//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