinking junkyard like the one in our yard or in the large bins near the gates of our building, but rather a gigantic warehouse of the most varied things, arranged in a special, one might say carefully maintained, order." (page 34)

Vivid images of my dad's home workplace came shooting through my mind after internalizing this thought. Despite having kept every scrap of paper and knick-knack since childhood, he has it organized in the most meaningful way imaginable and can recover an article at the drop of a hat. His memory has not failed him, nor are his reasons particularly sentimental – he just holds on to things for fear of needing them down the line to back up an obscure piece of knowledge lost otherwise to time. The main difference between my father and the character we know only by "the plumber" is that he still works and lives amongst his endless memorandum. For comfort, perhaps, or maybe because it is a natural product of never having moved residences upon establishing himself in a career. Regardless, what he retains is just as reflexive as the plumber's of the sum total of his being and contribution to the world.

"...going up to the large bundles of old boots, tin cans and similar junk hanging on long ropes attached to a nail which was driven deep into the wall, he could already guess what might be written on the white square tied to the end of each of these things." (Page 34)

Although I often refrain from symbolic interpretations of the elements in fiction, this passage struck me as a blatant representation of a plot or story – the expression "at the end of my rope" ties an inanimate object to an unexplainable phenomenon in nature so as to make the entire concept more manageable. From birth (the beginning of the rope) to death (the end), memorabilia are attached marking special events in the saga of the represented individual. Despite the pieces being insignificant out of context, it is clear that each represents much more. To the outsider, though, the story told through garbage might be just that – the plumber's narrative, though, aids those who wish to explore his narrative.

//On Photography

"Photography, with its devices of slow motion and enlargement, reveals the secret." (Page 59)

An abstract of the thought presented in the context of Walter Benjamin's "A Short History of Photography" (1931), this statement summarizes the wonderful field of photography. Unlike any other art form, capturing an instantaneous perspective of an environment is both a treat and an additional triviality. Composing a shot is only half the battle, as photography is always a time-based art. One slice of a lengthy shoot, sometimes as short as 1/250th of a second is the key to a successful photo – if the shutter is open too long, not at the right time, or focus isn't dead on, the opportunity is lost. However, should the stars align to produce the desired image, the detail in both time and space is an inexhaustible amount of information for exploration afterwards. Having taken and stitched together several 360° panoramas recently, I have found more pleasure in discovering their hidden personalities and oddities than in actually capturing the image. In the same way, portraits reveal a great deal about one's expression between their intended pose – a trace of a grimace may surface, or a longing in the eyes, or perhaps even irritation with the demands of the photographer. Nothing can hide from a camera.

"The amateur who returns home with great piles of artistic shots is in fact no more appealing a figure than the hunter who comes back with quantities of game of no use to anyone but the dealer." (Page 63)

Nope. Since when is investigation and trial and error a scar on the face of art? The opinion Benjamin presents as fact is, to say the least, narrow-minded. There is no better way to become familiar with a medium than to experiment, and often capturing or producing a plethora of images is key to finding a technique or style that fits especially well within that medium. After acquiring a digital single lens reflex camera, I've put over 30,000 actuations on the shutter and have yet to nail down my shooting preferences. Perhaps this is a result of a constantly evolving idea of an attractive image, or even something as natural as the changing seasons demanding different approaches to lighting, color and subject matter. No matter, claiming that quantity sacrifices worth is absolutely the antithesis of photography. Unless you are Annie Leibowitz, of course.

Santogold - Say A-Ha! (TEPR Remix)