On Curating, Online :

Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere Aalto University, P.O. BOX 11000, 00076 AALTO www.aalto.fi Master of Arts thesis abstract

Author Vanessa Kowalski Title of thesis On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere Department Department of Arts Degree programme Curating, Managing, and Mediating Art (CuMMA)

Year 2018 Number of pages 173 Language English Abstract

The invention of the Internet and its related accessories, as untrodden territory and as a medium, have ushered in a new era of artistic creation and curatorial practice, new frontiers for political censorship, and have drastically altered the paradigm of information transmission. The Web, although certainly a powerful social tool, has seeped so deeply into the foundations of everyday life that it has collapsed understandings of the present in exchange for a constantly refreshing sequence of now’s, and cultural institutions are struggling to ‘keep up with the times.’ Operating under the pressure of a capitalist system that privileges celebrity status, production, Vanessa Kowalski and modernity as progress, curators are ceaselessly inundated with an overwhelming amount of resources, struggling to dissect and interpret the present moment because the future has already ‘On Curating, Online: been deemed impatient. What would it mean then if cultural workers were to slow down, and Buying Time in the Middle of here’ reimagine progress not as linear procession but as collective expansion? Now This dissertation looks at the ways in which alternative approaches to exhibition Master’s Thesis making andOn Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere curating, specifically those taking place online, have long attempted to address the inadequacies and discriminatory practices traditionally upheld by major institutional models. Curating, Managing, and Mediating Art While the speed and omnipresence of digital technologies has also cultivated a tendency for the School of Arts, Design and Architecture creation of easily digestible content, slow curating, when used as a curatorial method rather than as a rate of dissemination, can serve as a strategy of resistance against the dueling binaries of Aalto University past and future from a position that generously expands the middle of now by engaging in Helsinki situated active thinking and critical reflection. Through an exploration of the evolution of the field of contemporary art alongside that of the Internet, this thesis presents examples of smaller Finland scale institutions currently publishing and exhibiting artworks online that exemplify slow curating strategies. Through an analysis of the ways in which these platforms are designed, 2018 accessed, and address their audiences, a series of three case studies center around online publisher Triple Canopy, dis.art, a Netflix like viewing platform, and the digital library Monoskop, in order to illustrate the diverse range of possibilities as well as the inherent Thesis Supervisor: Nora Sternfeld problematics of technology that cultural workers face when utilizing digital media to create External Advisor: Annet Dekker spaces for the exhibition of artworks, literature, and ideas. Art and its associated movements such as conceptual art, feminist art, and modernism have already shown that while art is often thought to operate on the margins, it has the capacity to spark societal and political transformations—and despite the imposing restrictions of surveillance and control, surely art online makes for no exception. When subordination and emancipation can be achieved by the same tools, simply having the tools is not enough, and any reconfiguration of the conflict depends not only on how they are used, but by whom. 3 2

Keywords curating, online, contemporary art, Internet, digital publishing, exhibitions, archives, slow curating Graphic Design by Bryan Fountain. Cover Image by Joshua Mathews. Fonts graciously provided by Peter Korsman/ Autograph. Printed in Helsinki on sustainably sourced papers. Please circulate or recycle this publication.

5 4 To my supportive and insightful advisors, Nora Sternfeld & Annet Dekker. To my colleagues and classmates. To those who have contributed their works, ideas, and care throughout this process and beyond it. To those who have been with me across time zones. To Finland. To my family & b. To you and your time. I am endlessly thankful to share the middle of now with you all.

7 6 ABSTRACTlooks at the ways in which digital library Monoskop, in The invention of the Internet alternative approaches to order to illustrate the diverse and its related accessories, exhibition making and curating, range of possibilities as well as untrodden territory and specifically those taking place as the inherent problematics as a medium, have ushered online, have long attempted of technology that cultural in a new era of artistic to address the inadequacies workers face when utilizing creation and curatorial and discriminatory practices digital media to create spaces practice, new frontiers for traditionally upheld by major for the exhibition of artworks, political censorship, and institutional models. While the literature, and ideas. have drastically altered the speed and omnipresence of Art and its associated paradigm of information digital technologies has also movements such as transmission. The Web, cultivated a tendency for the conceptual art, feminist art, although certainly a powerful creation of easily digestible and modernism have already social tool, has seeped so content, slow curating, shown that while art is often deeply into the foundations when used as a curatorial thought to operate on the of everyday life that it has method rather than as a rate margins, it has the capacity collapsed understandings of dissemination, can serve to spark societal and political of the present in exchange as a strategy of resistance transformations—and despite for a constantly refreshing against the dueling binaries the imposing restrictions sequence of now’s, and of past and future from a of surveillance and control, cultural institutions are position that generously surely art online makes for no struggling to ‘keep up with the expands the middle of now exception. When subordination times.’ Operating under the by engaging in situated active and emancipation can be pressure of a capitalist system thinking and critical reflection. achieved by the same tools, that privileges celebrity status, Through an exploration of simply having the tools production, and modernity the evolution of the field of is not enough, and any as progress, curators are contemporary art alongside reconfiguration of the conflict ceaselessly inundated with that of the Internet, this thesis depends not only on how they an overwhelming amount presents examples of smaller are used, but by whom. of resources, struggling to scale institutions currently dissect and interpret the publishing and exhibiting present moment because artworks online that exemplify the future has already been slow curating strategies. deemed impatient. Through an analysis of the What would it mean then if ways in which these platforms cultural workers were to slow are designed, accessed, and down, and reimagine address their audiences, a progress not as linear series of three case studies procession but as collective center around online publisher expansion? Triple Canopy, dis.art, a Netflix This dissertation like viewing platform, and the 9 8 TABLE OF CONTENTS

P.12 SITUATING THE RESEARCH P.98 SLOWING DOWN THE INTERNET • The Future is Hypertextual • I Link Therefore I am • Success (in Progress) • Digital Naïve • Rethinking Success as Slowness • Why Now and What Can Art Do? • Case Studies: Triple Canopy, dis.art, and Monoskop • The Medium is the Methodology • Triple Canopy • Questions & Case Studies • On Transparency • CanopyCanopyCanopy P.38 KEYWORDS AND FRAMEWORK OF THE NETWORK •Toward Visibility • dis.art • Who Cares? • End of the Line(ar) Timeline • On Curating, Online • Distorting And Disarming: Dissent on Display • Where is Care? • Monoskop • Exhibiting Online • Unpacking My Digital Library • World Wide Web? • The Crisis of Connectivity: Content • World Within Worlds • Better Off Online P.139 CONCLUSION • Platforms • Public Cyberspace P.149 CITATIONS • In the Public I P.169 IMAGE INDEX P.84 IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE TOGETHER

• Being Singular Plural: Sharing vs. Pseudo-sharing • Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere

11 10 Situating the Research Situating the Research Situating the Research Situating the Research Situating the Research Situating the Research Situating the Research Situating the Research Situating the Research Situating the Research Situating the Research Situating the Research Situating the Research Situating the Research Situating the Research 1 Situating the Research Situating the Research Situating the Research Situating the Research Situating the Research Situating the Research Situating the Research Situating the Research Situating the Research Situating the Research Situating the Research Situating the Research THE FUTURE IS of objective knowledge. There on paper back in 1843. attention. Perhaps the near Situating the Research HYPERTEXTUAL is space to be found here Citing the writing future is female and sold on an In an attempt to resist the between the teeth of traditional of several female-identifying overpriced t-shirt at The Wing,4 traditionally accepted linearity discourse when one acknowl- authors and the ways in which but it should be radically re- of research, while this thesis edges that “attending to the their works—nonlinear, nonhi- imagined as an unmarketable, remains in the realm of the restrictions in the apparently erarchical, and decentering— transgressive, intersectional,5 academic, I am purposeful in open spaces of a social world had hypertextual qualities, in and hypertextual ethos.6 my execution and presentation brings us into closer proximity her essay Women Writers and the of it through my style of writing to an actual world.”2 This is not Restive Text: Feminism, Exper- as well as in the organizational a catering to a vicious desire to imental Writing and Hypertext, I LINK THEREFORE I AM approach to my material. My pit singular identity against sin- Barbara Page proposed that The curator can be thought of position is precise, singu- gular identity, the problematics writing as an expression of as, but not reduced to, a link, lar and yet plural, and I am of which I will expand upon resistance is “to take apart one that once hovered upon endlessly thankful to Donna throughout this dissertation, the fabric of inherited textual reveals a source, connecting Haraway for her writing on but a necessary action to be forms and to reweave it into actors and ideas from different situated knowledge, reminding taken up by all who are able in new designs.”3 Although this fields or schools of knowledge, that “The moral is simple: only order to challenge the prevail- dissertation focuses most whether art, business, science, partial perspective promises ing hegemonic and patriarchal concretely on three particular or technology, in order to objective vision.”1 The disser- power structures of knowledge case studies, there are many present new ways of thinking, tation itself becomes an artistic production if the desire is to other insightful and inspira- both producing knowledge and exercise that reflects its own reshape them. To be silent and tional projects unfolding online unlearning, or “de-linking,” it. conclusion, looking toward to silence is to be complicit. that speak to the research In order to invite participation, ideas of slow curating and The technology sector is far and its context, and which collaboration, and critical think-

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere sustained inquiry as curatorial too often perceived as being a have thus been included in ing, which can be particular and methods that can be used to male dominated domain—even the frays of the fabric, or the distinct methods or outcomes more deeply engage with both the infamously sexist Wall footnotes, throughout the text. of their work, curators un- subject matter and varied audi- street employs more women The production of knowledge dertake the responsibility to ences. I invite you, reader, and than tech. Such a view further is unfit for the assembly line, concern themselves with the hope that you feel welcome excludes the experience and and therefore whether you are questions that surround the in the words and spaces that invaluable efforts and identities reading this in digital or printed relationships between audienc- follow. of all others who have made format oscillating between es, artists, themselves, as well Footnotes and the technology that many have pages, tabs, or other devices, as the tools they utilize in their reference lists are the con- come to rely on a possibility— I welcome your distraction as practice. They are not only to tested territories of academia like Grace Hopper’s source that have shackled personal code translator, or the work of 3 Barbara Page, “Women Writers and the Restive Text: Feminism, Experimental Writing and Hypertext,” Postmodern Culture 6, no. 2 (January 1996): http://pmc. experience and sequestered it Ada Lovelace who wrote the iath.virginia.edu/text-only/issue.196/page.196. behind the glimmering veneers world’s first machine algorithm 4 Marisa Meltzer, “A Feminist T-Shirt Resurfaces From the ‘70s,” The New York Times, November 18, 2015, accessed March 11, 2018, https://www.nytimes. com/2015/11/19/fashion/a-feminist-t-shirt-resurfaces-from-the-70s.html. 1 Donna Haraway, Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial 5 Kimberlé Crenshaw, “The Urgency of Intersectionality,” TED: Ideas worth Perspective, vol. 14, No. 3 (Feminist Studies, 1988), 582-583. spreading, October 2016, accessed March 14, 2018, https://www.ted.com/talks/ 2 Sara Ahmed, “Making Feminist Points,” Feministkilljoys, September 11, 2013, kimberle_crenshaw_the_urgency_of_intersectionality. accessed January 20, 2018, http://feministkilljoys.com/2013/09/11/mak- 6 Coincidentally, Ethos is the name of a new “people-powered blockchain” 15 14 ing-feminist-points/. cryptocurrency ecosystem. See www.ethos.io. Detail from GRAMMATRON (Animated GIF Remix), 2017 Artwork by Mark Amerika.

17 16 question these associations, were once sheltered? conviction is not necessarily greater need for sustained Situating the Research but to expose, not the answers No matter if curators medium specific, it is curators engagement as immeasurable that claim nonpartisanship, are independent actors or insti- who are ultimately, by virtue stacks of books, periodicals, but rather the oft-concealed tutional pundits, working in the of their duty to care, ‘troubled’ files, and browser histories foundations upon which these ethnographical museum, mini- with dealing with the entirety of have shaped the labyrinth in connections lie by means of malist contemporary blue-chip lived experience as their most which the curator wanders as parrhesia, which has been art gallery in a gentrified down- valuable resource “to produce, if ad infinitum, leaving behind described by Foucault as town of anywheres-ville, or present, disseminate, distrib- them the traces of their experi- choosing “frankness instead eye strained agoraphobes with ute, know, explain, historicize ence in the form of exhibitions. of persuasion, truth instead of carpal tunnel and lower back it.”9 Surely the digestion of the While exhibitions have been falsehood or silence, the risk problems aglow in the light of present moment is an important thought of as as a space,10 as of death instead of life and their screens, they are regularly aspect of curatorial work, but an act,11 an idea,12 a perfor- security, criticism instead of faced with the daunting process what about the ability to alter mance,13 a politically charged flattery, and moral duty instead of sorting through histories, the ways in which and what is gesture,14 a mirror to society,15 of self-interest and moral theories, behaviors and artistic consumed, particularly in this a theatre,16 the artist’s career apathy.”7 It is true however, practices in a sea of informa- generation so regularly charac- climax,17 a spectacle of wealth that not all who claim the title tion, overlapping accounts, and terized by insatiable appetites and privilege,18 and a play- ‘curator’ assume its associated untrustworthy sources both on for acceleration? ground for artists and curators responsibilities. If the age of and offline to reveal that which The speed and om- alike,19—they have taken on accountability is dawning upon lies buried—but not necessar- nipresence of digital tech- yet another possible interpre- us with revelations of artworld ily a ‘truth.’ First used by the nologies has increased the tation with the advancement misconduct—like that of Jens Serbian-American playwright production of information as of digital technologies. How Hoffmann, Aaron Bondaroff, Steve Tesich in his 1992 essay well as the ability to access it, might exhibiting art online

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere Anthony d’Offay, Gavin Dela- The Nation, the term ‘post-truth,’ paradoxically signaling an even stand in opposition to tradi- hunty, Knight Landesman—or later dubbed word of the year in 9 Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook, Rethinking Curating: Art After New Media (Cambridge, MA: that the exclusionary and nar- 2016 by the Oxford Dictionary, MIT Press, 2010), 304-305. row approaches to institutional seems to foil all the best laid 10 Alison Blunt and Cheryl McEwan, Postcolonial Geographies (New York: Continuum, 2002). representation and compen- plans of cultural workers who 11 Mieke Bal and Edwin Janssen, Double Exposures: The Subject of Cultural Analysis (New sation have finally tipped the have turned to art as a medium York: Routledge, 1996). 12 Kathleen Hefty, “Liam Gillick,” MUSE Magazine, 2016, accessed February 12, scales of tolerance, is there of infallibility only to see find 2018, http://www.musemagazine.it/liam-gillick/. any hope that justice might be that it might actually be, as Bo- 13 Barnaby Drabble, Federica Martini, and Sibylle Omlin, eds., “Performing the Exhibition,” On Curating, no. 15 (2012): http://www.on-curating.org/. served not from a failed court ris Groys contends, a “matter 14 An Incomplete History of Protest: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection 1940–2017. Whitney Mu- of law, but in another court: that of taste.”8 Art however, despite seum of American Art. 99 Gansevoort Street, New York, NY 10014. August 2017. 15 Janne Vilkuna and Pirjo Vuorinen, “Museums as mirrors of society: a case of the institutions wherein these its surrounding controversies, study of Finnish Museums,” The Museum Review 2, no. 1 (2017): https://themuseumre- offenders (amongst countless is defined by its will to change view.atavist.com/vol2no1finlandmuseums. 16 Marc Maure, “The Exhibition as Theatre- On the Staging of Museum Objects,” others), and such insupportable the worlds character, its ethics, Nordisk Museologi, no. 2 (1995): accessed February 12, 2018, https://www.journals. and unsupportive practices and its attitudes, and while this uio.no/index.php/museolog/article/viewFile/3729/3186. 17 Jonathan Harris, ed., Globalization and Contemporary Art(Oxford: Wi- ley-Blackwell, 2011). 7 Michel Foucault, “The Meaning and Evolution of the Word Parrhesia,” Michel 18 Ben Luke, “Nairy Baghramian: check your privilege,” The Art Newspaper, May Foucault Info, August 26, 2017, accessed March 21, 2018, https://foucault. 31, 2017, accessed February 12, 2018, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/fea- info/doc/documents/parrhesia/foucault-dt1-wordparrhesia-en-html. ture/nairy-baghramian-check-your-privilege. 8 Boris Groys, “The Truth of Art,” E-flux, March 2016, accessed March 28, 2018, 19 Playgrounds: Reinventing the Square. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. 19 18 http://www.e-flux.com/journal/71/60513/the-truth-of-art/. Calle Santa Isabel 52 Madrid 28012. April 2014. tional institutional models that, were no longer their methods of caretaking, and what, or a global Narcissus effect locks Situating the Research through the exclusivity of their for measuring success, and whom that care reaches on the us all into the screen we’ve exhibitions, chart the success instead exchanged a future receiving end are, like the tools been gazing at to see where it of curatorial mediation in terms planned 3-5 years in advance that facilitate its execution, is we’re going. of linear progression, accu- for a more thoroughly explored in a state of eternal flux. The mulation, and profitability, all present by slowing down, rise of new technology thus the while moving away from staying small, and repeat- certainly warrants a rethinking DIGITAL NAÏVE accountability and the reasons ing?21 While some dismiss the of the role of the curator in I began my research on curat- that required the rush? quotidian ubiquity of techno- the digital economy, wherein ing, specifically that which is Engendered by the logical advancements, immune the line between leisure and done online, as a user myself, neoliberal conditions of pro- to the unremitting electric labour teeters on the verge of deemed what Marc Prensky in duction and in order to ensure shocks of innovation, others extinction. Hito Steyerl aks “Is his 2001 essay Digital Natives, a delivery of novelty or the move forward while looking the internet dead? […] But how Digital Immigrants refers to as a new rather than the now, the back to see the technology’s could anyone think it could be “digital native,” albeit ignorant curator’s position tends to re- still impressive and altogether over? The internet is now more of the histories and laws of the quire a cross pollination along endangered potential for en- potent than ever.”22 If the In- place from which my citizen- various fields—in technology, acting social change in cultural ternet as a resource for artistic ship was ascertained, as if out in science, literature, etc.— and political institutions alike. practice is still gaining mo- of nowhere. I felt far better to maintain its status as an How then might alternative mentum, then curators are the represented as digitally naïve. informed authoritative figure. In approaches to progress, like gears of this machine respon- As a bilingual and dual citizen other words, “Hybridize or Dis- slow curating for example, sible not only for the direction of both Poland and the United appear!”20 As caretakers and transform the operative struc- of its movement and pace, States, and as a resident connoisseurs, curators are of- tures that surround the field of but for providing the means to lost in translation with vot-

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere ten championed for their ability contemporary art by working rewrite the user manual for a ing rights in Finland, it is this to navigate unfamiliar terri- both within and outside of its machine oiled by the pilfered superficially borderless digital tories or retread worn paths formulaic patterns of produc- resources of wars waged in the citizenship that is perhaps the with new insights, to forge tion, hegemonic discourses, name of culture itself. As the most curious of them all. I am new tools or repurpose the old and the expectations imposed realm of the online continues a considered a native of the ones, and for living to tell the on its actors to accordingly to isolate users from offline online by means of assimi- tale; that is, to share what they respond to ‘the times?’ More reality and from themselves in lation, this particular aspect have seen or experienced in importantly, how might they do exchange for idealized, post- of my identity afforded to me innovative and creative ways, so online despite the addition truth versions of both, insight by an adherence to unwritten and all in a timely fashion. But of restraining circumstances afforded by practitioners codes of conduct, an ability what would it mean if cultur- imposed by the technology working online today might be to speak and understand the al workers and practitioners they utilize to do so? the missing link that can help language of electronics— were to decide that quantity, The conditions which to contribute to an atmosphere technology like an extension scale, reach or productivity enable the curatorial gesture of sustained inquiry in the age of my own extremities made of infinite distraction23 before familiar to me through years of 20 The final words spoken by the narrator of Oliver Laric’s 2012 video Versions. Laric himself lifted the phrase from a 2001 poem, ‘Citizen’ by Canadian poet 22 Hito Steyerl, “Too Much World: Is the Internet Dead?” in The Internet Does Not Fred Wah. Exist (Sternberg Press, 2015), 11. 21 Anthony Huberman, “Pay Attention,” Frieze, June 1, 2015, accessed February 23 Dominic Pettman, Infinite Distraction: Paying Attention to Social Media (Cambridge, UK: 21 20 20, 2018, https://frieze.com/article/pay-attention. Polity, 2016). Situating the Research exposure within the context of native tongue is neither English the ‘real world’ is positioned as lign Velocities, writes, “Our task academia, access to a mobile nor netspeak, took my request something one can escape by today is to collectively sustain phone, a personal laptop, and for something simple as an op- being online, or as some ac- forms of struggle and negation an all inclusive WiFi plan. My portunity to practice both, and celerationists might propose, that do not offer false conso- rights and my role as a citizen ‘AngelGrill35’ was created. No, being online might allow for lation […] Starting from misery of public cyberspace howev- not a typo; we didn’t notice for the destruction of the world as might instead involve devel- er, remained unclear, despite awhile. Perhaps it is precisely we know it.25 While accelera- oping forms of politicization numerous Terms of Service this naivety which has defined tionism26 may be a reactionary that could not only recognize Agreements. ‘User’ is just my experience online as both fantasy—one that purports misery but delink from what another word for ‘other’ in the a user and content produc- that if capital continues to causes us misery.”27 Device digital census. er, and which has driven my conquer, humanity should not dependence is not an addic- I have grown up with research toward an analysis of resist but rather surrender and tion but rather an obsession28 the world (within worlds) at my my own digital DNA. From the advance it to the point of near with modernity, innovation, fingertips, and it is without a very beginning, I understood apocalyptic proportions so and reciprocity—and as the doubt that as a user, cultural what it meant to be a woman that a new world order might saying goes: misery loves worker and curator, as a view- on the Internet, how quickly emerge like a phoenix from the company.29 Society at large is er, and as a scholar, I—and it I wanted to be anything but, techno-ash—this is a future seen as catching up to rather seems I am not alone24—have and that there was no way to built on the exploitations of the than being caught by recent taken this technology for grant- renounce this citizenship. present, one which remains technological innovations—in ed. I logged on for the first time unknown and yet already either case, it’s clear that some- in the basement of my child- polluted by the outsourced thing, or someone, should slow hood home to the soundtrack WHY NOW AND responsibility of today. Some, down. The last several decades of the era: a primal, pubescent WHAT CAN ART DO? like those of the Equitable have certainly been marked by

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere scream erupting from the mon- The stigma of being online Internet Initiative in Detroit or extreme technological celerity, itor like a modem to modem hovers over users like a cloud the Tribal Digital Village Initia- and each update promises an mating call. Already settling of shame, the shadow of which tive in Southern California, are even greater level of connec- into her role of parental con- leaves in its wake a trail of digi- attempting to build their own tivity than the last, yet fails to trol, my mum offered to help tal cookie crumbs to be traced, Internet, but complete with- disclose disconnection as a create my first screenname on but never back to the source. drawal is not a viable option possible side effect in the fine the dial-up AOL service which The lexicon of digital technolo- either. As Benjamin Noys in his print. The edges of the past occupied our landline, meaning gy once basked in the glow of critique of accelerationism, Ma- are not simply retreating in it could only be used when my a utopian halo, but is one now father wasn’t expecting work characterized by darkness; 25 See Alex Williams’ and Nick Srnicek’s #ACCELERATE MANIFESTO for an Acceleration- related phone calls. Construct- devices are like portals, a bot- ist Politics. ing my digital identity, I wanted tomless pit, something like an 26 It’s worth noting that Nick Land, the father of accelerationism, suffered a breakdown in the early 2000s and disappeared from public view after what he to retain the agency afforded addiction too taboo to discuss later described as fanatical abuse of “the sacred substance amphetamine.” by the conditions of another: I aloud, that swallows first time 27 Benjamin Noys, Malign Velocities: Accelerationism & Capitalism (Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2014), 70. wanted ‘girl’ to be part of my users, hardened abusers, en- 28 Tayana Panova and Alejandro Lleras, “Avoidance or Boredom: Negative Mental online alias. My mum, whose thusiasts and junkies alike. Yet, Health Outcomes Associated with Use of Information and Communication Tech- nologies Depend on Users’ Motivations,” Computers in Human Behavior 58 (May 2016). 29 Gillian Tett, “We’d Be Lost Without GPS,” Financial Times, May 20, 2016, 24 See www.allmyfriendsatonce.com for a collection of “memories of being accessed February 11, 2018, https://www.ft.com/content/35180898-1d44-11e6- 23 22 online” organized by Gene McHugh. a7bc-ee846770ec15. a rearview mirror,30 the past transmission; the evolution from by exactly the same tools.36 concerning the inner workings Situating the Research could never be contained in Web 1.031 to Web 2.0,32 which It seems however, that these of displaying art and culture the rearview. changed the proprietary and tools are all that we, those may seem inconsequential. New methods of com- static nature of early websites deemed the users, have left. For cultural workers, artists, munication and expression are into more socially interactive My research is con- curators and educators, seen as no longer being defined versions, not only reversed the ducted between the years of however, art and its exhibition by the imposed authority of uni- flow from owner to viewer, but 2017-2018; amidst the struggle do not come as an end or an laterality as information moves also continue to flood the tribu- for Net Neutrality,37 as the Unit- answer in the struggle for a in all directions, across tempo- taries of public memory at such ed States Congress proposes more democratic Internet, and ralities, and against the whims speeds that threaten official, a $307 million increase to ultimately a more democratic of public, personal, or corpo- i.e. state, narratives of power. budget spending to fight cyber world, but can certainly be rate interests—it is updated, The initial euphoria of promised attacks during elections and invaluable tools when used to refreshed, shared, reblogged, connectivity subsided long quietly passes the CLOUD Act, rethink the dominating Euro retweeted, liked, commented ago, and has been usurped as Facebook stock plummets and androcentric discourses on, reposted, cited, linked, by those still safely cradled in $50 billion in a day in light of of power that have enabled the generated, circulated and power in distinct ways through the Cambridge Analytica data technology that has for roughly stored. That information, which camouflaged technologies of hacking controversy, as the a third of the world’s popula- theoretically anyone can create surveillance and manipulation.33 possibility of ever achieving tion39 become an integral facet and disseminate as they like, It was thought that the Internet a more democratic Internet, of daily life. maintains an ambiguous aura: it would rejuvenate democracy,34 not only in the United States, As alpha 3.4, a project can be the number of flights of but just as the use of Youtube, is severely threatened. Such by Charles Lim Li Yong and stairs an iAnything has tracked Twitter, and Facebook during substantially palpable effects Woon Tien Wei of tsunamii.net as being walked in a day, or the 2011 Arab Spring35 carried require immediate political ac- for Documenta 11 wherein they

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere the incriminating government the promise that the immediacy tion. While the production of all streamed a live-feed of docu- secrets leaked by the likes of afforded by digital technology knowledge is affected by the menta.de, similarly expressed: AJTransparency, Cryptome.org was going to empower a new censorship, accessibility, and it’s not only that the physical and Balkanleaks.eu. Computers wave of positive social change, legislation of communication can be made virtual, but that and the software and programs the past several years have networks,38 everyday actions the virtual exists in and affects they run have reconfigured shown that emancipation and the paradigm of information subordination can be enacted

36 Richard Wolffe, “The Evil Genius of Cambridge Analytica Was to Exploit 30 Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage, ed. Jerome Agel (London: Penguin Those We Trust Most,” The Guardian, March 21, 2018, accessed March 22, 2018, Books, 2008). https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/21/cambridge-analytica-face- 31 Information/news websites, i.e., online versions of traditional media out- book-exploited-trust. lets and institutional websites that follow a top-down approach. 37 Net Neutrality is a set of principles and rules that say internet service 32 Social media, i.e., independent blogs and unmediated interactive social providers must treat all data fairly without blocking or “throttling” certain network sites. data streams. In a 3-2 vote, The US Federal Communications Commission ended 33 Evgeny Morozov, The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World (London: Penguin, the 2015 Open Internet Order, which protected net neutrality in the United 2012). States. 34 Lawrence K. Grossman, The Electronic Republic: Reshaping Democracy in the Information Age 38 Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New York: Routledge, (New York: Viking, 1995). 1997). 35 Jessi Hempel, “Social Media Made the Arab Spring, But Couldnt Save It,” 39 Daven Peng and Lodovica Biagi, “Demographics & Use,” Statista, accessed Wired, January 26, 2016, accessed February 08, 2018, https://www.wired. January 22, 2018, https://www.statista.com/markets/424/topic/537/demograph- 25 24 com/2016/01/social-media-made-the-arab-spring-but-couldnt-save-it/. ics-use/. the physical.40 Of course, just certainly, ‘progress’ has been tug-of-war rages ad naseum is vulnerable, malleable and Situating the Research because something is online made. I should make clear at between the two extremes—a porous, and yet still cultivates does not mean it pertains only the outset that I am not calling tie seems a compromise too and nurtures an organic type to the online, but as Simon for a total recall, like Gretch- dangerous to risk, and as of growth that resists the dom- Sheikh writes, any criticism en Bender’s 1987 installation Paolo Virno contends, there is ination of a capitalist economic needs a target, “whether in the work by the same title, nor do nothing “less passive than the system? narrow sense of an artwork or I oppose all notions of moving act of fleeing, of exiting.”43 Are Despite the odds, exhibition, or in the broadest forward, and I am certain- we responsible for aiding in care here, online, still strives sense of the art world, societal ly not againsts all versions our own demise and becoming for survival, and several in- structures of power, or cap- of progress. Such progress what Metahaven calls “cap- stitutions, like Triple Canopy, italism as a world system of however, comes at a price, is tives of the cloud?”44 Perhaps dis.art and Monoskop, seem governance and exploitation. subject to inflation, and the this duel of binaries is ever- that they are not quite ready [It] must define its position not currency of the exchange must lasting, but it is only from the to show any signs of forfeit- just in terms of ideology, but be contextualized with respect middle that one can struggle ing. While these institutions also, more methodologically, in to individual subjectivity within for the middle, or attempt continue to grapple for the terms of angle and vicinity.”41 a much larger socio-economic to reconfigure the conflict middle, they do so with tenac- Rather than simply exploiting framework. The Web, although entirely. The middle however, ity and endurance, rather than the potential aesthetics of new certainly a powerful social tool, is itself a shrinking position, impetuously; their approach to media, crowding the already has seeped so deeply into the and notoriously so in the field curation is what I will explore overflowing data center and foundations of everyday life of arts and culture, as there is throughout this dissertation as museum storage basements that it has collapsed under- less and less time left to reflect ‘slow,’ meaning that their work with art object experiments, standings of the present in in between updates and data is rooted in historical context how might the practices of ex- exchange for a constantly downpour, little that separates and personal subjectivity, and

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere hibiting online integrate digital refreshing sequence of now’s, leisure from labour, and yet which does not situate pro- technologies with the power of and cultural institutions are the expectations remain the ductivity as a terminus. If the artistic communication in order struggling to ‘keep up with the same “to tirelessly do more at online is seen as a reimagined to address and reflect the times;’ some remain blanketed once, to become increasingly public space wherein demo- inadequacies founded in the in the conservated nostalgia of flexible, to constantly change cratic participation and artistic offline that initially provided the the past exhibiting antiquated goals, plans, preferences— expression can theoretically tools to do so? or stolen relics, while others and to earn less and less. All flourish, and the technology If we consider the are eager to make ancient this characterises neoliberal and devices once thought to advancements of capitalist the archaeological remains of work and life.”45 What would be emancipatory now have the interests in recent years, then the post-Anthropocene.42 A it mean then to repel the age potential to dominate every of urgency, to take the time to waking (and sleeping) moment 40 Manuel Castells, “The Impact of the Internet on Society: A Global Perspec- rethink progress as a collective of daily life, then temporali- tive,” MIT Technology Review, September 8, 2014, accessed March 11, 2018, https://www.technologyreview.com/s/530566/the-impact-of-the-internet-on- kind of advancement, one that ty, politics and the quotidian society-a-global-perspective/. 41 Simon Sheikh, “Circulation and Withdrawal, Part II: Withdrawal,” 43 Paolo Virno, A Grammar of the Multitude (New York: Semiotexte, 2004), 70. e-flux, March 2015, accessed March 22, 2018, http://www.e-flux.com/jour- 44 Metahaven, “Captives of the Cloud: Part I,” Captives of the Cloud: Part I - nal/63/60924/circulation-and-withdrawal-part-ii-withdrawal/. Journal #37 September 2012 - e-flux, September 2012, http://www.e-flux.com/ 42 Benjamin H. Bratton, “Some Trace Effects of the Post-Anthropocene: On journal/37/61232/captives-of-the-cloud-part-i/. Accelerationist Geopolitical Aesthetics,” E-flux, June 2013, accessed 45 Isabell Lorey, “Precarisation, Indebtedness, Giving Time Interlacing Lines March 21, 2018, http://www.e-flux.com/journal/46/60076/some-trace-ef- Across Maria Eichhorn’s 5 weeks, 25 days, 175 hours,” ed. Maria Eichorn, 5 weeks, 27 26 fects-of-the-post-anthropocene-on-accelerationist-geopolitical-aesthetics/. 25 days, 175 hours, 2016. Each year, hundreds of thousands of tons of electronic waste is shipped from Europe and the

USA into developing countries. A large proportion ends up in Ghana.

A topography of e-waste, Ghana, 2012 Photograph by Kai Löffelbein from his series Ctrl-X.

29 28 are the only positions from focus on curating online and distinctions and similarities the stage for an understanding Situating the Research which the possibility of such caretaking as a precarious pro- found between independently of how certain curatorial strat- an unfolding and burgeoning fessional field deeply embed- designed platforms and social egies can be used to actively middle in the cultural field can ded in the dominant structures media platforms, as well as engage critical thinking with be reconsidered. that enable the circulation of users relationship to them. The the same tools that are thought economic and social profit chapter “In the Public I” exam- to have disabled it. both online and off. The follow- ines the ways in which indi- The section “Slowing THE MEDIUM IS ing chapter, “Where is Care?,” vidual identity is constituted in Down the Internet,” begins THE METHODOLOGY explores exhibition practices the public space of the online with the chapter “Success (in In order to present a series of in relation to new technolo- realm through an interpretation Progress)” wherein I look at three case studies that focus gies, artistic processes, and of Chantal Mouffe’s “agonis- the ways in which success is on smaller scale institutions socio-economic and political tic pluralism,” and expands defined and currently mea- that currently use the medium circumstances by looking at upon the challenges posed by sured in major museums and of the Internet to exhibit or the ways in which alterna- technology in regards to any art institutions, as well as how publish, I first assess the field tive approaches to exhibition attempts made toward genuine such quantitative approaches of contemporary curatorial, making are implicitly tied to democratisation. can result in a contradiction of artistic and exhibition practices their precursor conditions. The The second section intentions that ultimately fail to utilizing a variety of examples chapter “World Wide Web?” of the thesis, “In the Middle of achieve a goal that claims to and a mixture of qualitative and provides a historical framework Nowhere Together,” presents serve the public. The chapter quantitative methodologies to of the Internet as a networked the underlying theoretical “Rethinking Success as Slow- analyse both statistical data as technology, as both a concrete framework of the research. ness” expands upon a possible well as existing literature. I also structure and an ideological The chapter “Being Singular interpretation of slowness as trace the early Internets histori- one, and the accompanying Plural” looks at communication it pertains to “slow curating”

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere cal roots in order to expand chapter “World Within Worlds” and care through Jean-Luc and how as a method rather on its role in contemporary addresses the question mark Nancy’s philosophical inter- than as a rate, it can be used society, and more importantly included in the previous pretation of being, or rather to rethink the aforementioned its effects on the evolution of chapter title and attempts to being-with, to mark the dis- institutional models and ad- artistic and curatorial practice. rethink the narratives that have tinctions of true sharing and dress what is forfeited in their The first section, defined the Internet as eman- pseudo-sharing as they pertain approaches to quantifying “Keywords and the Framework cipatory, democratic, and free. to curatorial practice in the progress. This section will also of the Network,” situates the The chapter “Better Off Online” increasingly privatized digital introduce three case studies research and includes an in explores the influence of early domain. The chapter “Buying wherein I have looked at the depth investigation of key- net.art on contemporary artis- Time in the Middle of Nowhere” ways in which curators working words and concepts such as tic practice online, dissecting from which the thesis takes its online have pursued alternative exhibitions, platforms, and the term “post-Internet” and title, positions critical thinking exhibition methods that reflect public space with respect to the relationship between the as an important site of every- upon the notions of transpar- the role of the curator. The realms of the offline and the day resistance in and for the ency, habit, and content. Each chapters “Who Cares?” and online. The chapters “Plat- contested middle of cultural case study is explored in its “On Curating, Online” look at forms” and “Public Cyber- production. This chapter own section, “Triple Canopy,” the multifaceted nature of the space” provide a definition positions time as a form of “dis.art,” and “Monoskop,” curatorial role with a specific of platforms and marks the curatorial currency, and sets where I look at online publisher 31 30 Triple Canopy’s approach to to include literature, academic logical theory, I am, of course, example of the digital mirroring Situating the Research transparency, the way that or non, as well as multimedia using the tool I am researching the distinctions and obstacles dis.art, a Netflix like viewing projects as I argue that their in- to conduct my research. If the posed by the tendencies of experience that mixes critical clusion can serve to contextu- Web is seen as the archive of inequality, racism, sexism, theory with entertainment to alise works which are primarily all archives, it is thus similarly classism, and social status that subvert patterns of habitual visual and which might allow plagued with an onslaught plague our present day world. usage, and assess the content for a more engaging viewer of questions concerning the “In a different paranoid fable, exhibited by the digital archive experience. traditional archive with regard we imagine that technology is Monoskop with respect to the I do not aim to to authority, agency, authen- the latest addition to the series distinctions posed by sharing provide a detailed historical ticity and conservation,49 the of collective agents generated and pseudo-sharing. overview of curatorial, artistic, problematics of which I more by history, as in a matryoshka Each case study is or exhibition practices in the thoroughly investigate in my doll: religion - theology - phi- conducted through an analy- digital age, as this information case study on Monoskop. losophy - ideology - science sis of pre-existing material in can be accessed obliquely While I aim to expand my - technology. This is to say the form of interviews, press and in greater depth through research to take into account that the history of thought is releases, and publications the accounts made by various a more broad and internation- stratified in information and released by or in collabo- authors and institutions,47 and al experience, I also hope to intelligence technologies even ration with the institutions because the overwhelming as- explore what it means, and though we only remember the themselves. I have chosen to semblage of available technol- respectively, why it is problem- last episode of this series, i.e. analyse pre-existing material ogy has evaded consistency; atic, to have encountered such the network that embodies the as my dissertation centers on its general characteristic being difficulty in my attempts to find dreams of the previous polit- the availability of such informa- one marked by innovation. The sources and examples which ical generation.”50 A pure or tion, and whether or not, and Web as a platform for distribu- are not generated through, and quantitative approach simply

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere if so how, these particular in- tion has given rise to the idea circulating solely amongst, a does not suffice because the stitutions are working to make that virtually anyone can be not seemingly singular hegemonic subject matter cannot be alien- their content, processes, or only a curator, but a content and primarily Western dis- ated from the contexts that internal structures more easily producer as well,48 meaning course. As with the production have produced its status as it accessible and understand- that while there are many of any and all knowledge, the stands to-date, thus in order able to the “average”46 user. I meaningful projects unfolding problematics of this position to address the case studies, it have chosen to examine three online, they are buffered by include the inclination for is necessary to first dig deeply distinct approaches to exhibit- copious amounts of digital generalization, further exclu- into the stratified layers that ing online to explore the tip of litter. Alongside an array of sion, and most violently and support the surface. “Such the iceberg of its possibilities. publications, books, journals, devastatingly: erasure. I aim are the dangers of addressing The exhibited content on these magazines, etc. in the fields of to illuminate whether or not the contemporary. We fear sites or platforms is not limited new media, visual art, educa- this dilemma I encounter in my that the future does not care; to artworks, but is expanded tion, art history and techno- own research is yet another its people have moved on to

46 Those who might be characterised as digital natives, digital immigrants, or otherwise. 47 For example, the exhibition Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today’runs Feb 7th - 49 Jacques Derrida and Eric Prenowitz, “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression,” May 20th 2018 at the ICA in Boston. Diacritics 25, no. 2 (1995). 48 Jennifer Yin et al., “Everyone’s a Curator: Do Museums Still Matter?” (lec- 50 Matteo Pasquinelli, “Cultural Labour and Immaterial Machines,” in Curating ture, SXSW Interactive, Omni Downtown, San Jacinto, March 9, 2014), accessed Immateriality: The Work of the Curator in the Age of Network Systems, ed. Joasia Krysa (Autono- 33 32 February 15, 2018, https://schedule.sxsw.com/2014/events/event_IAP20388. media, 2006), 271. other concerns.”51 Perhaps the is thus whether or not the ing, and in regards to creative What methods do they use to ana- Situating the Research future does not care, but as institutions I examine are also expression and exhibition mak- lyze the data collected from their curators we should. I propose engaged in questioning the ing, how might the implemen- Web analytics? then to start in the middle of restrictions posed by the me- tation of its methods counter How does transparency actual- now, here.52 dium they use. Virtual content the accelerated nature of ly enable visibility, and in turn, is created, designed, and cultural production and still al- accountability? disseminated by those who oc- low for different ways to move CASE STUDIES & QUESTIONS cupy positions of power both forward? In order to explore dis.art: The exhibition of art creates an online and off, and thus my examples of slow curation, entry point for posing ques- research centers on the exhibi- I present three case studies How does dis.art rethink the tions that may never cease tion practices of curators who wherein each institution has potential of habitual patterns of to surround social, political, are working in ways specifi- been analysed with special usage online and resist the tenden- academic, and professional cally affected by the Web and attention to several factors in- cy to privilege chronology? life, and the Web has become whose practices involve digital cluding, but not limited to, the How, if at all, does dis.art yet another space in which publishing, online exhibitions, ways they are designed, ac- challenge the exclusivity of the such questions can be raised. and digital archives. cessed, assessed, interpreted, exhibition as an event? Does exhibiting or publishing The realm of the the types of work they show, online however also pose its online has already made a real and most importantly, how or Monoskop: own set of obstacles? In order world impact, inspiring a mul- if the curatorial intention aims to better understand the extent titude of texts, exhibitions, and to be distinguished from the What is the content of this digital to which they can or cannot academic programs that cen- traditional models of major library and how does its manner of be overcome by curators or ter on the effects of new media cultural institutions or their organization address the ability to practitioners working in this practices, and therein lies the exhibition practices operating access certain types of information

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere context, it is necessary look hope that exhibition practices today. Beyond this general that can be online, but perhaps at the Internet’s transition online can be used to rethink examination, I also ask several not off? from private ownership to the the neoliberal logic of contem- questions that are particular What are the advantages and public sphere and as an artistic porary institutional models, to each example with respect disadvantages of medium—or, more succinctly, specifically but certainly not to the notions of transparency, digital libraries/archives if spatial how it has come to appear as only museums and art institu- habit, and content, as these or material limitations are not im- though we are stranded in the tions, that envision progress as are the aspects which I have posed upon them in ways similar middle of nowhere. production, accumulation53 and considered to be of importance to their physical counterparts? One of my primary expansion.54 in regards to slow curating as a concerns in my case studies What is slow curat- curatorial method. In a more broad 51 Ed Halter, “Foreward,” in You Are Here: Art After the Internet, ed. Omar Kholeif (HOME Triple Canopy: sense, this thesis asks how and Space, 2014) 15. 52 Irit Rogoff, “Starting in the Middle: NGOs and Emergent Forms For Cultural exhibition practices online Institutions*,” in Public Servants: Art and the Crisis of the Common Good, ed. Johanna Bur- How, if at all, has Triple Canopy can confront the quotidian act ton, Shannon Jackson, and Dominic Willisdon (MIT Press, 2016). 53 Keith Christiansen, “Growing The Met’s Collection of European Paintings,” articulated the notion of trans- of pseudo-sharing on corpo- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, i.e. The Met Museum, December 12, 2016, parency as well as their position rate owned social platforms accessed February 28, 2018, https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/now-at-the- met/2016/european-paintings-growing-the-collection. in their practice in terms of their and if curators can embody a 54 See the Lillehammer Art Museum in Norway. design? responsible and meaningful 35 34 approach if the translation we buy ourselves some time in explanations for artistic and Situating the Research and communication of care the middle of nowhere? curatorial practice in a post-In- and information are mediat- ternet world, including Toward ed through so-called lifeless a Lexicon of Usership57, no-net. devices and occur between KEYWORDS AND THE FRAME- org’s list of art keywords,58 The docile bodies. The Internet WORK OF THE NETWORK: New Hacker’s Dictionary,59 has surely enabled progress, In this thesis, it is important to the University of Richmond’s but at whose expense, and in understand the extent of what online journal Digital Ameri- what currency? Can all this might categorically be de- ca,60 Hd Kepler’s Online/offline multi-tasking and multi-tabbing scribed as ‘online,’ ‘exhibition,’ visual glossary,61 Tranzit. be mindful, and if so, how? and ‘public space’ in order to org’s Curatorial Dictionary,62 And to whom does such a mul- address possible exceptions alongside numerous others. tifaceted responsibility belong? and applications which are vital With so many overlapping and Ultimately, I ask what to another keyword: curator. contradictory definitions for methods curators can employ Contemporary artistic and post-Internet, curatorial prac- online to awaken individual curatorial practices that involve tice and exhibitions, reading agency and critical thinking digital technologies rely on the them all remains an impossible in the public cybersphere, implementation of specialized task, but imposing universality wherein persons-cum-users are language, not only by means of would result in the exclusion of reduced to their IP addresses remixing existing art historical personal experience, under- and technological advances vernacular, but which also standing, and the evolution of are thought to have led to include symbols, code, and net colloquial use. These varying societal regression. specific configurations. In the accounts, provided by individ-

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere Can the speed of con- words of early net.artist Olia uals, groups, or institutions are nectivity enabled by the Internet Lialina, “If something is in the invaluable in that they contex- be used to slow down and ac- net, it should speak in net.lan- tualize an understanding of the tually leave us, the users, with guage.”55 Language has been a contemporary condition from more time, not in the ever and major concern for those work- a specific perspective, wheth- over promised future but rather ing with newer media technolo- er geographic, cultural, or in an elongated and generously gies, and rightfully so—as Wal- conducted by expert or novice. swelling now? Ever closer to ter Benjamin reminds, “What Although my personal interpre- capitalizing on all aspects of does language communicate? tation of these definitions is as human existence, technology It communicates the mental volatile as the things it at- continues to advance because being corresponding to it.”56 tempts to grasp, a better now of our willingness to freely Many individuals and groups demands all such attempts. share and upload ourselves into have focused on providing pocket lining profit. How can definitions, glossaries and 57 Nick Aikens and Stephen Wright, eds., Toward a Lexicon of Usership (Eindhoven: Van Abbemuseum, 2014). 58 See www.no-org.net/akw.php. 55 “Olia Lialina interview Ljubljana,” interview by Josephine Bosma, August 5, 59 a.k.a., The Jargon File was released as etext #817 by Project Gutenberg in 1997, accessed February 11, 2018, http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/net- 1997. time-l-9708/msg00009.html. 60 See www.digitalamerica.org. 56 Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings, eds., Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings 61 See www.hdkepler.net. 37 36 Volume 1 1913-1926 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 1996), 63. 62 See www.tranzit.org/curatorialdictionary. Keywords and Framework of the Network Keywords and Framework of the Network Keywords and Framework of the Network Keywords and Framework of the Network Keywords and Framework of the Network Keywords and Framework of the Network Keywords and Framework of the Network Keywords and Framework 2 of the Network Keywords and Framework of the Network Keywords and Framework of the Network Keywords and Framework of the Network Keywords and Framework of the Network Keywords and Framework of the Network WHO CARES? fields of production, I propose framework of this thesis, being for those who take the title Keywords and Framework of the Network What is a curator? to look at the curator’s posi- itself ontologically necessi- professionally, the act of care- The platitudinous tion as one that, at its most tates care, but colloquially, taking is both compensated question evades definition and foundational purpose, inten- curation can still be seen as and compensating—their role is one to be refuted no matter tion, and expectation, stem- an inevitable condition of as tastemakers is instrumental how it is answered and de- ming from the Latin “cura,”64 existence; choices are always in determining what and whose spite how often it is asked as is as that of a caretaker. The being made, and opinions are artworks are shown (and there- long as the curator’s position notion of caretaking has been exercised through the most fore assigned value) when, is subject to the demands of the source for a plethora of minute of decisions, whether where, and in what context.65 the ever changing societies it texts regarding curatorial it concerns what to, or not This process of visibility they seeks to serve. practice, most notably Hans to, wear, eat, do, listen to, enable ultimately drives both Ulrich Obrist’s 2014 Ways of or say. (Is it possible not to the accumulation of econom- In Ancient Rome, cura- tores were senior civil servants Curating or amongst many look?) These decisions may be ic and social profit for the in charge of various departments essays featured in the 2003 greatly informed, dictated, or network of involved parties as of public works, overseeing the Empire’s aqueducts, bathhouses anthology The Curatorial: A limited by the socio-economic artworks and artists move from and sewers. Fast forward to [...] the curatus, a priest devoted to Philosophy of Curating edit- realities of the individual, but institution to institution in a the care (or ‘cura’) of souls. By the end of the 20th century, ‘cu- ed by Jean-Paul Martinon. here, I am interested look- ladder like pattern of progress, rator’ came to describe a broad Caretaking in curatorial work ing at the ‘no’ portion of the the curator often acting as category of exhibition makers, from museum employees who continues to be a site of con- answer, focusing on curators both an instigator and para- spend years working on modest, scrupulously researched displays templation as the character- who consciously identify site, rather than parrhesiastes. of Sumerian pottery, to free- istics of care continue to shift themselves as such, whether While models of for profit lancers who approach large scale Biennales of contemporary art and different kinds of care are they work independently or only curatorial practice can as an opportunity to clear their auteurial throat.63 required to address particular under institutional recognition. regrettably still be seen today,

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere contexts. The title ‘curator’ Although curators manifested in the viral or trend As Tom Morton seer- remains multifaceted in its often work on projects in dominated world of advertising ingly denotes, the ever shifting application; used by both the collaboration with others, such and across cultural institutions role of the curator has doubt- most powerful institutions that as designers, editors, writers, worldwide, I propose to look lessly been the center of often dominate the cultural land- educators, etc., there is an instead at the guiding princi- polarising debate amongst scape projecting their curators element of bias inherent in ples, but perhaps unfulfilled those whom the definition as walking advertisements this process, as the curatorial expectations, of early inde- most severely affects, be they with agendas and daytime role is ultimately an embodied pendently minded curators artists, cultural workers, edu- bloggers who post their ‘outfit individual position, meaning who concerned themselves cators, employers, marketing of the day’ to online photo that the act of linking is a far with rethinking the convention- managers, and of course, galleries as fashionistas. Is from neutral gesture that can al frameworks of the museum curators themselves. Although everyone really a curator? be traced back to a source or exhibition, establishing this Medusa of a moniker has Yes. And no. As I will explore such as personal opinion, counter publics and ushering tentacled itself into various more deeply in the theoretical political position or interest. in an atmosphere of question- Curators are deeply embedded ing that affects artistic and 63 Tom Morton, “A brief history of the word ‘curator’ | Art | Agenda,” Phaidon, within market dynamics, and curatorial practice still today.66 September 9, 2011, accessed January 24, 2018, http://de.phaidon.com/agenda/ art/articles/2011/september/09/a-brief-history-of-the-word-curator/. 64 Cura or curae meaning: attention, care, pains, zeal, concern, worry, anxiety, 65 See www.mon3y.us for the exhibition _MON3Y AS AN 3RRROR. 41 40 trouble, cure, treatment. 66 See for example Marcia Tucker, Alexander Dorner, and Pontius Hulten. The rise of the trans- promise of incrementally rising mines the value of the currency Keywords and Framework of the Network national curator in the 1990s, salaries,67 not only by those in the exchange between artists ON CURATING, ONLINE articulated in the mounting who have graduated from such and institutions. A responsibility number of group exhibitions programs but also by artists, to what, and to whom, howev- If one were to scruti- nise this repositioning of the and biennales, the profes- autodidacts, actors from er? I have deliberately avoided curator in the cultural domain sionalization of the curator, nearly all fields from the likes dissecting the curator’s daily for its correspondances with other fields of production, a now a hypermobile force in of science and literature to tasks as the potential repository parallel would be the recasting of the manager from the put-up- the globalized world and the advertising and marketing, and of responses is as numerous on functionary to dynamic genie 68 of profit creation and employee subject of much critique, led to most often by women. While as there are types of curators: inspiration, or the elevation both an increased demand for ‘curator’ is a relatively new title the academic researcher, the of the consultant (not least in arts administration) as broker locally based expertise and the to be taken, self or otherwise globe trotter collecting fre- of immaterial goods. Another paradigm could be the shift expansion of a privileged and assigned, embraced, reject- quent flier miles and business from producer (artist) to ma- predominantly Western idea of ed, celebrated or decried, no cards, the beaurocrat hidden nipulator of information and systems (curator). [...] This is contemporary culture, modern- matter the individuals intention, behind stacks of administrative a phenomenon observed across institutional and self-organ- ist ideas and histories. Like the it has, despite its surrounding paperwork, the activist rally- ised practices, but also most conspicuously in net art, where once popular early computer controversy, been exposed to, ing at the local election. The some boundaries of speciali- game Snake, wherein the dig- or is perhaps even character- curator’s role of commitment sation are eroded while others are enforced, in the sense that itally slithering creatures body ized by, notions of celebrity.69 can be reduced to a menial task a ‘social technology’ is only ever as ‘social’ as the relations lengthens with each pixelated The highly problematized like answering e-mails from it enables and reproduces.71 morsel he chomps, simultane- notion of qualification within artists or collectors, arranging ously avoiding making a meal the field has led to an influx of objects on a floor plan for an Marina Vishmidt’s of his own tail, an increase competitive scurrying, par- upcoming exhibition, organizing reflection reminds that as the in the number of museums adoxically propelled by the travel arrangements, taking late curator’s position has been On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere resulted in the need for more desire to be first to ‘discover’ night calls when plans go awry, reconfigured in the blue light of curators, and subsequently the new approaches to non-hier- or otherwise launched into an new technologies, now more rise of graduate or certificate archical thinking, to exhibition infinitude of expectations when often seen as a managerial and based curatorial programs making, and critical discourse. the career is a lifestyle, or even administrative role rather than in academia, like those at De The role of the curator a brand.70 It seems that the job that as of a cultural liaison, Appel in Amsterdam, Bard in is doubtlessly a position of dis- description is refreshed and the possibilities of curatorial Upstate New York, or my own tinguished economic and social updated every time a new gad- and artistic practice must also program, CuMMA in Helsinki. privilege paired with authority, get leaves the factory assembly be accordingly reconsidered. The last several decades have and should therefore be weight- line, unlocking new levels of While early net.art, or art made seen the curatorial profes- ed with responsibility: the cura- responsibility and expectation online, may have sought to sion flooded, perhaps for the tor keeps the keys and deter- while simultaneously scrapping create a museum without walls, the source code that was origi- major museums and institutions 67 The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that the number of nally developed from care. have instead built walls around curators will rise 7% between 2014-2024, and salaries will continue to in- it, starting their own online ex- crease by about 4,6% annually. 68 Rosalind Gill and Andy Pratt, “Precarity and Cultural Work In the Social Factory? Immaterial Labour, Precariousness and Cultural Work,” On Curating: 70 Simon Graj, “Skill Set of a Brand Curator,” Forbes, April 16, 2012, accessed Precarious Labour in the Field of Art, no. 16 (2013): http://www.on-curating.org/files/oc/ March 03, 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/simongraj/2012/04/16/skill-set- dateiverwaltung/old%20Issues/ONCURATING_Issue16.pdf. of-a-brand-curator/#6d0a7905ee18. 69 Jessica Morgan, “What is a Curator?” in Ten Fundamental Questions of Curating, ed. 71 Marina Vishmidt, “Twilight of the Widgets,” in Curating Immateriality: The Work of the 43 42 Jens Hoffman (Mousse Publishing, 2013), 24. Curator in the Age of Network Systems, ed. Joasia Krysa (Autonomedia, 2006). Keywords and Framework of the Network hibition spaces, like the Walker on ‘proper’ curatorial behavior Sollfrank’s 1997 Female Exten- ity,78 and which is one of the Art Center’s Gallery 9, SF MO- which can be characterized as sion, wherein she created 300 driving reasons behind the MA’s e-space and the Whitney being self-aware, responsible, fake female artists by remixing desire for alternative approach- Museum’s artport. Artists and trustworthy and informed, and existing websites to create data es to exhibition practices that independent curators howev- while these traits are regret- trash in response to Hamburg- seek to tackle the perpetuation er, are making digitally based tably not industry standard, er Kunsthalle’s 5MB open call of inequalities, contradictions, exhibitions elsewhere, not only few would argue against their submission limitation. While and corporations that currently within these institutional frame- invaluable effects on curatorial artists are granted a general plague the cultural landscape.79 works: online residency and practice. Reflecting on the no- freedom in their expression, a This responsible act gallery isthisit? invites artists for tion of curatorial responsibility, curator has a responsibility to of public justification is enabled a 25 day residency on its own Peter Eleey asked the public, or publics, be they by the curatorial task of medi- 72 website, Rebekah Modrak Can curators be con- constituted of the past, present, ation, most aptly described by and Marialaura Ghidini’s 2017 sidered “messengers” in a sim- or imagined future, and I believe Maria Lind as ilar sense, actors permitted to #exstrange wherein they curated occupy a place both inside and the position is both valuable [...] creating contact peripheral to the culture that artworks-as-auctions on Ebay, and necessary only when it is surfaces between works of art, provides the content and con- curated projects, and peo- on the various host sites such text for their work? Messengers marked by a level of account- ple, about various forms and who, in exchange for reflecting intensities of communicating as AirBnB or Soundcloud that back to their recipients essen- ability. As Groys reminds about and around art. As a term tial characteristics of con- ‘mediation’ seems to be open the artists of parasite platform temporary life, are accorded a to be responsible enough to allow for a winder CosmosCarl.co.uk re-appro- comparable degree of indemnity toward the public, a curator variety of models of approach- from responsibility for the way does not need to be part of ing exchanges among art, priate for their own works, or we use things, people, institu- any fixed institution: [they institutions, and the outside tions, and ideas.74 are] already an institution by world. [It] appears to provide Pivilion, Dina Karadžić and Ve- definition. Accordingly, the room for less didacticism, less dran Gligo’s decentralized and curator has an obligation to schooling and persuasion, and Don’t shoot the curator! publicly justify [their] choic- more active engagement that uncensored user-curated art es—and it can happen that the does not have to be self-ex- If not the curator, then who else? curator fails to do so.76 pressive or compensatory.80 On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere gallery on the darknet. Whether exhibiting on or off, curators It is precisely this If curators are to as- Online, the curatorial are often seen as “editors and failure to do so or to actually sume attitudes of responsibility act of mediation, or the cre- guides, providing a trusted filter be held accountable for their barren authority as simple mes- ation of contact surfaces, can in the new economy, helping to actions77 that the professional- sengers, or if they are reduced be interpreted rather literally cut through the noise of dra- ized field of curatorial practice to links, they risk becoming as device screens, platforms matically increased culture and is so often defined by precar- dispensable accessories in a and websites have become information production that has multifaceted economic equa- 73 marked this same period.” tion. In the case of the curator 76 Boris Groys, “Politics of Installation,” Politics of Installation - Journal Are curators responsi- #2 January 2009 - e-flux, January 2009, accessed January 29, 2018, http://ww- working online, this results in w.e-flux.com/journal/02/68504/politics-of-installation/. ble for sorting through and re- adding to the piles of digital 77 Ben Quinn, “Tate artist in residence quits, claiming gallery is failing cycling the piles of digital litter? women,” The Guardian, March 07, 2018, accessed March 11, 2018, https://www. litter that already obscure the theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/mar/07/tate-modern-artist-quits-saying- The cliches of curatorial humil- horizon of any possible future,75 gallery-is-failing-women. ity advise a sensitive emphasis 78 Maura Reilly, “Toward a Curatorial Activism,” 2018, accessed March 11, and not in the sense of Cornelia 2018, http://www.maurareilly.com/pdf/essays/CIAFessay.pdf. 79 On March 10th 2018 the artist Nan Goldin and fellow demonstrators threw 72 See www.isthisitisthisit.com. pill bottles into the moat surrounding an ancient Egyptian temple at the 73 Peter Eleey, “What About Responsibility?” in Ten Fundamental Questions of Curating, Metropolitan Museum in New York to protest the museums sponsorship by the ed. Jens Hoffman (Mousse Publishing, 2013), 114. Sackler family, who own Purdue Pharma, one of the largest makers of opioids. 74 Ibid, 118. 80 Maria Lind, “Why Mediate Art?” in Ten Fundamental Questions of Curating, ed. Jens 45 44 75 See for example www.cloaque.org. Hoffman (Mousse Publishing, 2013), 88. Keywords and Framework of the Network new spaces for exhibitions, not who, what and how are cared of racially motivated murders became known simply as the only of artworks, but of ideas, with. carried out by the National Salon.83 Indicating a char- histories, identities, literature, Socialist Underground which acteristic that would define images, and reflections alike. was later presented in a video many exhibitions to come The results of curatorial prac- WHERE IS CARE? shown in documenta 14, or with a shift from quantitative tice and artistic expression as Exhibitions, following a dictio- Model Court’s 2013 Resolution approaches of presentation mediation in the form of the ex- nary definition, are denoted 978HD, a film and installation toward the qualitative and hibitions online are expressed vaguely as “offering or expos- first shown at Londons’ Gas- more personalized, salon style by means of “sharing.” This ing to view.”82 Art exhibition works Gallery that questioned exhibitions soon went out of type of “sharing,” which I later history subsequently remains the role of technology in inter- fashion. These academies, distinguish from the lucrative enigmatic because of its de- national criminal jurisdiction in while providing context for exchange of pseudo-sharing, pendence on contextualisation; a trial that was conducted over the artworks they exhibited, is one of the more decisive artistic production during the Skype of François Bazaramba, wielded immense power in de- curatorial gestures that offers Middle Ages primarily serviced a Rwandan national convicted termining not only the content an entry point into understand- the church’s interests until of genocide by a the district they represented but also to ing what can be done with the 16th century, when artists court in the Finnish town of whom it was made accessible, exhibition practices online, began adding their own names Porvoo, might not be as easily and this tradition of exclusive in particular that which is to their aesthetic productions categorized as belonging to a access, as seen with museum currently being undertaken by thus establishing their own singular or particular field, but membership fees and collector projects like Triple Canopy, reputations. This does not do reveal the potency of cross or V.I.P. exhibition previews, dis.art, and Monoskop. Beyond mean that artworks were not pollination as well as the chal- has held far more firmly than simply creating these contact created prior to this, or that ex- lenges of categorization. manner of arrangement. surfaces, curators are those hibitions had not already taken Institutionally howev- Exhibitions later took

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere who determine their depth place, but at the time, they er, the earliest art academy in on a colloquial understanding and dimensions depending on were not categorized or recog- Europe, The Accademia delle as, mostly simply, an arrange- the content they exhibit, the nized as such. This ambiguity Arti del Disegno in Florence ment of objects in space—Pa- ways in which they configure is similarly the case today as founded in 1563, became a risian salons, World Fairs and communication through them, contemporary art often engag- model later copied in 1648 by Venice Biennales organized and how they address their au- es in collaborations with other L’Acadèmie de Peinture et de artworks in crowded arrange- diences from a position above, disciplines such as science, Sculpture in Paris. Responsible ments, often in decorative below, or within. If everyone is architecture and politics in an for the state’s educational pro- and ornate frames, their intent a curator81 possessing the abil- effort to widen its scope of gram in the Fine Arts, its first being to sell rather than create ity to create variations of these effects. For example, projects exhibition was held in 1667 space for sustained audience contact surfaces, the question like research agency Forensic for the court society only, but interpretation or contempla- is then not one concerned with Architecture’s collaboration by 1725 the exhibition moved tion. Characterized by over- who cares, but rather how to with the Society of Friends of to the Louvre and was open abundance, this style is now differentiate that ways in which Halit that investigated a series to the general public where it en vogue again across art fairs

81 Miya Tokumitsu, “The Politics of the Curation Craze,” The New Republic, August 24, 2015, accessed March 18, 2018, https://newrepublic.com/arti- cle/122589/when-did-we-all-become-curators. 82 “Exhibition,” Merriam-Webster, January 27, 2018, accessed February 09, 83 Elizabeth Gilmore Holt, The Triumph of Art for the Public, 1785-1848: The Emerging Role of 47 46 2018, https://www.merriam-Webster.com/dictionary/exhibition. Exhibitions and Critics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983) 1. 3 Holt, 3. such as Frieze and Art Basel84 principles,88 recontextualized The event, prior 1973 lithographic work and the Keywords and Framework of the Network wherein the walls are adorned philosophical debates89 and to being documented and sentiment continues to echo. with the most profitable works technological advancements.90 distributed, is temporary, and It reverberates at a screech- in order to finance a $50,400 For the last several decades, with an anticipated end in sight, ing decibel level in the case to $100,800 per weekend exhibitions have been more becomes an exclusive experi- of artworks exhibited online, booth,85 on platforms such as intensely critiqued as events.91 ence elevated by the nature of where the status of individual Instagram or Facebook that Positioned as events, exhi- its rarity, and can thus be more contemplation and attention allow for an infinitely scrolling bitions lend themselves to a readily adapted to the existing remain central curatorial and supply of content, and some particular type of reception discourses of art history that artistic concerns today,92 de- websites that layer crowded and reproduction, increasing- attempt to chart periods and tailed in Sternberg Press’ 2013 graphics and texts to the point ly made with the intention to movements on a timeline. The publication Attention Economy, of illegibility.86 While there may cater to media consumption event, as well as the objects Kunsthalle Wiens 2014 exhibi- not have been an obvious and serving to further amplify within it, retain what Benjamin tion “Attention Economy,” or conceptual thread connecting curatorial, artistic and insti- referred to as cult value, or their Peter Doran’s 2017 A Political arrangements immediately, tutional celebrity status. The unseen presence which main- Economy of Attention, Mindfulness such object oriented exhibi- approach to durational art that tains an exclusivity in terms of and Consumerism: Reclaiming the tions became loosely orga- emerged in the 1960s, like reception, aura and authentic- Mindful Commons. Nauman’s nized by theme or category, or that of Allan Kaprow’s Hap- ity. Advancements in techno- admonition however, remains otherwise relinquished some penings, Joseph Beuys’ 7000 logical reproducibility, with the an echo devoid of destina- sense of control and invited Oaks, Tehching Hsieh’s series invention of photography and tion, the attention to be paid the viewer to draw their own of year long performances, film, have dislodged art objects has no nowhere to land, and interpretations without so Andy Warhol’s films Sleep and from their original locations, instead keeps bouncing, losing much as a press release. The Empire, John Lennon and Yoko making them more easily trans- the force that vulgarity or an

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere constant evolution in exhibition Ono’s wedding day turned into ported, exhibited, and accessi- exclamation point might wish to practice continues to reflect a peace demonstration, sought ble to larger and more diverse retain. Certainly we are paying the changes that are taking to prolong the event with audiences, and for longer peri- attention, but attention in itself place in artistic production as works spanning hours, even ods of time. Benjamin’s critique is not virtuous, and the question a result of political, economi- years, some still ongoing or lies in the idea that while the is where, to what or to whom cal and ideological conditions growing in the case of Beuys. possibility of such reproduction do we pay it? imposed by authoritarian Exclusivity became a medium has emancipated the artwork It is no secret that the governments,87 conservative in itself. from its intended viewing art world, the canonized cur- context, it has done so to reach riculum of art history, and the 84 Andrew Goldstein, “Has Art Basel Become the Facebook of the Art World? An a wider audience that is still re- museums decorated walls, are Interview With Marc Spiegler,” Artnet News, March 19, 2018, accessed March 20, 2018, https://news.artnet.com/market/marc-spiegler-art-basel-facebook- ceiving, but doing so in a state cemented together with names interview-1235456. of distraction. Bruce Nauman belonging mostly to privileged 85 Julia Halperin, “Art Fair Economics: Why Smaller Galleries Are Forced to 93 Gamble,” Artnet News, June 13, 2017, accessed March 18, 2018, https://news. unabashedly commanded “Pay white males. While many artnet.com/market/art-fair-economics-small-galleries-gamble-989555. Attention Motherfuckers!” in his artists, educators, and curators, 86 See for example, heaven.internetarchaeology.org. 87 See for example www.cointemporary.com. 88 See for example www.left.gallery. 92 Tim Bajarin, “Why We Need Liberal Arts In Technology’s Age Of Distrac- 89 See for example www.x-temporary.org. tion,” Time, July 24, 2017, accessed March 18, 2018, http://time.com/4870642/ 90 See for example www.gazell.io. liberal-arts-technology-distraction/. 91 Beti Žerovc,When Attitudes Become the Norm: The Contemporary Curator and Institutional Art 93 “Art Statistics,” 2017, accessed January 29, 2018, http://www.havenforthe- 49 48 (Ljubljana: Igor Zabel Association for Culture and Theory, 2017). dispossessed.org/. like Feminist Curators United their containers, taking place from the confines of the home its fundamental importance Keywords and Framework of the Network as a primary context through and curatorial collective If I in various structures, ranging and safety against the expanse which art is first made public, circulated, seen, and discussed, Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To from the most conservative of the city, it is nonetheless the exhibition has long been Be Part Of Your Revolution, museums and galleries, to becoming increasingly difficult considered an ambiguous object of study at best, partly due to have worked tirelessly against city sidewalks,96 a kitchen,97 for visitors to dedicate their the tenuousness of the exhibi- 98 tion’s—any exhibition’s—onto- this status quo, (the legacy of online, and even in space. resources in this way as the logical ground, no matter who Guerrilla Girls still a force to Although the contents and boundaries between work and curated it.100

contend with), many commer- programming of museums leisure continue to be redrawn The traditional exhibi- cial galleries, museums, and and galleries are malleable, and as ticket prices rise—the tion is most simply described biennales continue to advance exhibitions are dictated to Metropolitan Museum in New by Christiane Paul as: it, expanding at unprecedent- some extent by the architec- York recently exchanging its [...] shown in physi- ed rates with multi-million tural structure that houses pay-as-you-wish policy for a cal space, has a set opening 99 and closing date, requires a dollar building additions and them: walls, ceilings, cen- solid $25 entrance fee. The visit to a physical locality satellite locations of their tral air systems, handicap physicality of institutions is fur- and, after its closing, becomes part of the ‘cultural archive’ satellite locations94 on distant friendly ramps, electricity bills ther complicated by structures, through its catalogue, docu- mentation, and critical recep- shores, like the Louvre Abu and mazes of hidden regis- namely walls, both actual and tion in the press.101 Dhabi,95 all in the name of trar offices. Institutions are metaphorical; these walls, delivering culture to those they cemented in geographical erected to ensure the safety An exhibition of art have deemed so desperate- reality, and in order to visit a of their contents in the name online however, ly in need of it. Exhibitions, museum or gallery, visitors of cultural conservation, are is seen by a translocal community, never closes and expansions, galas and events are tasked with a necessity to the ostensible border, violently continues to exist indefinitely (until some party fails in sus- are churned out and force fed pre-plan. Such visits require delineating the boundaries of taining it). It exists within a to the public at breathtaking the coordination of transpor- inclusion and exclusion. network of related and previous exhibitions that can be seen On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere speeds, allowing for reflection tation, the funds, the energy, directly next to it in another browser window, becoming part or criticism only after the fact, maybe even a babysitter, and of the continuous evolution of if at all. Where is care relegat- it goes without saying: time. EXHIBITING ONLINE the art form.”102 ed to reside if capital occupies While this uninterrupted mode Many authors have argued I would add that every corner? of reception may have its endlessly, and any recently online exhibitions are not only Exhibitions function benefits, allowing the body a published text on the topic will in conversation, either directly much like liquids in that they special and rare experience as show that the end is nowhere or indirectly, with the contents take the shape or form of a temporal and spatial escape in sight, about the ontologi- of other browsers, tabs or win- cal discrepancies posed by dows, but are simultaneously 94 Plans for a Guggenheim Bilbao # 2 in the Basque Country have been under the concepts of installations, consideration for more than a decade. inextricable from the extensive 95 Nick Trend, “Louvre Abu Dhabi: first look inside the £1 billion art muse- exhibitions, space, audience, history of artistic and curatorial um in the desert,” The Telegraph, November 07, 2017, accessed January 30, public(s), etc. 2018, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/middle-east/united-ar- practices and the socio-eco- ab-emirates/abu-dhabi/articles/louvre-abu-dhabi-first-look-review/. The reasons for this nomic conditions that preceded 96 ‘Singapore Poetry on the Sidewalks,’ a public art project, uses a special- are perhaps no mystery: despite ly formulated paint to inscribe rain-activated excerpts of local poetry on sidewalks 99 See www.metmuseum.org/press/news/2018/admissionspolicy/. 97 The Kitchen Show was the first exhibition Hans Ulrich Obrist curated. 100 Elena Filipovic, “When Exhibitions Become Form: On the History of the 98 In his 2012 project, The Last Pictures, Trevor Paglen developed an ultra-ar- Artist as Curator,” Mousse Magazine, August 24, 2015, accessed February 09, chival disc, micro-etched with one hundred photographs and encased in a 2018, http://moussemagazine.it/taac0/. gold-plated shell that was launched into orbit by the communications satel- 101 Paul, 87-88. 51 50 lite EchoStar XVI and in theory, will circle the earth ad infinity. 102 Ibid. them, thus they also contribute not, or should not be, out- published by FOAM in 2008,104 Keywords and Framework of the Network to the “cultural archive” and wardly mirrored reflections but before unraveling the This thesis, rather more importantly, its market. of existing structures with tangle of questions a prefix as than attempt the near im- Organized by those who wield antithetical contents erected charged as “post” invites, it possible task of excavating social or economic power both in haste, but rather invested is necessary to begin with the a complete history of actors online and off, exhibitions that in carefully exposing what root: Internet. While the Inter- responsible for the creation unfold online remain implicitly the archive, manifested as net is often used to describe of the Internet, focuses on the tied to patterns of commerce, an exhibition or institution, everything related to the effects of its evolution and the but are not as explicitly con- has discarded in its quest for online universe, I would like to development of certain func- fined to temporal or spatial preservation. As Seth Price’s refer to the Internet more sim- tions which are currently used limitations, which I argue in ongoing 2002 Dispersion ply as “the physical infrastruc- by practitioners who publish three case studies, allows for suggests, working in relation ture connecting computers, or exhibit online. In order to more considered, inclusive and to established institutions, […] a network of routers that avoid the risk of detaching the durational curatorial approach- but still with the intention of communicate with each other networked technology from es as well as more distracted critiquing their methods and through protocols.”105 Tracing the economic and political or fragmented audience and hierarchical models, such al- the history of its inception, conditions that enabled it, individual reception. ternative spaces and practices the Internet had a rather short it is vital to understand how This narrow approach might allow for a more nu- sighted beginning, but to think and where the Internet came to representation, as major anced understanding of what of the Internet as a recent into being through a lens of institutions tasked with the is considered to be valuable or phenomenon is misguided—it collaboration and conflict, preservation and conservation worth preserving and conserv- was the product of decades rather than solely through a of cultural heritage continue ing through distinct perspec- of development and although timeline and the names of a to fail to preserve or conserve, tives and interpretations. The often viewed as an agency of handful of inventors. To better

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere or do so for one culture while ability to exhibit artworks, peace, it was a product of the understand how both users neglecting its relationship with ideas, histories and narratives Cold War.106 and curators can more ac- another or others, has long online may serve as a possible While writing a history tively engage with works and inspired boycotts, protests, site for such alternative prac- of the Internet might itself exhibition practices online, it be pointless [...], writing a institutional critique, and tices, but an understanding of history of how we talk about the is helpful to expose how these 103 Internet might be a little more the desire for alternatives. the networked technology that fruitful. That does not mean systems and functions came that we shouldn’t be writing The 1950s saw the rise of predates the Internet reveals histories that would also try to into being, to see how their modern artist-run initiatives the inherent problematics that uncover efforts that point to original intentions have been alternative paths that were not gaining popularity in major continue to suppress creativi- taken and alternative languag- expanded upon, or perhaps es that were used [...] but it’s metropolises like London and ty, circulation and democracy very important to understand even completely altered over New York, but as projects in recondite ways. the conceptual residue left in time as a direct result of domi- our political struggles by that like artist-run-spaces.org show, term, the “Internet.”107 artist led initiatives are on the rise outside of these urban hot WORLD WIDE WEB? 104 Marisa Olson, “PostInternet,” FOAM Magazine, no. 29 (2012). spots, and of course, online Marisa Olson coined the term 105 Albert-László Barabási, Linked: the New Science of Networks (Plume, 2003), 147. too. These alternatives, are “Post-Internet” in an article 106 James Curran, Natalie Fenton, and Des Freedman, Misunderstanding the Internet (New York: Routledge, 2002), 36. 107 Evgeny Morozov, “Internets Past,” Canadian Centre for Architecture, December 2017, accessed March 20, 2018, https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/issues/3/ 53 52 103 See for example the Instagram account @art.exit. technology-sometimes-falls-short/55160/internets-past. nating power relations.108 if lamenting the realities of to- individual users. While military PANET was centrally planned, Keywords and Framework of the Network In 1958, ARPA day, “The ARPANET experience and scientific interest shaped the introduction of LANs was (Advanced Research Projects is a reminder that the efforts of the early Internet, its further a decentralized phenomenon Agency), funded by the Depart- individuals to build virtual com- development was influenced made politically feasible and ment of Defense, was found- munities are constrained by the by what Richard Barbrook economically viable in the ed in the United States as a realities of money and power and Andy Cameron called “the early 1980s because ARPANET response to Russia’s launch of that support the infrastructure Californian Ideology” in an was not in the business of Sputnik in order to stay ahead of cyberspace.”110 essay published in 1995 by the selling Internet service to its of its military rivals—its mission ARPA’s success came same name. “Hip journalists users, meaning that they had echoed an ideology which rings in the form of an accidental and cultural entrepreneurs” no economic incentive to loud today, of making America discovery: e-mail. Although starting working together with restrict access. In fact, the great, “again.”109 With military e-mail was not exactly a new scientists in the techno utopia reverse was true and became concerns in the event of a concept111 it prompted a Silicon Valley, proclaiming that a characteristic of platforms on Soviet attack in mind, the net- paradigm shift, and ARPANET they could “free the computer the network to come: a larger worked technology was origi- subsequently began to focus from its utilitarian purpose and community of users increased nally designed with resilience as on providing access to people make it work for humanity”112 the Internets value and initially, one of its main features. Once rather than computers. While but while “the Californian the expansion of a decentral- established as having greater it may have appeared in the Ideology has been embraced as ized system reduced the need potential than initially anticipat- public sphere as an overnight an optimistic and emancipatory for exercising control on AR- ed, it was slow in stepping into sensation, the Internet was the form of technological determin- PA’s behalf. However idealized a role of widespread accep- result of nearly two decades of ism […] this utopian fantasy of a decentralized system may tance as the technology was experimentation that resulted the West Coast depends upon appear, in order to avoid cha- expensive and access was lim- from a shift from military to its blindness towards—and os, several functions were put

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere ited. When a group of develop- civilian control during the 1980s dependence on—the social and in place to enable system wide ers seeking to improve network and 90s with a split into AR- racial polarisation of the society coordination, allowing commu- services formed USING (Users PANET and MILNET. ARPA was from which it was born.”113 nication between all users and Interest Group), the reality of initially responsible for Internet The 1980s saw the varying platforms. “In order the situation became clear technology but it ultimately re- rise of electronic communal for protocol to enable radically and still holds fast today: while leased its control, and responsi- networks wherein enthusi- distributed communications individual users or teams had bility was usurped by a network asts of all kinds could gather between autonomous entities, permission to alter or add hard/ of actors including the Bush together, and as single-user it must employ a strategy of software, they ultimately had no and Clinton administrations, computers grew in popular- universalization, and of ho- say in regards to the design or computer vendors, The Nation- ity amongst universities and mogeneity,” writes Alexander priorities of the ARPANET proj- al Science Foundation, public businesses, so did the demand R. Galloway in Protocol.114 The ect. As Janet Abbate points out and private institutions out- for simple, low-cost, Local system is thus designed not in a sentiment that resounds as side of the United States, and Area Networks. While AR- on openness, nor is it random

108 Janet Abbate, Inventing the Internet (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999), 2. 109 “Make America Great Again” is a campaign slogan used in American poli- 112 Curran, Fenton, and Freedman, 38. tics that was popularized by Donald Trump in his successful 2016 presidential 113 Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, “The Californian Ideology,” Mute, campaign. President Ronald Reagan used the similar slogan “Let’s Make America September 1995, accessed March 03, 2018, http://www.metamute.org/editorial/ Great Again” in his 1980 presidential campaign. articles/californian-ideology. 110 Abbate, 95. 114 Alexander R. Galloway, Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization (MIT Press, 55 54 111 MIT’s CTSS computer had a message feature as early as 1965. 2004). or free; it is rather based on Hypertext Markup Language that decoded and displayed the world’s information and Keywords and Framework of the Network anti-diversity to facilitate the (HTML) and could thus always the contents of an HTML file make it universally accessible exchange of information, the be displayed with a suitable which he called the World and useful.”122 content of which may itself be piece of reading software. Wide Web. While most G7 unique but relies on standard- “Hypertext’s compatibility Imagine then an countries were experiencing ization in order to be transmit- with the associative, nonlinear individual user, aware that an economic downturn at the ted.115 The Domain Name Sys- structure of discourse made it there is an ocean of informa- time, the dot-com boom in the tem, or DNS, advanced such a valuable tool for the empirical tion awaiting their discovery, 1990s positioned the Internet standardisation by translating analysis of social behaviors, in yet unsure of how to access as a new marketplace and domain names into unique this case, allowing the rela- it. This prompted the need for made for an notable excep- IP addresses, which allowed tionships among employees to a resource that was able to tion. “During its peak period users to access an Internet be mapped and organized.”118 scour the multitude of links between 1997 and 2000, tech- location by its domain name Berner-Lee’s accepted pro- and domains to provide the nology stocks rose 300% and sui generis.116 posal was thus devised not querent with a ranked list of took on a market capitalisation In 1989, while at only as social medium, but one results pertinent to their search. of $5 trillion.”123 By the year CERN, the European Organiza- in which surveillance was an Though not the first of its kind, 2000, at its still unsurpassed tion for Nuclear Research, Tim irrevocable factor of its design. but certainly one of the most peak, annual investment in Berners-Lee, an Oxford-ed- The URLs took a form which widely recognized, Google’s computers and related acces- ucated Englishman who was resembled http://www.yourdo- story began in 1995 at Stan- sories reached an astonishing both a physicist and software mainname.com,119 which is still ford University, where Larry $412.8 billion. Government engineer, “wrote a proposal for used today in creative ways; Page and Sergey Brin built a regulations in the U.S. made an approach to the problem of many countries often replace search engine that used links it possible for companies to institutional memory at a large the .com with abbreviations, to determine the importance of ‘modernise’ and update their

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere scientific organization with and if one sentence120 can say individual pages on the World computational infrastructure, high staff turnover. ‘Informa- it all, it should speak volumes Wide Web. They initially called which relied on the telecom- tion is constantly being lost,’ that rather than .us the United this search engine “Backrub,” a munication companies who he warned.”117 To remedy this States uses .com, which gesture that evokes an intimate were already expanding into loss, each document needed stands for commercial.121 In transference of care between foreign markets with finan- to be located with a file name, a gesture that could have persons, but soon renamed it cial support (with over $330 which he called the Uniform predicted a possible, but still “Google,” a play on the mathe- billion invested in 1990).124 Resource Locator (URL), and unfulfilled future, Berners-Lee matical expression for the num- Such expansions in commu- the pages were written in had also produced a browser ber 1 followed by 100 zeros, nication technology meant which can be said to more aptly that it was now even easier to 115 See for example www.legion-tv.com/online/reliable-communications. 116 Per Christensson, “DNS,” DNS (Domain Name System) Definition, August 30, reflect their future profits rather access global markets, and so 2014, accessed January 15, 2018, https://techterms.com/definition/dns. than their mission “to organize “millions of miles of fibre-optic 117 Michael Connor, “Speaking in Net Language: My Boyfriend Came Back from the War,” Rhizome, November 10, 2016, accessed February 13, 2018, https://rhi- zome.org/editorial/2016/nov/10/my-boyfriend-came-back-from-the-war/. 122 “How we started and where we are today,” Google, accessed January 22, 118 Ibid. 2018, https://www.google.com/intl/en/about/our-story/. 119 J. B. Williams, “Going Online: The Internet,” SpringerLink, January 01, 123 Carlota Perez, “The Double Bubble at the Turn of the Century: Technolog- 1970, accessed January 22, 2018, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49088- ical Roots and Structural Implications,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 33, no. 4 5_22. (2009). 120 See for example ww.ose.kadist.org. 124 “Comments of Verizon and Verizon Wireless. 2010. Department 121 The art world now has its own exclusive domain ‘.art’ which is available of Commerce, 6 December. https://www.ntia.doc.gov/files/ntia/com- 57 56 for purchase on www.art.art. ments/100921457-0457-”. and submarine cables were of a conception of a universal Situating the Research laid out, major advances in sense of objectivity writes that software and network design “When knowledge pretends were established, and large to be universally applicable, it investments in databases and hides its locus of enunciation servers were made.”125 The so that the colonial subject tendency for companies based accepts it as superior.”127 predominantly in the United In 1997, when a stan- States and United Kingdom dard protocol for credit card to outsource labour to low-in- transactions was adopted, come economies, a trend the Web became a shopping made made popular already mall, and the colonization of decades ago in the 70s but cyberspace brought with it far deeply rooted in the colonial- more advanced technologies ist and imperialist histories of surveillance and metadata of the slave trade market, controls, and advertising inter- spice routes, and agricultural est followed suit. While search exportation, was now common engines created new ways to practice and normalized the navigate the Web, they tended colonialist profit seeking meth- to navigate to mainstream od in the name of connection, destinations, further margin- modernity, and progress.126 alizing alternative sources.128 Once cables were laid on These media conglomerates Still from the 1940s

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere distant shores, the power to sought to make money under restrict access and information the pretext of making ‘knowl- film The Great Dictator. relied less on visible human edge’ more easily accessible, force, but militant technology but in this case, knowledge is still battled, now silently and reduced to content, content as if cloaked in invisibility. becomes capital, and connec- Last Moyo, in Rethinking the tion facilitates the exchange. Information Society: A Decolonial Connectivity is measured by and Border Gnosis of the Digital the speed of the network: the Divide in Africa and the Global faster the better, the more South, recalling the dangers profitable, the more expen-

125 Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2017), 26. 126 See for example www.or-bits.com/outsourced.php. 127 Last Moyo, “Rethinking the Information Society: A Decolonial and Border Gnosis of the Digital Divide in Africa and the Global South,” in Theorizing Digital Divides, ed. Massimo Ragnedda and Glenn W. Muschert (New York, NY: Routledge, 2018), 138. 128 Matthew Scott Hindman, The Myth of Digital Democracy(Princeton: Princeton Uni- 59 58 versity Press, 2009). sive, exclusive, unlimited.*129 ternet “itself quickly became a production in Post-Fordist be a reminder of the very real Situating the Research “However, the content that mirror of the actual world, with economies; the production material considerations that proved easiest to sell was not corporations and e-commerce of value is no longer as easily lie behind this technology and the creative works of minori- colonizing the landscape.”132 defined by linear time and of their economic and political ty artists about which some The Web has certainly become working hours. However, “even consequences.”136 Many users analysts write so lyrically, but yet another marketplace, not if these authors claim that remain unaware of the extent pornography and gaming.”130 only for cheap clothing and immaterial labor portends a to which wireless connections, This remains a tragically ac- accessories, pornography, and radical change in the activities delivered as if by invisible force cepted norm that characterizes get-rich-quick schemes, but of labor, it remains hypothe- out of nothing and nowhere, the online realm for many still for art as well.133 Acceleration sized primarily as a commod- are inextricably tied to a reality today, as Astra Taylor notes has defined the Internet’s path ity-producing activity.”134 As rooted in both materiality and in The People’s Platform: Taking of progress as it physically Sylvia Frederici notes, that corporeality. The Internet, as Back Power and Culture in the advances and establishes while Negri and Hardt may a system of cables or as a Digital Age, connections on distant shores, recognize affective labor as phrase that encompasses all of Instead of directly as well as the way it is thought material, “what [they] do not digital technology, certainly did squelching artistic expres- to have contributed to maxi- see is that the tremendous not come out of ‘nowhere,’ as sion when it’s too brazen- a tactic that can backfire to mizing efficiency in all aspects leap in technology required by if it were born like an amicable the artist’s advantage- adver- tisers and sponsors protect of life; the technology may the computerization of work version of Victor Franken- themselves by favoring docile 137 voices in the first place. Thus spread spatially, but it affects and the integration of infor- stein’s creature. The online is they alter the cultural ecology, individuals temporally. Prod- mation into the work process not a nowhere either, it is in the fostering work that is apoliti- cal and unchallenging, making uct producing industrial labor, has been paid at the cost of most literal sense, on a line, on the innocuously entertaining more plentiful than it would hegemonic in past phases of a tremendous increase of the network of cables that link be otherwise. While many hoped capitalist development, is now exploitation at the other end of all continents save for Antarc- that the Internet would help On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere create a more varied cultural rapidly being replaced with cul- the process.”135 tica, on a line that charts every landscape, advertising dollars continue to distort the market tural, cognitive, affective and Abbate again reminds digital footprint ever made. by creating perverse incentives, encouraging the production or information labour, or imma- that while “Communications The weightless rheto- irresistibly clickable content. terial labor, made possible by media often seem to demate- ric of digital technology masks [...] When advertisers call the a refusal to acknowledge the shots, they encourage only that such technological advance- rialise technology, presenting people and resources on which which will help them sell.131 these systems depend: lithi- ments. Post-Marxist scholars themselves to the user as sys- um and coltan mines, energy guzzling data centers and server such as Antonio Negri, Paolo tems that transmit ideas rather farms, suicidal worker’s at Virno, and Michael Hardt have than electrons. The turbulent Apple’s Foxconn factories, and WORLD WITHIN WORLDS women and children in develop- elaborated on the liberating history of the Internet may ing countries and incarcerated A world within worlds rather potential enabled by the shift than a world wide Web, the In- away from assembly line labor 134 Monique Lanoix, “Labor as Embodied Practice: The Lessons of Care Work,” in Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 1st ed., vol. 28 (Hypatia, 2013). 129 *Restrictions apply. 135 Sylvia Frederici, “Precarious Labor: A Feminist Viewpoint,” In the Middle 130 Curran, Fenton, and Freedman, 42. of a Whirlwind, July 1, 2008, accessed February 15, 2018, https://inthemid- 131 Astra Taylor, The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age (New dleofthewhirlwind.wordpress.com/precarious-labor-a-feminist-viewpoint/. York: Picador, 2015), 205. 136 Abbate, 3. 132 Christiane Paul, “Flexible Contexts, Democratic Filtering and Comput- 137 Interestingly, the Arctic Circle, where Frankenstein ultimately dies in er-Aided Curating: Models for Online Curatorial Practice,” in Curating Immateri- search of his monster who also hides away there until he dies, is the only ality: The Work of the Curator in the Age of Network Systems, ed. Joasia Krysa (Autonomedia, place yet to be connected by high speed Internet cables. This however, will 2006), 82. change in coming years as trade agreements between China and Finland are apt- 133 In 2013, the Phillips Auction House collaborated with Tumblr for their ly timed with unprecedented climate change and polar melting that will final- 61 60 first digital art auction which took place both on and offline. ly enable the 10,500km fibre-optic link to be laid across the Arctic Circle. Americans up to their necks in pixel glitches and slow to Situating the Research toxic electronic waste.”138 load sticky scrollbars, but A situated under- seamless minimalist pastoral standing of the conditions that landscapes wherein smog is enable the craved connection mistaken for clouds. The news to the the cloud reminds that is just nows. It all serves to the technology of today was widen the gap between past never liberating nor emancipa- and future so quickly that we tory on either end of the line. do sense ourselves falling The rise of artificial intelligence into the faultline because the and the Internet of things have GPS failed to account for shown that while devices may construction on the route to continue to shrink in size, their the the future.141 The future ability to synchronize with the however, ended back in 1972. perceived desires of a select The Limits to Growth, a report portion of humanity grows, and funded by Volkswagen and so too do the already heaping commissioned by the Club of piles of e-waste.139 Countries Rome, detailed the long-term like Finland, the first to declare consequences of exponential access to broadband Internet economic growth, noting that connection a human right back without a change in human in 2009, the legislative counsel- consumption habits, without a revolution in industrial econo- Transatlantic Sub-Marine Cables Reaching Land, VSNL International, Avon, New Jersey or for the Ministry of Transport On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere and Communications, Laura mies, and more importantly, if These VSNL sub-marine telecommunications cables extend 8,037.4 miles across the Vilkkonen, quoted saying [em- the natural world and its finite Atlantic Ocean. Capable of transmitting over 60 million simultaneous voice conversations, resources are not account- these underwater fiber-optic cables stretch from Saunton Sands in the United Kingdom phasis added] “it’s something to the coast of New Jersey. The cables run below ground and emerge directly into the you cannot live without in modern ed for in capitalist business VSNL International headquarters, where signals are amplified and split into distinctive society. Like banking services models, then we should expect wavelengths enabling transatlantic phone calls and internet transmissions. or water or electricity, you to see utter depletion within need Internet connection,”140 the next hundred years. While remind that both disconnection the report received criticism in and connection produce death. regards to its methodology, or An American Index of the Websites are no what constitutes a ‘resource,’ longer a jumble of clunky the idea remains a poignant Hidden and Unfamiliar, 2007 138 Taylor, 179. 139 Sarah Karacs, “Revealed: the toxic trail of e-waste that leads from the US to Hong Kong,” South China Morning Post, July 05, 2016, accessed March Photograph by Taryn 11, 2018, http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/arti- cle/1984534/revealed-toxic-trail-e-waste-leads-us-hong-kong. 140 Saeed Ahmed, “Fast Internet Access Becomes a Legal Right in Finland,” CNN, accessed March 24, 2018, http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/15/fin- Simon. land.internet.rights/. 141 Ashley Halsey III, “Eyes down, minds elsewhere, ‘deadwalkers’ are among 63 62 us,” Washington Post, September 27, 2015. and stark reminder that no porary experiences. Refresh ternet apply?143 When thinking Rather than dissect Keywords and Framework of the Network about the shape of the shelter direct political action has the source, perhaps by the that post-Internet or post-dig- the categories of post-Internet ital provide however, The prefix been taken since, regardless time you read this, things have ‘post’ should not be under- and post-digital, I would like to if the results reflected even an already changed, or you can stood here in the same sense use the term ‘online’ with the as postmodernism and post-his- inkling of a possible reality in try to, as Kristin Lucas who in toire, but rather in the sense understanding that the term of post-punk (a continuation of 5, 10, or 500 years. In 2012 2007 filed to legally change her punk culture in ways which are can be reductive and general, however, one of the authors of name from “Kristin Sue Lucas” somehow still punk, yet also in that it lumps together very beyond punk); post-communism the 1972 publication, Jørgen to “Kristin Sue Lucas,” refresh (as the ongoing social-political distinct artistic processes and reality in former Eastern Bloc Randers, released an update, yourself. While there have been countries); post-feminism (as intentions that distinguish say a critically revised continua- 2052: A Global Forecast for the many attempts to apply an tion of feminism, with blurry virtual art from robotic art, Next Forty Years,142 and accord- umbrella term to the artistic boundaries with ‘traditional’, which certainly deserve their unprefixed feminism); postcolo- ing to his analysis of trends practice and artworks created nialism; and, to a lesser extent, own sensitive approaches, post-apocalyptic (a world in on consumption, any possible as direct or indirect results of which the apocalypse is not corresponding theories, and future requires a reduction in the Web, most endeavors have over, but has progressed from a conservation strategies. The discrete breaking point to an consumption, a decline in pop- followed a trajectory similar to ongoing condition).144 term, which in this context ulation, a low carbon energy the technology they hope to can be reduced to refer to any From this perspective, system, and most importantly, address: replaced, upgraded, content made available through the term post-Internet surely institutions that counter nation- modified, hacked, or ultimate- technologically networked pro- applies to the contemporary al short termism. The Internet, ly discarded. The system for cesses and accessible through condition, but it is important to he says, which has increased naming can hardly resist the devices such as mobile phones, understand that this appetite access to knowledge, might entrapment of an art historical computers, etc., is applied here for definition is the result of the be able to help, but only if it is taxonomy, and authors and for its relationship to production artists, cultural workers and first realized that knowledge is artists alike have subsequently in artistic practice on the Web, their dependant institutions, On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere simply not enough in the face raced toward concepts like and most importantly, because positioning within a market that of powerful opposition. post-Internet or post-digital to it straddles a locus that consis- privileges pioneers and rewards distinguish themselves aes- tently refers to positions both with celebrity, social, and thetically, theoretically, and analogue and digital (offline vs. economic status. This is most BETTER OFF ONLINE conceptually from preceding online), and thereby reiterates certainly not said in order to The scope of the nets effects movements all the while seek- that networks are not confined avoid giving credit where credit are still not entirely clear to ing the validation and freedoms solely to technology. Ultimately, is due, but rather to reinforce present day Web 2.0 users, afforded by such recognition. I embrace the term because an idea which I will expand which are less than half the it forces one to ask questions While the prefix upon in subsequent chapters, total worldwide population, and “post,” literally defined as concerning the limitations of meaning “behind,” “after,” “lat- and which is central to all that so to say that we are living in a er,” “subsequent to,” or “poste- contemporaneity and the binary rior to,” does not necessarily follows: slow down the Internet. post-Internet world is, at first imply an end, or the death of, it is still ultimately a term that glance, perhaps premature; a assumes a particular posi- symptom of impatience that tion—if only 47% of the world 143 Adam Taylor, “47 percent of the world’s population now use the Internet, population has Internet access, study says,” The Washington Post, November 22, 2016, accessed March 11, 2018, has categorized most contem- then to whom does post-In- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/11/22/47-percent- of-the-worlds-population-now-use-the-internet-users-study-says/?utm_term=. b3df664540b9. 144 Florian Cramer, “What is ‘Post-digital’?” A peer-reviewed journal about_, January 23, 2014, accessed February 01, 2018, http://www.aprja.net/what-is- 65 64 142 See for example www.2052.info. post-digital/. nature inherent in the interplay networks, of people, commu- Nettime,152 a mailing list for art ly refreshed, searchable and Keywords and Framework of the Network of on versus off. 145 In this the- nities, and of ideas. The notion and activism, which was set up time stamped—a user can see sis, while I focus on exhibition of networks, the digital, and up by Geert Lovink, Pit Schul- exactly how much time has and curatorial practice situated the transference of images and tz, and Nils Röller in 1995, passed before replying with online, this does not mean information, however, were and correspondingly spread Sorry for the delay. While the im- that the projects and artworks already sources of great inspi- amongst online communities mediacy of mixed media mes- included in my research are lim- ration for artists long before like a virus. Characterized as saging technology, whether ited to digital existence, as they the 80s and can be seen in “communications, graphics, e-mail, Messenger, WhatsApp, often extend outside of these early photographic works,147 emails, texts and images, etc., can instill in users a sense parameters, the reasons for kinetic light works,148 and referring to and merging into of guilt when left on ‘seen,’ which I will expand upon more installations.149 In looking at an one another, artists, enthusi- it can also be used to deliver thoroughly in my case studies. already relatively canonized asts, and technoculture critics information, artworks,154 texts, In the early 1980s, the account of the history of net. trading ideas, sustaining one and even exhibitions more enhanced fibre-optics which art,150 one is confronted with another’s interests through quickly, still with the possibility, enabled the development of conflicting points of reference ongoing dialogue,”153 early net. but without the requirement or digital communication net- which are all heavily dependent art laid the foundation for virtu- expectation of an impending works and digital technology, on language and context. As al artistic communication and response.155 which are based on binary Caitlin Jones reflects, creative expression online that While American cor- code combinations of 0s and future new media practitioners porations retained a consider- Like Duchamp’s urinal, 1s, quickly replaced analog what would soon become known have been able to build upon, able amount of power on the signals in telecommunication as “Web art”or “internet art” deconstruct, and question. Web in the 90s, and still today, and the broader moniker, “new forms, particularly cellular media art,” posed a challenge E-mail, ARPA’s game chang- the post-communist and not only to the arbitrary line telephone and cable systems, between art and non-art, but it ing function, was an essential neoliberal territories of Eastern

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere also questioned the necessity because they could compress of the institutions established component of the flourishing Europe and Russia ushered large amounts of data onto to contain and present art— community of early net.artists, in an era of pluralistic politics namely, museums and galleries— more easily preserved and as well as the primacy of the facilitating the instantaneous which trumpeted the open 151 transported devices.146 This artist in the creative process. sharing of ideas and publishing ended potential of the Internet digital information was shared The term “net.art” potential of their manifestos, and digital technology with a through physical networks, like was born from a software and the technology remains positive outlook on cultural those of wires and cables, in glitch in a discussion thread on a powerful one still today. In reform and the formation of order to reach more abstract comparison, the systematic international alliances. In 1994, exchange is perhaps far less the Web was still a relatively exciting now as it serves as uncrowded constellation of 145 Lelia Green, The Internet: An Introduction to New Media (New York, NY: Berg, 2010). 146 “Digital Technology,” Dictionary of American History, 2003, accessed another reminder that being sites that were used for virtual February 03, 2018, http://www.encyclopedia.com/history/dictionaries-thesau- online is being tied to time; the show-and-tell like scenarios by ruses-pictures-and-press-releases/digital-technology. 147 Eadweard Muybridge’s 1879 zoopraxiscope. inbox is always open, frequent- various hobbyists, enthusiasts 148 Thomas Wilfred’s 1919 Lumia. 149 In 1958, Wolf Vostell became the first artist to incorporate a television 152 See www.nettime.org. set into his work The Black Room Cycle. 153 Rachel Greene, “Web Work: A History of Internet Art,” Artforum, May 2000, 150 See for example Zachary Kaplan’s A History of Net Art, www.Dam.org, or Oliver 162. Laric’s An Incomplete Timeline of Online Exhibitions and Biennales. 154 See for example www.mutations.gallery. 151 Caitlin Jones, “My Art World Is Bigger Than Your Art World,” The Believer, 155 See for example Slowly 10, a digital curatorial residency wherein a digital December 01, 2005, accessed January 22, 2018, https://www.believermag.com/ programme is distributed through a daily e-mail to the KoProjects mailing 67 66 issues/200512/?read=article_jones. list, and features one artwork, text, reference etc. for a period of 10 days. and companies advertising the time (but of course not for as an institution or corporation Mills, appear almost impossi- Keywords and Framework of the Network various types of communica- long), the artistic community online.158 As Domenico Quar- ble to decipher. These works tion tools that could be used online was seen as being far anta notes that seem as though presented in a

within the technology— some removed from the commercial- the Internet initially foreign language because—like sites are no longer function- ly exploited art and culture of favoured depersonalisation and in Mez Breeze’s 1994 anonymity over authorship and Mezza- ing, R.I.P. Yahoo! GeoCities the white cube that defined the self-promotion, as well as com- negelle, wherein she combined munity over individualism. As a 1994-2009, but live on in digital 1980s, the ideology of which place without gatekeepers or the the English language, infor- validating power of institutions, archives like that of archive. Brian O’Doherty’s 1986 Inside it prompted artists to develop mal speech and codework to org. By 1995, these new the White Cube chronicles in a platforms, networks, directories create a new hybrid form as a and community projects in order methods of distribution, com- way that remains of seminal to contextualize their efforts result of the interplay between 159 munication, and production, significance. The Web is still within a broader practice. humans and machines—for which used images, colorful the site of solace for many, not Looking at the early most digital newcomers it is. lo-fi graphics, and rudimenta- only do its effects remain un- works of net.art from the The Internet has also allowed ry coding to customize sites, clear, but so too do its scope 90s today can be a rather for a reworking of previously were still aglow and basking in of possibilities for the arts, and disorienting experience for explored concepts and visual the light of a utopian halo, and the last several decades have the contemporary user when language and mediums, for drew the attention of artists, shown that artist driven or considering that works have example works like Wafaa leftist intellectuals, and tech non-profit online galleries are been stripped from their orig- Bilal’s 2007 Domestic Tension, savvy individuals—many have not uncommon; many printing inal context. Early works were wherein the artist confined been joined by newcomers and presses have turned to digital made on particular browsers himself to a gallery, broadcast- haven’t left since.156 As Omar publishing for its feasibility and like Netscape or softwares ed a live feed over the inter- Kholief writes in You are Here, affordability, popular social no longer in use, their man- net 24/7 while viewers could Art After the Internet, “After all, platforms are being repur- ner of reception altered upon watch and chat with him at all On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere the internet seems like the ide- posed, and digital libraries are entering the physical space hours and fire at him with a al place for artists. It is a nim- turning away from the limita- of the gallery or exhibition, robotically controlled paintball ble, malleable, and responsive tions imposed by structures and sometimes lost entirely gun, recalls Chris Burden’s sphere that enables a degree and political and economic because the now antiquat- 1971 Shoot, where the artist is of autonomy, which most art- ideologies of the offline. ed technologies or devices shot in the arm by one of his ists crave but are often unable Early net.art sought to have since been abandoned. assistants. Since early net.art to achieve due to the hierarchi- claim a position as a temporary Extracted from its context, the often evaded archivability and cal nature of the art world and autonomous zone that signaled works of early practitioners of even welcomed the limitations its institutions.”157 The Web the death of the author and net.art, or net.artists, such as of temporality, some works provided the tools fundamen- shrank the gap between art Yael Kanarek, Jodi.org, Heath have not been such lucky sur- tal for building; it was both a and everyday life by proposing Bunting, Young-Hae Chang vivors,160 but these early exper- space for creating content and that every artist or individual Heavy Industries, and Lorna iments with websites, coding, the site of community, and at could exist on the same level and computer systems intro-

158 Natalie Bookchin and Alexei Shulgin, “Introduction to net.art (1994- 1999),” Introduction to net.art (1994-1999), March & april 1999, accessed 156 See for example the works of An Xiao Mina, Aleksandra Domanovi, Kate February 01, 2018, http://www.easylife.org/netart/. Steciw, Jennifer Chan, Parker Ito, Joshua Citarella, Brad Troemel, Alexandra 159 Domenico Quaranta, “The First Life of Net Art: UBERMORGEN, JODI, Vuk Gorczynski, and Oliver Laric. Cosic, Olia Lialina,” Spike Art Magazine, October 20, 2016, accessed February 157 Omar Kholeif, “Preamble,” in You Are Here Art After the Internet, ed. Omar Kholeif 01, 2018, https://www.spikeartmagazine.com/en/articles/netart. 69 68 (Manchester: HOME and SPACE, 2017), 12. 160 See for example www.oneterabyteofkilobyteage.tumblr.com. duced a different approach to for its preservation and col- last several decades have infatuation with the evasion Keywords and Framework of the Network contemporary art practice, one lection162 through an already seen artists selling memes of institutional reception was that may have at first sought established reputation in more made online in galleries,166 or more of a fantasy than a pos- to function externally from the traditional sites of commerce— placing outdated computer sible reality. As Claire Bishop mainstream, but were things auction houses, dealers and models in exhibition spaces points out

really better off online? As collectors found in new media to run or display artworks It seemed desperate- Josephine Berry Slater, who a new market.163 Early net.art, and independently designed ly to crave recognition by and integration into mainstream currently teaches at the Media though it was originally made programs or software.167 New contemporary art, falling over itself to name digital artists and Communications Depart- and accessed online, quickly media already boasts its own who had already appeared in Art- forum, gallery shows, biennials, ment at Goldsmiths, reminds found its way into galleries and relics and antiques. One of or art fairs. The ambivalence institutions, and was loosely the most notable institutions is curious, and perhaps best The cursory list of resolved by eliminating the ar- events in Net art’s swerve from termed “new media art,” which working today, Rhizome’s Net tificial distinction between the avowed outsiderhood to, by and new media gang and mainstream large, comfortable institution- is curtly described by Quar- Art Anthology, is an ambitious contemporary art altogether, or al involvement, mirrors and anta as “the art that uses new project that seeks to to retell at the very least acknowledging entails many parallel narrative their significant overlap.169 of disillusionment. It charts the development of the World Wide media technologies as a me- the history of artistic practice Web from virgin and libertari- dium–period.”164 The interplay in the digital age, in which Neither the works an frontier or ‘virtual reality,’ to universalized tool of late of online works in the offline even the most influential works of early net.artists nor those capitalism; its administrative techniques, its instantaneous world like those by Thomas have faded into obscurity as a of new media practitioners circulation. It repeats some of Ruff, Cao Fei, Laura Owens result of technological obso- working today can evade the the same steps as conceptual art, for which the innovative and Artie Vierkant amongst lescence.168 With the launch of principles, and more impor- dematerialization of the art object worked both as a radical many others, allows artists tools like Web Recorder, such tantly, markets, economies, attempt to withdraw the pretexts and politics that dictate of veneration (aestheticism, another opportunity support databases dedicated to pre- retinality) and commodicafca- themselves through sales, serving, collecting, or display- the ebb and flow of value, tion (the aura of originality), On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere whilst also providing an uncanny reveal their processes, and ing online artworks, even those production, and creativity in advance warning of the coming info-capitalism.161 contextualize themselves and which like Rhizome are artist the societies they touch—no their work, which still battles driven, dictate which works are matter how many times you Created by artists for respect or reception along- selected to be archived and click the switch on Rafaël who sustained themselves by side more traditional (read: how, in effect changing the Rozendaal’s Onandoff.org. other means and through the profitable) practices such as type of work which is made. This is not a statement in- creation of works sold offline, painting or sculpture.165 The Twenty three years later, a be- tended to evoke a paralyzing net.art generated a demand lated reflection on the timeline sense of hopelessness and

161 Josephine Berry Slater, “Unassignable Leakage: A Crisis of Measure and of artists and artworks which certainly not one intended to Judgement in Immaterial (Art) Production,” in In Curating Immateriality: The Work of the have since been categorized diminish the importance of Curator in the Age of Network Systems, ed. Joasia Krysa (Autonomedia, 2006), 140. 162 See for example www.netvvorth.com. as belonging to net.art’s the work done by early net. 163 Jennifer Chan, “From Browser to Gallery (and Back): The Commodification oeuvre reveals that the early artists or the institutions that of Net Art 1990-2011,” Pool, December 28, 2011, http://pooool.info/from- browser-to-gallery-and-back-the-commodification-of-net-art-1990-2011/. 164 Domenico Quaranta, “What’s (Really) Specific about New Media Art? Cu- 166 See for example www.s-a-d-e.la/air-pop----memes.html. rating in the Information Age,” Rhizome, December 6, 2012, accessed March 167 See for example the 2017 Whitney Biennale. 24, 2018, http://rhizome.org/editorial/2012/dec/6/whats-really-specif- 168 “The Art Happens Here: Net Art Anthology Launch,” New Museum, Octo- ic-about-new-media-art-curating/. ber 2016, accessed February 03, 2018, https://www.newmuseum.org/calendar/ 165 Ben Hobson, “Galleries around the world are finally “starting to take view/1106/the-art-happens-here-net-art-anthology-launch-1. digital art seriously”,” Dezeen, February 17, 2015, accessed March 15, 2018, 169 Claire Bishop, “SWEEPING, DUMB, AND AGGRESSIVELY IGNORANT! REVIS- https://www.dezeen.com/2015/02/17/movie-galleries-around-world-start- ITING ‘DIGITAL DIVIDE,” in Mass Effect, ed. Lauren Cornell and Ed Halter (MIT 71 70 ing-to-take-digital-art-seriously/. Press, 2015). now work to archive and with. A platform is aimed at social media platforms that religion and commerce were Keywords and Framework of the Network supporting and stimulating conserve it, but rather is a creative initiatives and work, many Web users have come all concentrated, was initially and it provides a possibility realization that once under- for continues exhibition of to know continue to maintain a considered a vital component stood, actually reactivates a artefacts, often accompanied by facade of neutrality, of access, of democracy as it was the reactions to them and various once promised potential of discussions. Sometimes there is and of social potential; the site in which citizens could also a set of instruments avail- digital technologies. able for a particular kind of minimalist design of Google’s rationally deliberate politi- creative work. A platform often homepage is incongruous with cal issues.173 In the context also puts effort into translat- ing digital creative process the amount of data it collects of the public cybersphere, into offline and more official PLATFORMS cultural scenes, establishing from its users. At their core, or electro-agora, however, connections between cultural When using the phrase ‘on- movements of different times however, they are simply debate has been tranquilized, line exhibition space’ in this and orders. Most platforms economic actors responding as if placed behind a fence organize (ir)regular real-life, dissertation, I am referring to gatherings such as festivals, to the demands of a capitalist in a zoo, ‘free’ to roam within concerts, workshops or those of a spectrum of cyberspaces, a less formal nature. Technical- society; Uber’s price surge af- the confines of a cage and meaning that these spaces ly speaking, a platform should ter a New York City bombing in entertained according to have an open database with a involve computers or computer user friendly interface that September of 2016 or the JFK the schedule of the keeper. anyone can download from/up- networks, and which range load to, and instruments for the Airport protests in response “The media constitute us as contextualization and devel- from hashtags, to 3D rendered opment of a practice it works to Executive Order 13769, citizens by offering us pro- websites, and which are most with-blog, forum, chat, ranking, Tinder’s 2016 performative cessed insights into an array voting, featuring, and others.170 often accessed on their own gesture of gender inclusivity, of significant domains—eco- distinct URLs, or make use of These databases, or Instagram and Snapchat’s nomic, political, scientific pre-existing social media plat- platforms, and digital spac- recently renounced collabora- and so forth—through which forms, the most common being es are sites of interaction, tion with Giphy after a racist democratic choices and Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, participation, and collabora- GIF surfaced in a tweet by Ly- opinions can emerge, and not

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere etc. but which also have similar tion shaped by and for the auna Augmon, and should be by breaching the boundaries country specific iterations, material they work with, be it treated as such no matter how between decision makers and such as Russia’s Vkontakte, music, literature, art, software, often they claim to accommo- those on the receiving end Poland’s NaszaKlasa, or Chi- etc. Their formulas have been date user interests with ethical of their decisions.”174 Con- na’s Baidu Tieba. What exactly arrived at by a multitude of or moral updates.172 sidering that the connection are these platforms? Artists routes, and because they exist afforded by such social plat- Olga Goriunova and Alexei online, are political in their very forms was always character- Shulgin explain that nature, no matter if the content PUBLIC CYBERSPACE ized by corporate interests,

A platform is [...] they exhibit is explicitly stated The Classical Athenian agora, it quickly transformed into organised in a special way: as a as such or not.171 While there or the public square on which competition and comparison, relatively simple database with artefacts, or a more complex are many types of platforms politics and administration, wherein the number of follow- portal built around a database. A platform differentiates itself that have been created by [...] by the relation of creative, 172 In June 2017, Tinder announced a “More Genders” update accompanied by social, instrumental, educa- artists, designers, and cu- the statement: “Starting today, no matter how you identify, you can express tional and historical character rators, the corporate owned your authentic self,” apologizing for their failure as allies excusing them- it establishes and is involved selves saying “We haven’t had the right tools to serve our diverse community in the past, but that changes today.” See www.blog.gotinder.com/genders/. 170 Olga Goriunova and Alexei Shulgin, “From Art on Networks to Art on Plat- 173 Manuel Castells, “Public Space in the Information Society,” Public Space, forms: (Case Studies: Runme.org, Micromusic.net, and Udaff.com),” in Curating 1994, accessed March 24, 2018, http://www.publicspace.org/en/text-library/ Immateriality: The Work of the Curator in the Age of Network Systems, ed. Joasia Krysa (Autono- eng/1-espacios-publicos-en-la-sociedad-informacional. media, 2006), 237-238. 174 Luke Goode, Jürgen Habermas: Democracy and the Public Sphere (London: Pluto Press, 73 72 171 See for example www.desktopresidency.com. 2005), 95. ers, retweets and subscrip- entries for occurrences of ‘social’, with the concomitant which Miriam Hansen broadly Keywords and Framework of the Network tions translates to popularity, the phrases “I feel” and “I am rule of the bureaucracy on the describes as the “neurophysi- success and potential profit; feeling” to create a database one hand, and an obsessive ological process that mediates lamentably, the accounts of human feelings across a preoccupation with intimacy on between internal and external, with the most followers in the number of demographics. the other, has proved remark- psychic and motoric, human world are highly paid female As we continue to ably prescient.”179 Benjamin and mechanical registers,”181 pop stars from the U.S.175 upload versions of ourselves also reminds that is a mode of cognition that is It seems that the online, our nucleus accumbens The increasing pro- active, corporeal, intense and ‘social’ aspect of these social aglow with every ‘like’ and our letarianization of modern man which allows for the imagination and the increasing formation platforms was not enough levels of loneliness lowered of masses are two sides of the of a different existence than the same process. Fascism attempts to delink us from misery and with every post if only momen- to organize the newly proletar- one characterized by the sen- 176 ianized masses while leaving has instead exacerbated it. tarily, despite all of the risks, intact the property relations sory alienation afforded by the Anxiety, depression, lone- we do so because we define which they strive to abolish. It aestheticization of political life sees its salvation in granting liness, jealousy, and stress our identities through and with expression to the masses-but in which we can see ourselves on no account granting them levels rise the more time we others, we nurture so that we rights. The masses have a right reflected and with others. spend on social media yet the might be nurtured in return, to changed property relations; Artworks, opinions, and images fascism seeks to give them FOMO (fear of missing out) on and most often, we share, expression in keeping these may glide across the glossy relations unchanged. The logical any of these dismal emotions post, and update because outcome of fascism is an aestheticizing of surfaces of screens, but this 180 renders us unwilling to let want to tell the rest of the political life. does not mean that they are

go—someday, all the stress world what it is we care about, We reached the tip- inherently superficial, as both might actually power our de- whether or not anyone is ping point long ago with the rise their exhibition and reception 177 178 vices. Users generate data, listening. In exchange for hits of yellow journalism, competing can still be sites of resistance. the clicks and likes to be sold of dopamine and serotonin, news outlets vying for ratings These social plat- On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere to advertisers, but they also users voluntarily relinquish and rather than reality, reality forms, because they do attract generate affective emotional their information into capitalist television that reduced reality so many users, remind that responses such as pleasure, receptacles, thus the digital to television. Yet Benjamin’s assimilating into the masses disgust, anger, etc., that resist economy is nothing new, but materialist perspective pur- or adopting a mob mental- being entered into the market, simply a thinly veiled extension ports that technology is not the ity leads to a a diffusion of but might find their way into of pre-existing conditions. As antithesis of nature, but rather a responsibility, and what social projects like Sev Kamvar and Seyla Benhabib notes, “Han- new configuration of it, and that psychologists have called Jonathan Harris’ wefeelfine. nah Arendt’s prediction that through a collective innerva- “social loafing,” when individ- org, a system that searches modern societies would be tion of technology, humanity uals put forth less effort when the world’s newly posted blog increasingly dominated by the can, through mimetic faculties, working in a group. A study dialectically augment its rela- conducted in 2005 showed 175 Singer Katy Perry has over 109 million followers, and in 2017 her Twitter that people extended greater bio read: “Artist. Activist. Conscious.” tionship to both. Innervation, 176 Jessica Brown, “Future - Is social media bad for you? The evidence and the unknowns,” BBC, January 05, 2018, accessed March 10, 2018, http://www.bbc. 179 Seyla Benhabib, “Feminist theory and Hannah Arendt’s concept of public com/future/story/20180104-is-social-media-bad-for-you-the-evidence-and- space,” History of the Human Sciences 6, no. 2 (1993): 110, 2011, http://hhs.sagepub. the-unknowns. com/content/6/2/97. 177 In 2017, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Tech- 180 Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility, and Other nology created a rubbery material that generates electricity from stress. Writings on Media, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty, and Thomas Y. Levin 178 Maurizio Mauri et al., “Why Is Facebook So Successful? Psychophysiologi- (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard Uni. Press, 2008), 41. cal Measures Describe a Core Flow State While Using Facebook,” CYBERPSYCHOL- 181 Quoted from Elizabeth Stewart, Catastrophe and Survival: Walter Benjamin and Psycho- 75 74 OGY, BEHAVIOR, AND SOCIAL NETWORKING 14, no. 12 (2011). analysis (New York, NY: Continuum, 2010), 86. individual effort when they according to a codification that communication, engagement, Reddit, freebird.is, or micgoat. Keywords and Framework of the Network were in smaller groups in both partitions as closely as pos- criticism, and content, the com. Opinions need not be distributed and collocated sible time, space, movement. breadth of diversity of personal expressed as tedious or pro- situations, but when placed in These methods [...] which as- experience, emotion and ex- tracted theses, but have been collocated groups however, sured the constant subjection pression is reduced to the con- reduced to comments, or even people felt greater pressure to of its forces and imposed upon fines of what several men have more minutely, gestural ava- look busy even when they were them a relation of docility-utili- deemed worthy of sharing.186 tars that symbolize affirmation not, while those in the distrib- ty.”183 Through habitual usage, The screen is thus not a portal or disapproval; this is hardly a uted groups were less likely these types of platforms and through which one can escape debate interested in reaching to feel such pressure.182 What digital devices have ever so to another possible world, it is agreement, let alone a Haber- is seen through the screen clandestinely disciplined bodily a two-way mirror gazing back masian notion of consensus. thus has the potential to be a gestures, pace, and behaviour at us from the extension of Chantal Mouffe, a starting point for both political to the extent that even the the one in which we currently notable critic of Habermas’ action and inaction. Social movements that allow users to live, reflecting the misery and theory of deliberative democ- media platforms, created and work within them can be trade- maladies of modern life. While racy, in her theory of agonistic maintained by power-wielding marked—Apple alone has won it is here where the masses are pluralism, acknowledges that corporations, are the most a number of key swipe gesture constituted, wherein the per- both power and antagonism commonly accessed sites on patents for virtual keyboards sonal becomes public, it is also are ineradicable forces and that the Web and have further ex- since 2001. here in the reflection wherein they play a “crucial role in the panded an illusion of participa- Understanding the the public gets personal. formation of collective identi- tion each time a 140 character limitations of social media ties.”187 She reminds that the tweet is added to the thread. platforms may allow users to consensus of which Haber- Surfaces find their temporal seize some control, to ma- mas conceives is not only an

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere and spatial dimensions in nipulate their functions,184 IN THE PUBLIC I impossibility, but that it would platforms, and become the site and appropriate some of their Social media platforms have signal the end of contestation of voluminous and expansive strategies within new contexts not yet entirely replaced public and dissidence, arguing that politically charged public and toward different goals,185 forums for discussion, but the failure of such a conception space; a public cybersphere, and projects like The Wrong, the they have dramatically altered of democracy is that identity producing what Foucault refers world’s largest digital art bi- the ways in which debate is is “abstracted from social and to as docile bodies. On social ennale that uses Facebook as positioned, addressed and power relations, language, media platforms, users are its primary exhibition platform, received, now more simply culture and the whole set of treated as wholesale goods have attempted to do just uploaded or downloaded in practices that make the individ- by the “uninterrupted, con- that. However, in the following online forums or threads like uality possible.”188 Mouffe goes stant coercion, supervising the chapter, I explain that without processes of the activity rather the addition of alternatives 186 Of the four most popular social media platforms, Facebook, the world’s largest social media platform, was started by Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo than its result [...] exercised that allow for different forms of Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. The mobile pho- to-sharing platform Instagram was started by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. 182 Laku Chidambaram and Lai Lai Tung, “Is Out of Sight, Out of Mind? An Snapchat, a multimedia application was started by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, Empirical Study of Social Loafing in Technology-Supported Groups,” Information and Reggie Brown, and the mobile news and social networking service Twitter Systems Research 16, no. 2 (June 2005): 149-168. was founded by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams. 183 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. 187 Chantal Mouffe, “Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism?” Social Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), 137. Research 66, no. 3 (1999): 752. 184 See for example www.bubblebyte.org. 188 Chantal Mouffe, “Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism,” Political 77 76 185 See for example www.facebook.com/GalleryOnline. Science Series, no. 72 (December 2000): 10. on to say “[...] if we accept that for non-conformity, scrutiny ourselves.”192 If we lose sight of ticised retrospectives of past Keywords and Framework of the Network relations of power are constitu- and resistance, calling into the inherently political charac- and future civic engagement tive of the social, then the main question a homogenous view ter of the online, as Stephanie frequently impose language question of democratic politics of a public by embracing the Bailey notes “we lose exactly and expectations that misrep- is not how to eliminate power notion of a more intersection- what is at stake: a perception resent what actually happens but how to constitute forms al understanding of identity, of the internet as a territory in the mediations of the pres- of power that are compatible which can be comprised of that is a ‘live’ and volatile as ent.”196 Such forms of count- with democratic values.189 What different spatial and temporal the fertile fields over which er-expression need then to be Mouffe is then proposing, if positions of understanding. battles have been waged and visibly and actively contextu- both structurelessness and Objective knowledge would social contracts drawn.”193 alized within the overarching consensus are impossibilities, hold no seat here, as only How can such framework of existing power is not a conservative approach subjective perspective and the multiplicity can be enacted structures that dominate dis- that seeks to replace the ex- ability to self-identify resist the within pre-existing structures course online; they require an isting structures of power with impositions of a rigid universal- or with the creation of new understanding of the inherent yet another structure of power, ity, neutrality and consensus. ones online? Is multiplicity or problematics of the technology as if women were to replace Mouffe notes that a “properly polycentrality a viable counter they occupy that predates the all men in positions of political political intervention is always argument, and more impor- Internet, as well as an under- power all would be right in the one that engages with a certain tantly, is it reserved solely for standing that participation world, pitting hegemony against aspect of the existing hege- the leisure privileged middle online is simply not enough to hegemony, but that “the consti- mony in order to disarticulate/ class? While online discussion spur a recasting of dominat- tution of democratic individuals re-articulate its constitutive el- can serve to expose partici- ing structures of power in the can only be made possible by ements. It can never be merely pants to the non-like minded, name of democracy. As Natalie multiplying the institutions, the oppositional or conceived as it can also become the site of Fenton reminds “Genuine

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere discourses, [and] the forms of desertion because it aims at political polarisation,194 and so democratisation requires the life that foster identification with re-articulating the situation the fetishized positive nature real and material participation democratic values.”190 in a new configuration.”191 As of connectivity is equally called of the oppressed and ex- Applying Mouffe’s Andrea Fraser reminds, “if into question. Although digital cluded; the real and material theory to the field of arts and there is no outside for us, it media can certainly be used to recognition of difference, along culture atop the electro-agora is not because the institution engage in counter-expression with the space for contestation would mean that rather than is perfectly closed, or exists against authoritarian govern- and an understanding and seek the validation of estab- as an apparatus in a ‘totally ments amongst many other response to its meaning. This lished, or recognized institu- administered society’, or has things, it still poses a risk for is not an argument simply for tional, governmental or market grown all-encompassing in punitive action,195 and “roman- inclusivity, multiplicity, par- defining bodies, a multiplicity size and scope. It is because of expression and reception is the institution is inside of us, 192 Andrea Fraser, “From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique,” Artforum, September 2005, 104. needed in order to make space and we can’t get outside of 193 Stephanie Bailey, “OurSpace: Take the Net in Your Hands,” in You Are Here: Art After the Internet, ed. Omar Kholeif (Manchester: HOME and SPACE, 2017), 130. 194 Matthew Scott Hindman, The Myth of Digital Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). 189 Mouffe, (1999): 753. 195 Lily Kuo, “Tanzania is threatening more citizens with jail for insult- 190 Mouffe, (December 2000): 11. ing the president on social media,” September 15, 2016, accessed February 191 Chantal Mouffe, “Critique as Counter-Hegemonic Intervention,” Eipcp, 08, 2018, https://qz.com/782239/five-tanzanians-were-charged-with-cyber- April 2008, accessed February 17, 2018, http://eipcp.net/transversal/0808/ crime-for-insulting-president-john-magufuli-on-social-media/. 79 78 mouffe/en/base_edit. 196 Curran, Fenton, and Freedman, 132. ticipation or for the creative Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi writes rather than to work it or to per- works two-ways, reflection is Keywords and Framework of the Network autonomy of everyone, as that there is no identity, only ceive it as a goal, or something an active gesture, akin to Ryan these claims alone can only processes of identification, then forced, a claim which enters an McNamara’s 2013 and still ever take us to first base.”197 rather than attempting to rebuild arena of violence. After all, if the ongoing performance MEEM 4 In the case of corruption, as is a sense of belonging based on Internet really was a World Wide Boston: A Story Ballet About the the case online, direct criti- a false concept, things might be Web, what good is a border?201 Internet, wherein we come to cism falls short and and must better off if identity is “forgot- For now, however, establishing recognize that the relationships seek equally cunning ways to ten altogether.”199 But change solidarity on the basis of more between ourselves and others subvert the logos of power. It comes ever slowly, no matter than a singular and reduced are always subject to change.205 is here wherein art, through how quick the connection, and concept of identity, such visibili- works like the 2001-2003 Black a position that proposes to do ty, contextualized and transpar- Net.Art Actions by Mendi + away with identity entirely when ent in its intentions,202 is a site of Keith Obadike that address art politics police its very core and strength and can do much more online with race as a central wait armed at borders, erecting than making the rounds through concern, has the potential higher walls, and exercise con- reblogging.203 to propose alternative blue- trol through more inconspicuous While each country prints, not an escape plan. As methods that all too frequently faces its own set of conditions Gerald Rauning explains, “the go unnoticed, is one of great that rule the regulation of its poststructuralist proposals for privilege. Perhaps all this visi- version of the Web, China for dropping out and withdrawal bility will in the future reveal a example boasts the largest [...] is anything but this kind of different kind of immateriality, or number of Internet users and relapse into the celebration of invisibility; a disappearance of one of the most advanced an individual turning away from the need to be identified along- models for digital censorship,204

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere society. The point is to thwart side a re-appropriation of the artworks and exhibitions that dichotomies such as that of phrase of the right-wing rhetoric occupy social media platforms the individual and the collec- “All Lives Matter” when they or use digital technologies to tive, to offensively theorize new actually do matter, and not as generate and establish di- forms of what is common and sources of imprisoned or low- vergent territories away from singular at the same time.”198 cost labor forces, as imperialist the center, can become the It is here, in instituent practic- subjects, or as demographically spaces of such possibility for es that the singular becomes targeted consumers. As Nancy intervention or interruption plural and expands the middle writes “Community is bare, but that at the very least, can be that lies between the extremes it is imperative,”200 arguing that this first step toward a more of escapism and complicity. our task is to think community democratic sense of expres- If it is true that as as something always unfolding, sion. If the screen is something like a mirror, albeit one which 197 Ibid, 142. 198 Gerald Raunig, “Instituent Practices,” Eipcp, 2006, accessed March 22, 201 www.dis.art/60-million-americans. 2018, http://eipcp.net/transversal/0106/raunig/en/base_edit. 202 See for example www.m-est.org. 199 Franco “Bifo” Berardi, “Trap of Identity and Delusion of Truth,” in Authen- 203 See for example www.not-surprised.org. ticity? Observations and Artistic Strategies in the Post-Digital Age, ed. Barbara Cueto and Bas 204 Nick Routley, “Map: Internet Censorship Around the World,” Visual Capi- Hendrikx (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2017), 143. talist, September 30, 2017, accessed March 24, 2018, http://www.visualcapi- 200 Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural, ed. Werner Harnacher and David E. Well- talist.com/internet-censorship-map/. 81 80 bery (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 2000), 35-36. 205 See for example www.parallelograms.info. The mirror is, after all, a utopia, since it it since utopia, a all, after is, mirror The is a placeless place. In the mirror, I see see I mirror, the In place. placeless a is myself there where I am not, in an unreal, unreal, an in not, am I where there myself virtual space that opens up behind the the behind up opens that space virtual surface; I am over there, there where I I where there there, over am I surface; am not, a sort of shadow that gives my own own my gives that shadow of sort a not, am visibility to myself, that enables me to to me enables that myself, to visibility see myself there where I am absent: such such absent: am I where there myself see is the utopia of the mirror. But it is also also is it But mirror. the of utopia the is a heterotopia in so far as the mirror does does mirror the as far so in heterotopia a exist in reality, where it exerts a sort of of sort a exerts it where reality, in exist counteraction on the position that I occupy. occupy. I that position the on counteraction From the standpoint of the mirror I discover discover I mirror the of standpoint the From my absence from the place where I am since since am I where place the from absence my National Museum of Modern I see myself over there. Starting from this this from Starting there. over myself see I gaze that is, as it were, directed toward me, me, toward directed were, it as is, that gaze and Contemporary Art. Seoul, from the ground of this virtual space that that space virtual this of ground the from is on the other side of the glass, I come come I glass, the of side other the on is South Korea. back toward myself; I begin again to direct direct to again begin I myself; toward back my eyes toward myself and to reconstitute reconstitute to and myself toward eyes my Screenshot by Mario myself there where I am. The mirror mirror The am. I where there myself functions as a heterotopia in this respect: respect: this in heterotopia a as functions Santamaria from The it makes this place that I occupy at the the at occupy I that place this makes it moment when I look at myself in the glass glass the in myself at look I when moment Phantom in the Mirror, 2013 at once absolutely real, connected with all all with connected real, absolutely once at the space that surrounds it, and absolutely absolutely and it, surrounds that space the - ongoing. unreal, since in order to be perceived it has has it perceived be to order in since unreal, to pass through this virtual point which is is which point virtual this through pass to 1 there. over

, , Continuité /Mouvement/ Architecture Miskowiec, Jay trans. Autres,” Espace “Des Foucault, Michel 1 October 1984, 4. 1984, October

83 82 In the Middle of Nowhere Together In the Middle of Nowhere Together In the Middle of Nowhere Together In the Middle of Nowhere Together In the Middle of Nowhere Together In the Middle of Nowhere Together In the Middle of Nowhere Together In the Middle of Nowhere Together In the Middle of Nowhere Together In the Middle of Nowhere Together In the Middle of Nowhere Together In the Middle of Nowhere Together In the Middle of Nowhere Together In the Middle of Nowhere Together In the Middle of Nowhere Together 3 In the Middle of Nowhere Together In the Middle of Nowhere Together In the Middle of Nowhere Together In the Middle of Nowhere Together In the Middle of Nowhere Together In the Middle of Nowhere Together In the Middle of Nowhere Together In the Middle of Nowhere Together In the Middle of Nowhere Together In the Middle of Nowhere Together In the Middle of Nowhere Together In the Middle of Nowhere Together In the Middle of Nowhere Together BEING SINGULAR nication” is for us, today, such Nancy, has taken on a different working hours, now exploded an affair—in every sense of the PLURAL: SHARING VS. word[...] — if its theories are dimension, and requires an into all aspects of existence flourishing, if its technologies PSEUDO-SHARING are being proliferated, if the additional phenomenological after the first click, or as in In Being Singular Plural, Jean- “mediatization” of the “media” brings along with it an au- interpretation through the lens Christian Marclay’s 2010 The Luc Nancy complicates the to-communicational vertigo, if of the quotidian. The imme- Clock, the first tick. When does one plays around with the theme very core of community itself of the indistinctness between diacy of sharing online has the user become a citizen? through his analysis of the the “message” and the “medium” out of either a disenchanted or shifted away from the editorial At the core of capi- co-existential, and writes jubilant fascination, then it is transcription of the everyday, talism is the driving force that because something is exposed Being cannot be any- or laid bare. In fact, [what which in effect, positions every seeks the endless commodi- thing but being-with-one-anoth- is exposed] is the bare and er, circulating in the with and as “content”-less Web of “commu- day as if it were not everyday. fication of human beings and the with of this singularly plural nication.” One could say it is Sharing on social media plat- the natural world for a profit; coexistence. [...] But this cir- the bare Web of the com- (of the culation goes in all directions telecom-, said with an acknowl- forms remains disguised, even pseudo-sharing has became at once, in all the directions edgment of its independence); of all the space-times [les es- that is, it is our Web or “us” when its inner functions are re- the site of seemingly endless pace-temps] opened by presence to as Web or network, an us that is presence: all things, all beings, reticulated and spread out, with vealed time and time again by exploitation, as it capitalizes all entities, everything past and its extension for an essence and the likes of Edward Snowden on dasein itself. As it ad- future, alive, dead, inanimate, its spacing for a structure.207 stones, plants, nails, gods—and or Julian Assange, as a neolib- vances embodying a global di- “humans,” that is, those who expose sharing and circulation With the rise of social eral reconstruction of Marx’s mension, the capitalist system as such by saying “we,” by saying media usage, the notion of “commodity fetishism,”208 becomes increasingly inter- we to themselves in all possible senses of that expression, and communication has been masking the relationship sectional, and even capitalizes by saying we for the totality of all being.206 reduced to the act of “shar- between the capitalist and the on intersectionality, and thus ing;” sites and platforms invite laborer as entertainment rather requires intersectional resis- Being-there is the users to share their photo, than as work, or connection tance. In the United States way we experience ourselves share their moods, share their rather than commodity. in the 1960s for example, On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere through the lens of everyday thoughts, share their location, several organizations, like life, and most importantly, with to share in a private message, The user is the women’s liberation and others, and not exclusively hu- or to share publicly. Sharing using, civil rights movements, were mans. In this understanding of has come to define what it using, formed on the basis of frag- being, the notion of sharing is means to be online; as users used. mented identity politics that an inherent trait, as the world upload personal information to Once online, the focused on reform, but only as is always and already a shared construct their profiles, they possibility of ever being it pertained to each respec- one. Sharing thus becomes not mark the positions of their offline again vanishes—you tive group, ultimately acting only an ontological concept, existence within the network, are locked in a state of to legitimize the very sys- but because communities and geographically or in terms of ever-sharing. Perma-share. tems they sought to critique identities are formed by virtue their beliefs and interests, and Over-share.209 Pseudo-sharing by seeking inclusion within of being-with, a political one as thus assert their commercial further deconstructs a tradi- them.210 In 2018, capitalism is well—without sharing, meaning value in the chain. Sharing, tional model of work, previous- viciously preying on the pol- remains an impossibility. or rather pseudo-sharing in ly defined by linear time and itics of inclusivity, yet hiding One could say- even this sense, unlike its ontolog- more simply that Being is 208 “Marx’s Theory of Commodity Fetishism,” Libcom.org, 2017, accessed March communication. [...] If “commu- ical position as described by 03, 2018, https://libcom.org/library/i-marxs-theory-commodity-fetishism. 209 See for example www.sleepingupright.com. 206 Nancy, (2000): 3. 210 For example, women of color were systematically excluded from both fem- 87 86 207 Ibid, 28. inist and civil rights movements. its locus of enunciation: fast its domination? In one way or however, help me find my way multitask in a fast-paced envi- In the Middle of Nowhere Together another, bare sovereignty [...] fashion companies like Zara presupposes that one take a cer- to it.”212 ronment, the ability to not only tain distance from the politi- print the phrase ‘Feminism!’ co-philosophical order and from wear many hats, but to wear on sweatshirts while paying the realm of “political philoso- them all at once. No leisure, phy.” This distance is not taken the women who work to make in order to engage in a depolit- BUYING TIME IN THE just labor, latte capitalism,213 icized thinking, but in order to them in notoriously unsafe engage in a thinking, the site of MIDDLE OF NOWHERE and for some curators, like sweatshop conditions dying which is the very constitution, Where are we when we think? Obrist whose favorite word is imagination, and signification rather than living wages, mega of the political, which allows The elasticity of temporality is ‘urgent,’ barely any sleep. The this thinking to retrace its path corporations like media giant in its retreat and beginning psychological, not something sentiment that there is simply from this retreat.211 Google tick boxes for diversity sensed like touch, taste, sight too much to be done rings like and attempt to hire people of If the Web has already or hearing, but rather it is an alarm you can’t hit snooze color to save themselves from enabled the convergence of perceived, and varies between on. If this was already the case discrimination lawsuits, while individuals within communities individuals. The privatization prior to the invention of the on International Women’s Day on many, but not all, points of time in economic systems Internet, considering that in McDonald’s flips its signature of the spectrum of political however, imposes the sequen- 1937 Time magazine published golden arches upside down to ideology from extreme right tial stacking of Newtonian Pep-Pill Poisoning, an article show solidarity with women to extreme left, as well as time on a spinning clock that that condemned the American without raising the wages of entirely contrived identities measures physical, or public, obsession with speed both 214 the single mothers it employs. like ‘Caroline,’ the persona time in terms of accumulated literally and figuratively, the This is not to say that identity crafted by Ann Hirsch for an currency; salaries defined feeling has only been exac- politics should be wholly elim- eighteen month long Youtube by working hours, vacation erbated to an unsustainable inated, but rather that it needs performance in 2008, what is periods scheduled according extreme as technological to take into account the larger left to be done if we are to be to calendar columns and rows, advancements have acceler- On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere framework and structures of together by means of using the alarms sounding at intervals ated the rates of production the existing political economy, tools which have been gifted so we don’t oversleep the and expectation but have otherwise it risks enabling to us by corporate entities? It morning meeting. Wasted time not shortened the working the same right-wing politics is essential that one does not may equate to wasted money, day. The American dream is which are built on national- lose sight of the fact that poli- but it also establishes both as unnatural, simulated, overly ism, militarism, and dogmatic tics is based on being-with, on forms of currency. In the age stimulated, and its natives fundamentalism. being together, and on sharing, of accelerated time in Western continue to march onto distant Nancy writes which occur dialogically but culture, the distinction be- shores planting symbolic flags

[...]one could begin to without imposition through the tween time for leisure and time of wavering proficiency. describe the present transfor- for labor, particularly pertain- As Raqs Media Col- mation of “political space” as acts of caretaking, writing, or a transition toward “empire,” ing to freelance positions in lective laments, “We are rest- where empire signifies two artistic expression. “In each things: (i) domination with- case it calls us forth, to recog- creative fields, is endangered less, exhausted through the out sovereignty (without the elaboration of such a concept); nize being-with, to be open to if not already extinct. Job operation of the worst, most and (2) the distancing, spacing, descriptions seek efficiency damaging technique available and plurality opposed to the being-with, to hold signification concentration of interiority open. [...] Nobody can make and productivity, the skills to to torturers: sleep deprivation. required by political sover- eignty. [...] How is one to think me have this ethos. They can, the spacing of empire against 212 Matthew Anderson, Martin Heidegger and Jean-Luc Nancy on Community, PhD diss., Uni- versity of Ottawa, 2010, 78. 213 See for example www.visualcapitalist.com/latte-index-currencies/. 89 88 211 Nancy, (2000): 36-37. 214 Take Your Pills, dir. Alison Klayman, March 9, 2018. INFINITE INFINITE Graphic reproduced from Hannah Arendt’s 1977 book The Life of the Mind. FUTURE

THOUGHT-TRAIN

THE PRESENT

INFINITE PAST

91 90 We could all do with a ‘sleep not yet appeared. Reflection same, but that is not to say to be relied on to find out In the Middle of Nowhere Together draws these absent “regions” their meaning, to assume the in’ on the long night shifts. It into the mind’s presence; from they are dissimilar. position of “umpire,” of arbiter that perspective the activity of and judge over the manifold, appears as if there has been thinking can be understood as a To say that we as a never-ending affairs of human a generalized forgetting of the fight against time itself.216 society have stopped thinking existence in the world, never arriving at a final solution to arts and sciences of dreaming, both undermines and para- their riddles but ready with ev- For Nancy and 215 er-new answers to the question especially lucid dreaming.” lyzes humanity, but certainly, 220 Arendt, thinking becomes the of what it may be all about. Antagonizing the war between the way that thinking in the site of resistance; thinking al- past and future, news outlets attention economy is prac- Arendt finds within lows us to buy some time, not and social media platforms ticed has changed.218 A bu- temporality and the quotidi- in the middle of nowhere, but have opened fire with an limic appetite for distraction an act of thinking the site of in the middle of now, here. En- unlimited ammunition of nows, and a diet that consists solely resistance, but this is far more gaged thinking brings neither forcing users to pick sides and of nows is hardly enough than the neoliberal notion of a sense of false consolation of abandon the struggles of the to sustain a life, let alone a self-care that is already fed escape, as accelerationism or present so that they might, at struggle. Thinking, like writ- back to us in the form of mind- artificial intelligence attempt the very least, get some shut ing, or love for Nancy, calls ful apps like Vent, where you to, it avoids the immobilizing eye. In , one closer to recognizing the can express your feelings with The Life of the Mind extremes of either optimism Arendt comforts, and writes significance of being-with; it “those who care” on a sliding or pessimism, but results in a entails letting ourselves be scale of emotion, or Coffitivity That we can shape the realization that what happens everlasting stream of sheer opened to difference, to resist that creates soundtracks of change into a time continuum now does matter, that the we owe not to time itself but to exclusion and violence, and environments like “Univer- the continuity of our business future, as Rebecca Solnit the rigid formation of identity sity Undertones” or “Texas and our activities in the world, reminds in a recent Guardian in which we continue what we if we realize that our very own Teahouse” to be used as back- started yesterday and hope to article, Protest and Persist: Why finish tomorrow. In other words, is constructed by its relation ground noise while you work the time continuum depends on Giving Up Hope is Not An Op-

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere 219 (or maybe just feel lonely), or the continuity of our every- 217 to others. day life, and the business of tion, remains unwritten. No Viridi that simulates taking everyday life, in contrast to matter if plans and programs the activity of the thinking Arendt continues, care of growing plants in real ego—always independent of the have been written in anticipa- spatial circumstances sur- time, or Offtime which lets you tion and advance, no matter This diagonal, though rounding it—is always spatially pointing to some infinity, is control your digital self without determined and conditioned. that Siri schedules our weekly limited, enclosed, as it were, It is due to this thoroughgoing by the forces of past and future, the feeling of missing out and spatiality of our ordinary life ‘me-time’ every Tuesday and thus protected against the which boasts having already that we can speak plausibly void; it remains bound to and of time in spatial categories, evening, no matter that time is rooted in the present—an en- created more than 750 years of that the past can appear to us marches twice daily over the tirely human present though it as something lying “behind” us is fully actualized only in the undistracted time– and is still and the future as lying “ahead.” same spot on the clock irre- thinking process and lasts no [...] The gap between past and longer than this process lasts. creating more than 525,600 future opens only in reflec- spective to that which occurs It is the quiet of the Now in 221 tion, whose subject matter is minutes each day. This kind outside of its defining digits— the time-pressed, time-tossed what is absent—either what has existence of man [...] we find of thinking instead requires an already disappeared or what has no two moments are ever the our place in time when we think, that is, when we are sufficient- understanding of what has ne- ly removed from past and future 215 Raqs Media Collective, “Is the World Sleeping, Sleepless, or Awake or cessitated such mindfulness in Dreaming?” e-flux, June 2014, accessed March 23, 2018, http://www.e-flux.com/ journal/56/60349/is-the-world-sleeping-sleepless-or-awake-or-dreaming/. 218 See for example www.idlescreenings.com. 216 Arendt, 205-206. 219 Jean-Luc Nancy and Peter Connor, The Inoperative Community (Minneapolis, MN: 217 Rebecca Solnit, “Protest and Persist: Why Giving Up Hope is Not an Op- University of Minnesota Press, 2012). tion,” The Guardian, March 13, 2017, accessed March 14, 2018, https://www. 220 Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind (San Diego, CA: Harcourt Inc., 1977), 205- theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/13/protest-persist-hope-trump-activism-an- 206. 93 92 ti-nuclear-movement. 221 See www.offtime.co. the first place—it is, not unlike time, is ceaselessly rerun, critique it. And to critique it is In the Middle of Nowhere Together the early ARPANET, resilient. re-commenced, reformed, to wish for and work toward Applying Belgian philosopher deformed and transformed by change, transformation, Isabelle Stengers’ plea for the individuals who retempo- revolution in the very nature of “slow science” to the field of ralise it,224 the everyday action advanced capital society.”226 arts and culture in her article of engaged thinking can thus The opportunity to recreate our For Slow Institutions, Nataša Pe- result in a more true sense of professional spaces is as it has trešin-Bachelez notes that re- sharing. Thinking becomes the always been: now. silient thinking “focuses on the site of critique wherein individ- As more and more diversity of practical solutions uals can formulate questions users spend more and more for a specific locality, and on and propel action, not in the of their time online, for most the cooperation and creativity sense of reactionary short term Americans the total exceed- of everyone involved in a com- solutions, but rather actions ing ten hours a day, while munity or society. [It] looks at that can endure with collective attention span decreases, and the critical and dystopian near support. As Aruna D’Souza content, rather than knowl- future; unable to anticipate or writes of the #MeToo move- edge colonizes and circulates postpone it, it can only react ment shortcomings, “here, at spasmodically in the form 30 by adapting to it.”222 the beginning of this moment second video clips, GIFS,227 Industrialization, of heightened recognition, the and 1000 character articles, urbanization and the techni- artworld has the opportunity to what can true sharing actually sation of life have created and stop operating purely reactive- come to look like? How might perpetuated the seemingly ly, and instead imagine new smaller institutions, those insignificant notion of the every ways of being and doing, in without grandiose amounts of

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere day, “when everything—mon- order to recreate our profes- funding, utilize the currency of ey, work hours, miles, calories, sional spaces.”225 In her writing time in praxis? How can the minutes—became calculated on Henri Lefebvre’s notion of professionalized position of and calculable, and when the quotidian, Kristen Ross care, that of the curator who objects, people and the rela- reminds that “[...] to formulate acts like a link, utilize the same tions between them changed the quotidian as a concept, digital technologies and types under the onslaught of such to wrench it from the contin- of platforms toward different quantification.”223 As Bernard uum in this it is embedded (or goals and perhaps unlink us Stiegler writes in Relational better yet, the continuum that from what necessitated such Ecology and the Digital Phar- it is), to expose it, examine it, resistance to begin with? makon, “the support of social give it a history, is already to

222 Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, “For Slow Institutions,” October 2017, ac- cessed March 24, 2018, http://www.e-flux.com/journal/85/155520/for-slow-in- stitutions/. 223 Kristin Ross, “French Quotidian,” in The Art of the Everyday: The Quotidian in Postwar French Culture, ed. Lynn Gumpert (New York, NY: New York Uni. Press, 1997), 21. 224 Bernard Steigler, “Relational Ecology and the Digital Pharmakon,” Culture Machine 13 (2013): 3-4, www.culturemachine.net. 225 Aruna D’Souza, “Worst-Case Scenarios: Contemporary Art’s #Metoo Hand- 226 Kristin Ross, “French Quotidian,” in The Art of the Everyday: The Quotidian in Postwar wringing,” Momus, March 22, 2018, accessed March 26, 2018, http://momus.ca/ French Culture, ed. Lynn Gumpert (New York, NY: New York Uni. Press, 1997), 19-20. 95 94 worst-case-scenarios-contemporary-arts-metoo-handwringing/. 227 See for example www.ani-gif.com. NSA-Tapped Undersea Cables, North Pacifi c Ocean, 2016 Photograph by Trevor Paglen.

97 96 Slowing Down the Internet Slowing Down the Internet Slowing Down the Internet Slowing Down the Internet Slowing Down the Internet Slowing Down the Internet Slowing Down the Internet Slowing Down the Internet Slowing Down the Internet Slowing Down the Internet Slowing Down the Internet Slowing Down the Internet Slowing Down the Internet Slowing Down the Internet Slowing Down the Internet 4 Slowing Down the Internet Slowing Down the Internet Slowing Down the Internet Slowing Down the Internet Slowing Down the Internet Slowing Down the Internet Slowing Down the Internet Slowing Down the Internet Slowing Down the Internet Slowing Down the Internet Slowing Down the Internet Slowing Down the Internet SUCCESS (IN PROGRESS) analysing success through the tunities, and the programming cal empathy, and tolerance.232 Slowing Down the Internet Isn’t it odd that mu- lenses of attendance, revenue of content. But is this infor- According to several accred- seums–one of society’s princi- pal institutions dedicated to and review are certainly not mation made available to the ited museum “Core Mission” culture–do not measure their enough to qualify the effects public which provided it? statements, most museums success or impacts in cultural terms? Attendance, revenue, of reception on communities, While some mu- strive to serve the public objects accessioned, exhib- its mounted, and publications it is virtually impossible to seums, the ICA in Boston through several means which published are some of the measures that museums use to assess the impact of cultural for example, do make this include but are not limited to assess their operations. But, it institutions without the use of information available in either the collecting, preserving, re- can be argued, none of these are cultural indicators. They do not tangible measurements, name- dedicated publications for searching and interpreting of reflect on the cultural needs, opportunities, or well-being ly numbers and statistical data. visitors at their localities or as objects, living specimens and of the community. Nor do they In 2004, Maxwell L. Anderson a download friendly PDF on historical records, providing offer insights into the cultural impacts of museum operations published Metrics of Success their websites, this aggre- many social services, lan- on individuals. What these mea- sures do offer is some insight in Art Museums, an article in gate fiscal data is also often guage, job training programs, into the activity of museums as institutions–as nonprofit, which he intended to delineate compiled and translated into and programs that cater corporate entities.228 tangible methods that can be colorful infographics later to low-income families and

used to consider a museum’s published by a number of veterans.233 While museums An understanding “success” internally.230 Within art world publications that and major cultural institutions of the way that success is the confines of the 20 page ar- break down annual spending have certainly been the sites currently quantified by existing ticle, Anderson expands upon and chart trends throughout of educational initiatives, institutions that claim to seek each section with proposed a specific period.231 These community programs, and social and political change can methods for respective quan- cheery infographics are very particular expressions of reveal how a different set of tification through the use of simply visualizations of data, historical narratives, it is far priorities might better serve the surveys, ranking, demograph- and are posited as methods too often that they function as same goal. Museums, galleries, On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere ics, and of course, numerical for advancing institutional spaces for capital exchange or other art institutions, despite data. These methods can agendas in a gesture akin rather than cultural or com- their abundance of glass doors then be used to translate the to pseudo-sharing, made munity exchange—accepting and skylights, are upheld by attendance and participation public to attract both private corporate sponsorships is bricks of bureaucracy and of the audience, often unbe- and public sponsorships, to standard practice, exhibit- cemented in place by capitalist knownst to them, into infor- justify spending habits as ing only that which will draw driven markers of success, yet mation-as-knowledge deemed they pertain to economic and crowds (sales) the norm, in Measuring Museum Impact and necessary for the advance- professional growth, and to and diluting controversy to Performance: Theory and Prac- ment of the institution rather assert their improvement of preserve the guise of sophis- tice, John Jacobsen admits: than the public. The resulting critical thinking skills, histori- tication, are the museum PR “The field still lacks an accept- data is used internally to inform ed way to measure impact.”229 future planning, expansions or While traditional modes of closures, employment oppor-

228 Douglas Worts, “Measuring Museum Meaning: A Critical Assessment Frame- work,” Journal of Museum Education 31, no. 1 (2006). 231 “Art Museums By the Numbers 2016,” Association of Art Museum Directors, 229 Dan Weiss, “What Makes a Museum Successful?” Yale Insights, August January 9, 2017, accessed January 27, 2018, https://aamd.org/our-members/ 3, 2016, accessed January 27, 2018, https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/ from-the-field/art-museums-by-the-numbers-2016. what-makes-museum-successful. 232 “Museum Facts,” American Alliance of Museums, 2013, accessed January 27, 230 Maxwell L. Anderson, Metrics of Success in Art Museums (The Getty Leadership In- 2018, http://www.aam-us.org/about-museums/museum-facts. 101 100 stitute, J. Paul Getty Trust, 2004). 233 Ibid. Slowing Down the Internet team’s daily struggle.234 general lack of diversity in the María Inés Rodríguez of the when to practice parrhesia is

In the museum-as-fac- arts as it pertains to represen- Musée d’Art Contemporain to speak honestly from a visible tory, something continues to tation. de Bordeaux, for their brazen vulnerability, from below, and be produced. Installation, planning, carpentry, viewing, With so many employ- attempts to politicize narra- thus bring forth a sort of radical discussing, maintenance, betting on rising values, and networking ees, questionable funding from tives. Instead, the museum has and meaningful care of the self alternate in cycles. An art space 239 is a factory, which is simulta- both public and private sourc- becomes a selfie factory that with others? Those who have neously a supermarket—a casino es which are often kept private, invites you to do their social turned to the Web to exhibit or and a place of worship whose reproductive work is performed it is no surprise that museums media marketing for them.238 publish are certainly faced with by cleaning ladies and cell- phone-video bloggers alike.235 are often compared to corpo- Museums celebrate their own sets of problems, as rations, wherein accountability their success to the tune of a Harun Farocki explored in his Here in the muse- is dispersed across so many Spotify playlist on repeat as 2009 series Serious Games, the um-as-factory, exhibitions are actors that any blame might audiences are exposed time online is also a battlefield. It is like canned products stacking never reach the right ears, and time again to the things not without its own set of regu- on supermarket shelves, neatly let alone be addressed. The they have already expressed lations concerning limitations,240 stored, preserved, hermetically question “Who cares?” re- interest in based on the options content,241 productivity,242 sealed to avoid rot, leakage, sounds here in different tone offered, and often without being accessibility,243 and accountabil- or tampering—evidence rather like that of a war cry in the presented the opportunity for an ity.244 In response, many working than artwork, storage rather museum-cum-battlefield.236 In alternative approach; anything online have chosen to base than exhibition. Culture is exchange for attendance and else it seems is too expensive their strategies of resistance kept secret, or kept safe, from ticket sales revenue, visitors to risk. The transmission of on the ideas of transparency, culture itself. Recently, two can come to expect a return on information in this institutional critique,245 and concern246 in an new white curators have been investment, but much like an context resembles that of Web attempt to address and embody hired by the Brooklyn Muse- algorithm which can only work 1.0; static, proprietary and the qualities they feel serve a

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere um to oversee the African Art with pre-existing data rather delivered from the top down, a middle rather than a side. and Photography department, than invent it, these methods position that claims to serve the Curatorial and artistic and in response, Assistant of measurement contribute public from above, rather than research, now more easily Professor of History of Art to reproduction of much of from within. How can one claim conducted through the use of at Cornell University, Anan- the same, and often penalize to approach a truth from above social media platforms, net- da Cohen-Aponte, started a those who push against those Twitter thread (#POCarthistory) limits,237 like Olga Viso of the not to disparage their visible Walker Art Center, Helen 238 Arielle Pardes, “The Rise of the Made-for-Instagram Museum,” Wired, qualifications, but to highlight a September 27, 2017, accessed March 24, 2018, https://www.wired.com/story/ Molesworth of LA MOCA, and selfie-factories-instagram-museum/. 239 Foucault, “The Meaning and Evolution of the Word Parrhesia,” 2017. 234 For example, The Frick Collection in New York is the gift of a man who 240 See for example the “New New Wight Gallery” www.dma.ucla.edu/exhibi- ordered his security guards to shoot on strikers; Brown University in Rhode tions/newnewwight/thegalleryisnaked. Island was founded by a man who made his money in the slave trade; the Rhodes 241 See for example www.oneacre.online. scholarships bear the name of an imperialist; TATE London and the National 242 See for example www.raum.pt. Portrait Gallery accept funding from the major oil corporation BP; Boeing 243 See for example www.fluidity.online. sponsored the Afghanistan Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum. 244 Aint-Bad Magazine, an online and offline independent publisher, recently 235 Hito Steyerl, “Is a Museum a Factory?,” in The Wretched of the Screen (Sternberg issued a public acknowledgement of their involvement in perpetuating the Press, 2012) 35. conditions of gender-inequality that they seek to address alongside an apol- 236 See Hito Steyerl’s 2012 video lecture Is the Museum a Battlefield, which was first ogy, a refund to all those who entered their latest Open Call, and have post- shown at 13th Istanbul Biennial. poned their following issue in order to best assess how they might progress, 237 Christopher Knight, “MOCA Fires Its Chief Curator,” Los Angeles Times, if at all. March 13, 2018, accessed March 14, 2018, http://www.latimes.com/entertain- 245 See for example www.bodyanxiety.com. 103 102 ment/arts/la-et-cm-moca-fires-molesworth-vergne-20180313-story.html. 246 See for example www.feltzine.us. working sites, e-mail exchang- by organizations whose power of rapturous applause.252 nor a reversion to dial-up, nor Slowing Down the Internet es and long distance calls,247 predated the pre-Internet does it require deleting social How to avoid con- can be used to replicate or era, meaning that the oppo- applications (using a VPN, Tor temporary art heartbreak? reinforce existing conditions, site was true: the hegemony browser, turning off your Lo- Only fools rush in. The clock of i.e. more of the same, but can had simply extended across cation Services and disabling industrial capitalism continues also provoke necessary con- technologies.250 The success Platform in your Facebook to quantify time down to the versations about the politics of monopolies is, at one level, settings however is not a bad tick, the ticks now multiplied of inclusivity and visibility of because of the weakness of idea), instead the phrase re- and visually represented in Ap- marginalized histories within their opponents, and while it is flects the endangered potential ple’s World Clock application, institutional walls. While in a challenge to both withstand of the increasingly ubiquitous but time in the information age no way providing a complete and compete with prevailing technology to communicate, of the networked world flows. replacement for human inter- methods of information dis- to share and to foster deeper Although I have frequently action, digital technology has semination and easy to digest connections across networks referred to notions of speed certainly strengthened and en- viral content, it is nonetheless of ideas and people. and acceleration when speak- abled contact and connection a worthwhile fight when con- Slow curating, as ing about digital technologies across geographic locations sidering the snowball effect of Megan Johnson has de- and exhibition practices, in in ways that were previously local or smaller movements.251 scribed, “includes a meaning- the case of ‘slowing down the unthinkable.248 Although the In- ful and deep understanding Internet,’ slowness is not the ternet has energized activism, of one’s immediate context, inverse of acceleration as it still often called click-tivism, “the RETHINKING working with local experts too implies progress—it does context of political disaffection, SUCCESS AS SLOWNESS to learn the cultural politics, not refer to the speed at which increasing political manipu- the poetics of place, and to Contemporary art thus digital content is received or lation at the centre, an unac- not only reflects, but actively investigate issues conscious intervenes in the transition disseminated and requires On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere countable global order and the toward a new post Cold War and unconscious that affect world order. It is a major clarification. Rather than a weakening of electoral power, everyday lives.”254 The turn player in unevenly advancing rate, slowness is a method, the internet has not revitalized semiocapitalism wherever to durational approaches in T-Mobile plants its flag. It is and it can be understood as a democracy.”249 In 2011, the involved in mining for raw ma- artistic or curatorial practice terials for dual-core proces- curatorial gesture that “inten- Pew Research Center for the sors. It pollutes, gentrifies, which extend the period of tionally and directly connects People and the Press found and ravishes. It seduces and being together, does not consumes, then suddenly walks to context and specifically that 80% of Internet traffic to off, breaking your heart. From come as a singular solution the deserts of Mongolia to the notions of the local, employs news and information sites high plains of Peru, contem- to address the contradic- porary art is everywhere. And relational and collaborative was concentrated at the top tions in the reception of art when it is finally dragged into processes, and reaches out of 7% of sites, a majority of Gagosian dripping from head as an exclusive event as the to toe with blood and dirt, it to diverse communities.”253 which (67%) were controlled triggers off rounds and rounds significance of duration does Here, ‘slow down the Internet,’ not lie “in a single extend- 247 See for example www.domain-gallery.net. does not call for an intentional ed project, but rather in the 248 See for example www.timesupnow.com. tangling of submarine cables, 249 Curran, Fenton, and Freedman, 17. 250 Russell Heimlich, “Internet Gains on Television as Public’s Main News Source,” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, January 04, 2011, 252 Hito Steyerl, “Politics of Art: Contemporary Art and the Transition to accessed February 12, 2018, http://www.people-press.org/2011/01/04/internet- Post-Democracy,” in The Wretched of the Screen (Sternberg Press, 2012). gains-on-television-as-publics-main-news-source/. 253 Megan Johnston, “Slow Curating: Re-thinking and Extending Socially En- 251 See for example www.seeclickfix.com, www.sunlightfoundation.com, www. gaged Art in the Context of Northern Ireland,” On Curating: After the turn: art education opensecrets.org, www.change.org, and the use of hashtags such as #Ferguson, beyond the museum, no. 24 (December 2014): 26. 105 104 #WakeupAkhilesh, or #MeToo. 254 Ibid. relationship between projects tural demands of the market, The Artist’s Institute, suggests immediately excludes entire Slowing Down the Internet in place across time.”255 When and eventually must, to some where we might begin to speed populations of potential digital slowness is used as a meth- extent, concede to survive. toward instead citizens. As Raluca Voinea, di-

od in curatorial practice, a From the 1960s, Might we pay attention rector of Tranzit.ro, a network multiplicity of interrelations is durational approaches in to the structural inequalities of independent contemporary that persist for women artists, both made and subsequently artistic and curatorial prac- artists of colour and artists art initiatives operating in without financial means? If opened to the possibility of tice, as in the works of John that’s a priority, then curating Austria, Czech Republic, Hun- won’t necessarily consist of pay- being re-made, both in terms Cage, Tehching Hsieh, Marina ing attention to the latest name gary, Slovakia, and Romania, of materiality and spatiality Abramović, Santiago Sierra whizzing through the existing stated of the organization’s circuits of value production. and through temporality. and Tino Sehgal, have sought Might we pay attention to the approach, “organic processes, precarious conditions that often Online, where digital media is to intervene in industrial accompany making art, thought- learning from doing, recycling quickly consumed, accessed capitalism’s disciplined and ful criticism and experimental and adapting from one project exhibitions? If that’s a priority alongside other browsers or regimented imposition of time then, as institutions, we must to the next, developing long- justly, even generously, compen- tabs, and vying for attention by ‘wasting’ it, extending it, sate the artists and thinkers we term relationships, learning to work with and serve.257 with a users more immediate exposing it and laying it bare. be patient and to appreciate surroundings, enacting such Rather than as a line or like the While museums and long durations, seeing a space a sense of slowness certainly Snake that avoids its elongated institutions continue to expand grow in time, together with poses a challenge, and has tail, as Adrian Heathfield notes, their physical forms, they do so a community, enlarging this hence spurred a pedagogic such “durational aesthetics while simultaneously forget- community by expanding the turn in artistic and curatorial give access to other temporal- ting to expand the variety of fields of knowledge rather than practice that seeks a target ities: to times that will not sub- histories, narratives, and per- forcing everyone to embrace for the unpaid and misguided mit to Western culture’s linear, spectives of those outside their the same models–these are 258 attention we should be pay- progressive meta- narratives, walls. As square footage pric- things that are working.” On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere ing. Socially based projects its orders of commodification; ing rises worldwide and is in- This approach to slowness still that sustain commitment have to the times of excluded or creasingly privatized, websites builds, it allows institutions been expressed in alternative marginalized identities and and independently designed to grow, to develop, it is still approaches to education, lives; to times as they are felt apps and platforms remain a productive, but it does so with legislation, or markets, such in diverse bodies. Time, then, comparatively more affordable, respect to those that comprise as in Jakob Jakobsen and as plenitude: heterogeneous, cost-effective and accessible its community; rather than 256 Henrietta Heise’s Copenha- informal, and multi-faceted.” space which may not function the hierarchical stacking of a gen Free University, Pablo While artists have long ex- to solve, undo, or otherwise new building development, it Helguera’s The School of plored engagement as a medi- patch omissions within institu- spreads organically, still with a Panamerican Unrest, or Rirkrit um, what about curatorial and tional narratives, but do build center as it cannot avoid struc- Tiravanija’s Untitled (Free/ exhibition practices that seem networks of support and soli- ture, but its peripheries are just Still), in an effort to resist the to do the inverse and continue darity amongst those who find as valuable as the middle. consumable moment, but to speed through the pre- community within them without these projects and others are planned calendar year? Jenny necessitating a premium which not impervious to the struc- Jaskey, director and curator of

255 Paul O’Neill and Claire Doherty, eds., Locating the Producers: Durational Approaches 257 Anthony Huberman, “Pay Attention,” Frieze, June 1, 2015, accessed Febru- to Public Art (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2011), 11. ary 20, 2018, https://frieze.com/article/pay-attention. 256 Adrian Heathfield and Tehching Hsieh, Out of Now: The Lifeworks of Tehching Hsieh 258 Adriana Ledecouvreur, “Tranzit.ro,” Temporary Art Review, April 06, 2017, 107 106 (London: Live Art Development Agency and The MIT Press, 2009), 23. accessed March 22, 2018, http://temporaryartreview.com/tranzit-ro/. CASE STUDIES: linear presentations of infor- TRIPLE CANOPY sustenance. It is no secret that Slowing Down the Internet As I explore in the following mation are unfit for the inherent every Web user is being sur- three case studies, while no subjectivity of any chronicaled veilled, their data ceaselessly one method can be used to or documented narrative of the ON TRANSPARENCY mined and collected across exemplify curatorial strategies past. I have chosen to look at It is important to note that prior platforms, processed by ana- that embody slowness, a com- these specific examples in or- to the publishing practices lytical software, subsequently bination of approaches have der to explore the diversity of popularised on the Internet, sold, and converted into been used by these institu- ways in which exhibiting takes artists or authors were often targeted advertising content.261 tions to address the notion of shape online, and how the cu- known locally before they How can, or should, this mass quantifying such parameters of ratorial act of caretaking has could gain global notoriety. amount of data be utilized in success itself in order to offer been contextualised according Online however, the reverse the context of contemporary a more engaged experience to to intention, community, and is the standard and virtual art exhibited online? For their citizens, not users. Addressing medium. These particular in- content begins in a state of exhibition Black Transparency - distinct aspects of slow curat- stitutions, while they are also general global accessibility The Right To Know In The Age Of ing, projects like Triple Canopy, subject to economic demands and returns to local contextu- Mass Surveillance, Amsterdam dis.art, and Monoskop have in the way that aforementioned alization.259 Groys’ In the Flow based research and design used the Web as a platform large scale museums are, have reminds that “to be able to collective Metahaven noted for artistic, curatorial, and ex- been selected as my focal survive in the contemporary that the “visualisation of ‘trans- hibition making practice and points because of their con- culture one also has to draw parency’ also raises questions research in distinct ways; on- sidered approaches to a more the attention of the local, about identity, representation, line publisher Triple Canopy authentic notion of sharing that offline audience to one’s global and the role of the design addresses critical thinking in are ultimately remunerative, but exposure—to become not discipline(s) itself. The Internet the digital world, particularly are not intrinsically pecuniary. I only globally present but also as a superstructure of creation,

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere the ways in which literature and have chosen to look at the work locally familiar.” 260 Creative transmission, and imitation, multimedia artwork are con- done by Triple Canopy, dis.art, expression is often perceived means designers are not only sumed. dis.art, a new moving and Monoskop to see how they as an individual experience, capable of creating a message image platform, attempts to have attempted to rethink dig- practised in a time of seclusion but also play an important dispel the notion that the media ital technology’s potential for and away from the gaze of role in catalysing political and most frequently accessed or connection, despite the relent- others, but online, the algorith- social change.”262 Exhibiting viral digital content like videos less socio-economic stipula- mic stare is in a state of ever or publishing on the Web, by and humorous images in the tions, unrealistic professional and over-gazing, and digital virtue of exhibiting itself as forms of memes and GIFS need expectations that surround the artwork or published material exposing to view, implies a to be not only quick but shallow fields of art and cultural pro- is no longer fixed but in flux; degree of transparency in the in order to survive the forces of duction, and the impediments the process itself becomes a sense of accessibility. Prior circulation, and Monoskop, a inherent in utilizing the Web not only a documentation of to addressing another aspect digital library for arts and hu- as a platform for distribution. the artwork, but its source of of transparency, visibility, I manities, does not produce or 259 Boris Groys, In the Flow (London, UK: Verso, 2016), 179. commission new content, but 260 Ibid, 178. categorically organizes histori- 261 Taylor, 31-32. 262 Metahaven, Black Transparency-The Right To Know In The Age Of Mass Surveillance, Bureau cal material online in a way that Europa, March 2013, accessed March 13, 2018, https://www.bureau-europa.nl/ addresses the ways in which en/manifestations/black_transparency_the_right_to_know_in_the_age_of_ 109 108 mass_surveillance/. Slowing Down the Internet propose to first approach site, and how they navigate CSS and HTML code. Few Transparency as a transparency in the sense of through my content, orga- sites on the Web readily re- principle, when making such exposing the inner workings nized across several pages, lease this information publicly information not only publicly of digital technology and its before they eventually close perhaps because a jumble of available but publicly interpret- systems of control, and how the tab. Squarespace claims numbers might be considered ed, can lead to accountability the articulation of this infor- that “While metrics are critical uninteresting to the aver- on the side of the publisher mation can be more explicitly for tracking and testing the age user, deter engagement and can serve to foster greater communicated as a publishers performance of our business, because of the reminder of levels of trust between insti- subjective position. they are merely a reflection ever present surveillance, and tutions and individuals, which Backend developers, of our ideas and execution in because it is simply uncouth in turn impact the results of Web designers, and curators the market. Our values and in terms of presentation as collaborations.266 of digital exhibition spac- ideals are our decision making minimalist Web design is the es have access to the Web guide.”263 If I were to rely only current prevailing trend.264 analytics and statistics of on the information provided The numbers remain their sites or platforms when by such analytical data, which numbers, until they become CANOPYCANOPYCANOPY logging into their administra- reduces my site visitors into meaning. That meaning, I Triple Canopy is a nonprofit tion pages. Logging in to my their respective IP address- argue, to follow Nancy’s 501(c)(3) organization mani- own domain, which is hosted es, I would fall into the same understanding, comes from fested as an online magazine by Squarespace, I can toggle pseudo-sharing trap of the engaging with the data from that was launched in 2007 through to the “Analytics” museum who interprets their an informed critical distance, and which is currently based page to reveal my “stats,” success only through atten- distinguishing data from in New York with satellites which are represented in dance and ticket sale revenue, knowledge. In order to begin to in Berlin and Los Angeles. minimally designed graphs and responds accordingly approach a genuine democra- It fittinginly appropriates its

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere and charts. Squarespace to attract more of the same. tisation, as Luke Goode notes, name from Triple Canopy Inc., shows me who (each unique This collected data speaks It would be danger- the security contractor working IP address) is viewing my site, to particular aspects of my ous to overlook those agencies with federal governments in which, whilst not accruing any where (highlighting geograph- site audience, but it does direct political power, never- Iraq and Afghanistan founded theless influence the political ic pinpoints on a world map) not reveal anything about an process. Whatever ‘public inter- by US Army Special Forces est’ credentials accrue, for ex- they are viewing it from, on individual’s reasons for nav- ample, to a media institution or in 2003, “presumably to profit what device (mobile, desktop, igating my exhibited content campaign group, such organisa- from the free-market outsourc- tions cannot legitimately stand or tablet), how they arrived in a manner that is distinctly aloof from the obligations of ing of the Bush-Cheney critical publicity. In other 267 (directly, or through Google, their own. Such statistics are words, institutions that claim administration.” Officially, Instagram, Facebook, Other), thus not the penultimate mode to be institutions of the public the magazine is CanopyCano- sphere must, themselves, be the browser they are using for understanding cultural or opened up to the critical scru- pyCanopy Inc., already alluding tiny of a wider public sphere.265 (Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, communal impact; the data to their interest in the power of etc.) the operating system on collected by hosts and server their device (Android, Win- sites is also kept hidden from 264 See for example www.brutalistwebsites.com. 265 Luke Goode, Jürgen Habermas: Democracy and the Public Sphere (London: Pluto Press, dows, iOS, or OS X), it even viewers, often relinquished 2005), 26. shows me the exact time and to a back-end cellar crowded 266 Michael Johnston, publication, Department of Political Science, Colgate University, 2016, accessed March 10, 2018, http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/ date each user accesses my with rows and rows of custom groups/public/documents/un/unpan0. 267 Alexander Provan, ed., The Binder and the Server (New York, NY: Canopy Canopy 111 110 263 See www.squarespace.com. Canopy, 2012), 10. Slowing Down the Internet repetition. With strategic Web or multitasking that have been Working closely with artists, positions ultimately as readers. development skills they have normalized in such environ- writers, technologists, and de- In the case of Triple advanced a model for online ments.268 However, while linear signers, Triple Canopy aims to Canopy, rather than simply publishing that encompasses reading might lend itself to produce projects that demand publish the raw data, their col- digital works of art and liter- narrative or fictional work, considered reading and view- lected information about their ature, public conversations, researchers have also argued ing.270 Their platform model readers is interpreted through exhibitions, and books. that such formats might not hinges on the development of the lenses and discourses of Triple Canopy’s be suitable for academic or digital publishing systems that many fields in the forms of transition from print to Web scientific texts. As Dutch incorporate networked forms their “Issues” and “Series” with begs the question, is paper is scholar Joost Kircz reminds of production and circulation respect to individual subjectiv- better than digital? Despite the “Not all information is linear or to achieve greater distribution, ity, and if possible, ultimately fact that decades have passed even layered. There’s a lot of all the while retaining many of made available beyond their since the digital revolution and information that’s spherical. the benefits afforded by print- webpage, often extending many schools have already You cannot stack it up. The ed matter such as the gestures into printed matter or as an implemented devices into question is to what extent can of page flipping and the ability embodied exhibition, lecture classroom settings, no major we mimic human understand- to bookmark. In an interview or seminar in physical space. research has proved a defin- ing?”269 Digital publishing sys- published by The New York- Their collection of “Series,” itive answer to the question, tems that incorporate video, er, they noted their desire to which gather contributions although some reports have images, and hypertextual or “collapse the old model of the based on a single theme or shown that when reading linked additional information print publishing industry, with topic, such as Universal Time, something more than 500 alongside their texts might thus its assembly-line approach and Passage of a Rumor, or Did You words or more than a page of better serve not only a plu- its walls between author, de- Get the L? compile the work of a book or screen, comprehen- rality of reading interests and signer, publisher, and distribu- artists, writers, and research-

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere sion will likely decrease when abilities, but might also enable tor.”271 Achieving this synthesis ers “who trace histories that using a digital device. Digital a greater level of engagement however, was no easy feat, are obscured, partially erased, mediums have influenced the with information. and was a process of trial or seemingly unassimilable” perception that the ease and Aware of these dis- and error, evolving through and bring to the foreground the speed of delivery of informa- crepancies in memory and in- their careful interpretation of forgotten, against the “au- tion through devices have formation retention across me- analytical and statistical data thoritative sources that speak increased understanding, but diums, Triple Canopy utilises collected from the users that of consequential institutions this remains an illusion due in the aesthetics and experience accessed their platform. Triple and figures,” and “whose part to the physical and mental of traditional print media—their Canopy sought to identify their consciousnesses are more demands for reading on a webpage and reading platform viewers not solely as numbers easily relatable to those with screen: the need for scrolling, mimics a classic book with its or IP addresses, and them- power.”272 Triple Canopy seeks the reflective glare, and the off white background and stark selves not only as producers, to recover lives that have been different levels of concentra- black text—in order to contex- but rather addressing both lost, and tell stories that have tion characterized by browsing tualize Web specific content.

270 “About,” Triple Canopy, accessed January 29, 2018, https://www.canopycan- 268 Joost Kircz and Adriaan Van Der Weel, The Unbound Book (Amsterdam: Amster- opycanopy.com/about. dam University Press, 2013). 271 Sasha Frere-Jones, “Triple Canopy: ‘Slowing Down the Internet’,” The New 269 Claudia Wallis, “A Textbook Dilemma: Digital or Paper?” The Hechinger Yorker, June 17, 2012, accessed March 26, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/ Report, August 23, 2017, accessed March 19, 2018, http://hechingerreport.org/ culture/culture-desk/triple-canopy-slowing-down-the-internet. 113 112 textbook-dilemma-digital-paper/. 272 See www.canopycanopycanopy.com/series/active-recollections. not, and perhaps cannot, be ongoing transitioning from approach to slowing down simply the message,278 but it Slowing Down the Internet told. Their series remain active offline to online and recount the Internet “it turns out, isn’t was the tedium.279 and open, and contributions to the problems inherent in an oppositional stance, but a each topic can be presented in analysing data and developing continually negotiated one.”275 their entirety, or otherwise al- new platforms for the distribu- This sustained inquiry is their TOWARD VISIBILITY tered over time with additional tion of their content. Creative marker of distinction; ex- David Joselitt, in his 2011 artworks or literature. As seen Director Caleb Waldorff and traordinarily chronicled with essay What to Do with Pic- in series such as Did You Get Senior Web Developer Adam a propensity for detail, Triple tures, conflates the networks the L?, The Page and the Screen, Florin created the original Canopy’s approach to trans- that support the images, or and Media Studies, a recurring platform which mimicked the parency is one to be heralded artworks that inhabit them theme of the collections is a gesture of turning pages in a for its deeply invested attempt with the human body, where- reflection on Triple Canopy’s book, a horizontal movement to make sense of the numbers in a failure of the circulatory transition from a traditional that pushed against the Web’s by contextualizing them both system leads to death; the print publication to an online vertical scrolling default. Upon online and off. TC is also a museum wherein artworks publisher through an assem- reviewing the ways in which part of Common Practice, an are contained might then be blage of writing and delibera- viewers navigated their content advocacy group that fosters more aptly renamed a cem- tions that attempt to, in their according to time spent on research and discussions etary. Museums are often own words, each page, browsers or devic- about the role of small-scale referred to as mausoleums,

rethink publication es used, etc., they addressed arts organizations in New York the final resting place for amidst the inevitable churn of numerous platform bugs and City, their main topics of focus histories or artworks that are novelty and anachronism that characterize the “digital age,” as malfunctions, and a standard being: “sustainability not at the destined to a dust collecting the distinction between experi- ence online and IRL narrows. [The protocol was subsequently expense of quality; long-term life in a wooden crate in a series “The Page and the Screen”] includes media excavations and enacted to ensure consisten- relationships with artists and poorly ventilated basement, On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere Web 1.0 reminiscences, soft- cy. In The Binder and the Server, publics; less compromised ac- rendered inaccessible to the ware experiments and samizdat scholarship, as well as polemi- Triple Canopy states “However cess to artwork; and horizontal general public. While many cal writings by the editors—on 276 writing after conceptual art, on much we wanted Triple Can- networks and collaboration.” institutions are moving toward syntaxes of verse and GIF, and on opy’s platform to counteract As another digital making the digitized versions publishing after the shift from disciplinary to tech-enabled the entrenched reading habits publication, the trend forecast- of their collections available to control societies.273 of the Internet, we also wanted ing K-hole, reminds in their the public, through programs They have published first-time users to understand first issue, a report on visibility, such as the Google Cultural a number of books, most intuitively how to engage “saying who you aren’t is just Institute which has created notably The Binder and the with our content,”274 noting as important as saying who 360° views of gallery interiors Server, articles, and interviews that for an online publication, you are.”277 The medium, for that allow for an ‘ultra experi- with the likes of The New unlike their spatially confined Triple Canopy, was not then ence’ of artworks that actually York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, printed counterparts, distribu-

Financial Times, BookForum, tion, production, and learning 275 Ibid, 27. and The Stranger, that chart together were continuous, and 276 See www.commonpracticeny.org. 277 Greg Fong et al., “K-Hole #1 FragMOREtation: A Report on Visibility,” their progress, pitfalls and still ongoing, processes. Their K-Hole, May 2011, accessed March 13, 2018, http://khole.net/. 278 The phrase was introduced in Marshall McLuhan’s book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, published in 1964. 273 See www.canopycanopycanopy.com/series/the_page_and_the_screen. 279 The 1978 song “The Medium Was Tedium” by the Desperate Bicycles, the 274 Alexander Provan, ed., The Binder and the Server (New York, NY: Canopy Canopy lyrics of which say “All I can say to you is this: it was easy/ it was cheap/ go 115 114 Canopy, 2012), 27. and do it!” surpasses bodily limitations,280 and the technology which in and around digital environ- discounts on printed publica- Slowing Down the Internet this can be a tedious process have been used in the process ments.”282 A major component tions, free entry to events, or a resulting only in unsuccessful of production, so preservation of their Education Initiative is dedicated acknowledgement translation. Institutions digitiz- in a pure sense here is almost their Publication Intensive—a on their site, amongst other ing their collections are often perverse: to position digital two week program that wel- benefits. With permission, not working with born-digital works in finitude denies their comes applicants from the Triple Canopy makes publicly objects; the objects were not existence and value, which is fields of writing, art, literature, available not only the names made with the consideration maintained and accrued by art history, new media, and de- of those working directly for of what they would look like virtue of its circulation. Careful sign free of charge to focus on the organization, but also its online, so a photograph of not to step onto the territory the history and contemporary sources of funding, contribu- a Renaissance painting in a of conservation, how can cu- practice of publication through tors, and supporters, in turn digital database speaks less rators expose their processes discussions and workshops— allowing viewers to see and to the painting than it does to as well as artworks on active the last iteration of which was ‘search’ those who financially the potential of photography, sites before they are later held in Los Angeles in Jan- support them. While TC does cameras, editing software, saved, stored, re-coded, or uary of 2018. Triple Canopy not publish the names of every and pixel resolution. While this archived in another location? also offers an internship and reader or visitor, the disclosure is an aspect of artwork central Triple Canopy not volunteer program that com- of those who financially sup- in many ways to its conser- only publishes online and off, pensates selected participants port the organization enables vation, and can be a method but also hosts various events, with a stipend as well as a crucial aspect of visibility for decolonized conservation seminars, lectures, and began school credit. that counters the approach- practices,281 it must be ap- an Arts Education Initiative to It is important to note es of major institutions that proached differently with Web address the often unexam- that Triple Canopy is certified continue to accept corporate based works that are subject ined vocabulary, politics, and by W.A.G.E, signaling their sponsorships and funding from

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere to their own processes of de- architecture of cultural literacy commitment to fair compen- sources that sway institutional cay, destabilization, and site in the digital age. Their educa- sation for contributors at every agendas and politics. As Solnit specificity. While conservators tion initiative, which receives level while simultaneously decries, “Democracy depends and curators are both working major support from The Brown ensuring that each issue of the on public participation, which in areas that require distinct Foundation, Inc. of Houston as online magazine is available itself depends on visibility. On expertise and specialization, well as from many generous in- in its entirety at no cost. As a purely theoretical grounds, you their work is tightly woven dividuals, brings together a va- non-profit, Triple Canopy dis- can argue that invisibility is together within the archive in riety of expert perspectives in tributes its digital content free thereby undemocratic; practi- which they often situate their the fields of art, media studies, of charge, but welcomes do- cally, it is ferociously so, again practices. The conservator of and Web development to offer nations and also offers tiered and again.”283 Transparency, new media art must consider “a rigorous, carefully designed memberships—the Friend, the afforded by digital technol- artist intention and the tran- curriculum focusing on critical Contributor, and the Support- ogies in this sense calls into sience of both the artworks inquiry and interactive learning er—which serve to support question the curatorial function their writers and contributors, of mediation with respect to each level offering special accountability in a way that is 280 Brian Droitcour and William S. Smith, “The Digitized Museum,” Art in America, September 1, 2016, accessed November 20, 2017, http://www.artina- 282 See www.canopycanopycanopy.com/education. mericamagazine.com/news-features/magazines/the-digitized-museum/. 283 Rebecca Solnit, “The Visibility Wars,” in Mass Effect: Art and the Internet in the 281 Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, Decolonizing Museums, PDF, L’Internationale Online, Twenty-first Century, ed. Lauren Cornell and Ed Halter (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 117 116 2015. 2015), 249. far less likely to appear within divergent interests from an contextualize, to reflect, and ing that while the contents Slowing Down the Internet institutional frameworks, let embodied perspective which to critically implore.285 As with might be saved and relatively alone be implemented. reveals curatorial and artistic some early net.art, some vi- ‘accessible’ by future devices, While still maintain- perspectives—questions are sual works may be difficult to the experience of navigating ing the authority of decision more important than an- understand when taken out of Triple Canopy’s archives is making in curatorial practice, swers.284 While this approach context, and the inclusion of not as easily preserved. While Triple Canopy’s educational may lead to an oversimplifica- additional multimedia mate- specialization is certainly of initiatives are intended as tion of artistic and curatorial rials may enable a shift away great value, diverse modes of gestures that invite conver- practice, something that might from the idea that to look at reception and connection that sation without positioning regrettably and unintentionally art, or anything, online, you rely less on elitist or special- their resulting exhibitions or deter viewers because it can must already know how— ized knowledge create a more publications as truth or fact, be interpreted as circular or that you must be already be hospitable space, one which but rather as explicitly subjec- frivolous, it can still be seen deemed a digital native. Dear can welcome practitioners tive and vulnerable perspec- as a valuable component for Future Reader, a lo-fi video and viewers from various eco- tives that remain malleable curators working online when made by Triple Canopy for the nomic, social, or educational over time. The site becomes considering the educational 2018 exhibition Publishing as backgrounds and establish a porous space for sustained potential of both their content an Artistic Toolbox: 1989–2017 solidarity across publics, contemplation, one which and processes. This horizon- at Kunsthalle Wien, bleakly those unbeknownst to us, invites viewers to engage with tal approach to education imagines a future wherein including digital immigrants— a process rather than solely becomes a space of learning books have been replaced and maybe even the non-hu- the results of it. Curators who together rather than a rein- by biological computers. By man, or aliens, but hopefully at are able to open themselves forcement of the hierarchical sending a kind of extraterres- the very least, the ghosts that and their projects for input in Web 1.0 dynamics of teacher trial message, Adam Lampert, have been violently neglected

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere such a way that allows for the and pupil. who is the only figure made since time immemorial. intersection of interests, roles Publishing artworks visible on screen, attempts to and content are likely able to alongside texts and interviews contextualize Triple Can- address the concerns, and can also serve to establish opy’s work in the present suggestions of their commu- the agency of the figure off moment with language that DIS.ART nities by being a part of them, screen, functioning as a may seem commonplace now, not simply serving them from gesture that speaks to a more like jpegs and paper, but if above. By making this type of true sense of sharing in that it history continues to repeat END OF THE multifaceted inquiry available is a gift made public through itself, one day won’t. He LINE(AR) TIMELINE to viewers, the reception of the the contributions of those shows the camera pages and Social platforms like Facebook, exhibited artwork or research involved who embrace their pages of paper upon which Twitter, and Instagram auto- is considerably enhanced in positions as those charac- their website contents have matically refresh upon opening that it speaks to readers with terized by a responsibility to been printed, recalling Paul and continuously regenerate Soulellis’ 2013 Library of the with their incessant improved Printed Web,286 while explain- feature, and improved ethics,

285 Brigid Limerick, Tracey Burgess-Limerick, and Margaret Grace, “The poli- 284 Ronald D. Vale, “The Value of Asking Questions,” Molecular Biology of the tics of interviewing: power relations and accepting the gift,” International Journal Cell, March 15, 2013, accessed March 14, 2018, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ of Qualitative Studies in Education 9, no. 4 (1996). 119 118 pmc/articles/PMC3596240/. 286 See www.soulellis.com/projects/library/. promising updates. Google’s now online. Just as journalists, already years ago, too can form habits.”290 By col- Slowing Down the Internet Advanced Search allows users reporters and photographers What is needed, [...] lecting user data, social media to prioritize search results rushed to be first on the scene, are practices that conduct platforms create hyperreal re- radical social criticism, yet based on how recently they as newspapers raced editions which do not fancy themselves flections of selfhood and docile in an imagined distance to were published, down to toward headlines, digital media institutions; at the same time, digital bodies are exposed time practices that are self-crit- the hour. As Robert Hassan naturally followed in their quick ical and yet do not cling to and time again to the interests and Ronald E. Purser’s 2007 footed tracks; content, like their own involvement, their and habits of their corporeal complicity, their imprisoned aptly titled text 24/7: Time baseball caps that boast World existence in the art field, counterparts, convincing them their fixation on institutions and Temporality in the Network Series winners, are pre-made and the institution, their own that to stay the same they reminds: the Web is in anticipation of predicted being-institution. Instituent need to renew. Society practices that conjoin the ad- open for business 24/7, and results so as not to miss a vantages of both “generations” Communication not of institutional critique, thus this has certainly changed the moment, or a sale. Spurred only increases the number and exercising both forms of par- variety of habits, but tends to way audiences have come to by market driven consump- rhesia, will impel a linking of link them subtly together [...] social criticism, institutional recognizing that new modes of expect to receive or access tion, being first, though not critique and self-criticism. association will exact a new use This link will develop, most of it. Thus, habit is formed in their content; now. Time necessarily most accurate or of all, from the direct and view of possible future changes presents a particular challenge thoroughly researched, has indirect concatenation with and does not harden so readily political practices and social [...] By a seeming paradox, in- to curators working online changed the face of culture movements, but without dis- creased power of forming habits pensing with artistic compe- means increased susceptibility, on many levels as the works to one pockmarked by greed, tences and strategies, without sensitiveness, responsiveness.291 dispensing with resources of they engage with are often selfishness, and capital. The and effects in the art field.289 not static objects, and the field of art has decidedly As seen by the Habits, a condition space wherein those objects followed suit to an untenable amount of new products of being, cannot be done are encountered lends itself to zenith, as gallerist Jose Freire that enter the digital market away with, but can be altered. accelerated consumption, easy notes his reason to end his annually and the rate at which Online, users are defined by

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere to digest content, and tends participation in art fairs: “It’s images, topical youth serums, their habits, and the patterns in to privilege the most recent not only that the art world data, clothing, information, which they maneuver websites rather than relevant. As Maria has become bigger. It has new gadgets and junk mail are and content are the world Popova, founder and editor also become faster.”288 This projected onto the public from of advertising’s glimpse into of the website Brain Pickings, model of exhibition making is all angles, haste has already future revenue. Phrases like has observed, “the dominant decidedly unsustainable, and become an unhealthy habit for ‘eyeball economy,’ or ‘attention way knowledge and infor- participants should be aware individuals as well the environ- economy’ are used to refer to mation are organized online of the dangers of succumbing ment. While habits can certain- the ways in which capital is pushes us toward the already to such patterns of habit solely ly generate comfort, they also accrued online; advertisers are familiar instead of broadening to please the neoliberal agenda create dangerous conditions aware of the the overwhelming our horizons.”287 The priority that prides itself on progress of collective disinterest that amount of information available afforded to chronology has as novelty and innovation. can lead to complacency and on the Web, and recurrently long plagued the dissemination Content, care and culture need acceptance, both online and choose to deliver content that of information, through news- not be sacrificed in the name off, as the “distracted person is unchallenging, quick, and print, radio, television, and of speed. As Rauning warned 289 Gerald Raunig, “Instituent Practices,” Eipcp, 2006, accessed March 22, 287 Taylor, 102. 2018, http://eipcp.net/transversal/0106/raunig/en/base_edit. 288 Andrew Goldstein, “Team Gallery’s Jose Freire on Why He Is Quitting 290 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, trans. Harry Zhorn (New York, NY: Schocken Art Fairs for Good,” Artnet News, March 06, 2018, accessed March 30, 2018, Books, 2007), 241. 121 120 https://news.artnet.com/market/jose-freire-art-fairs-interview-1235624. 291 John Dewey, Experience and Nature (Dover, 1958), 281. in the case of viral videos or the perceived numbness of dig- idencies, or those which exist sent 74% of all internet traffic Slowing Down the Internet memes, often vapid, fleeting, ital viewers they have deemed on dedicated URLs,294 have the by the end of 2018,295 then and promptly replaced by the too distracted to notice. opportunity to reconfigure tra- curators can explore the ways following trend that already For Benjamin, films ditional modes of operation by in which they can harness and waits impatiently in the queue. were a site wherein collective subverting the precedents of reshape the content transmit- If users unconsciously innervation might occur— conventional usage. To present ted through these preferred retread familiar paths on the should contemporary art the overlooked possibilities of mediums for viewing and com- Web when seeking information thus also seek to appease a Web based exhibitions, dis. municating information. DIS, or inspiration, or continue to trajectory of obsessive virtual art for example, does this which began in 2010 under the consume content in the forms routines and be exhibited in by speaking the same lan- pretense of a lifestyle and fash- of videos, visual jokes, and form formats that mimic the meth- guage as the ad agencies and ion magazine, but not really as their perceptions of political ods used by media companies marketing teams who have either, describe themselves as

climates from Youtube ‘reac- to deliver consolidated, or usurped the language of digital a dissection of fashion tion’ videos, can the perceived curated, information as quickly natives, but instead use it to and commerce which seeks to dissolve conventions, distort re- problem of habit and desire for and as efficiently as possible? broadcast a different and more alities, disturb ideologies, dis- member the establishment, and distraction actually be part of How might the same tools that complex message. disrupt the dismal dissemination of fashion discourse that’s been the solution in the crisis of criti- have fostered online habits and distinctly distributed in order cal thinking? Habits can be ex- the expectation of speed and to display the disenfranchised as disposable. All is open to dis- panded to reflect user expecta- ease, actually be used to slow DISTORTING AND DISARM- cussion. There is no final word.296 tions on the platforms and sites things down? As Beryl Graham ING: DISSENT ON DISPLAY In 2018 they launched they access when looking at or and Sarah Cook note, “For the The statistical numbers, those a new platform, dis.art, that for information; 40% of Internet audience, the time character- detached from context, can combines critical theory and users abandon websites that istics of new media art can be still be a cause for concern what they refer to as “edu-tain-

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere take more than three seconds confusing because they are for creators and curators of ment” videos.297 Institutional to load and frustration arrives based on the mixed metaphors Web centric content who aim critique, politics, and popular when sites are too cluttered to of event, cinema, and video to reach particular audiences, culture collide on screen at navigate, or formatted in user game. For the curator, they are such as those who tend to 24fps—each presented clip is unfriendly ways.292 The notion equally confusing, with choices read about or view exhibitions highly produced, often involv- that every second counts has to make between metaphors of on blogs, follow galleries and ing actors and special effects, resulted in the rise of minimally means of exhibiting new media institutions on social platforms, exploring what happens when designed platforms or web- art and limited information on or create artwork with digital new technology meets old pages that present attention time and audience to inform tools. If video content, for ideas. Refashioning topics of grabbing content that seeks these choices.”293 Exhibitions example, is expected to repre- contemporary concern, one to shock, disturb, or otherwise and artworks which occupy placate and tranquilize user pre-existing social platforms, 294 See for example www.panthermodern.org. 295 “2017 Internet Trends Report,” May 31, 2017, accessed February 03, 2018, reactions; predators preying on like Instagram based artist res- http://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends. 296 Natasha Stagg, “The Path-breaking, Piss-taking Legacy of DIS Magazine,” Dazed, February 22, 2018, accessed March 26, 2018, http://www.dazeddigital. com/art-photography/article/39117/1/dis-magazine-bernadette-corpora- 292 Sean Work, “Kissmetrics Blog,” How Loading Time Affects Your Bottom tion-print-video-rip. Line, accessed March 20, 2018, https://blog.kissmetrics.com/loading-time/. 297 Ben Davis, “DIS Magazine, New York’s Hippest Art Media Outlet, Is 293 Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook, “Space, Materiality, and the Audience,” Launching a ‘PBS for Gen Z’,” Artnet News, December 04, 2017, accessed March Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook (2010). Rethinking Curating - Art after New Media, 20, 2018, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/dis-makes-the-pivot-to-vid- 123 122 2010, accessed February 24, 2018, http://www.immersence.com/. eo-1158761. video, Christopher Kulendran very bad commercials”299 while or media, they are not easily form or another like trends in Slowing Down the Internet Thomas and Annika Kuhl- simultaneously releasing the categorized into the systems fashion. Perhaps there is also mann’s 60 Million Americans 2019 budget plan which slash- of organization that one might an expectation that a desire Can’t Be Wrong, opens with a es funding for the National find on sites such as Netflix to preserve the videos might sequence of footage of border Endowment of the Arts, the or Hulu, ie. “Independent come from an external source walls and fences around the National Endowment for the Cinema” or “Nordic Thrillers,” considering DIS’ already well world while an off-screen Humanities, and the Corpora- and thus present content in a founded institutional recep- narrator reminds that nomad- tion for Public Broadcasting— genre non-conforming manner. tion, the working members ism was once the norm. In an the organizations that support Each video remains available averaging in age in the their attempt to combat the notion the public television networks for a period of thirty days, late 30s and already boasting that visual media makes for a and radio stations he might’ve and while an archive may be curatorial roles in biennales, passive experience, DIS en- imagined streaming those formulated and added to the several museum exhibitions courages viewers to engage in commercials on as well as the site in the future, it is not yet and frequent appearances in active thinking by repurposing artists who understand how to a feature on the platform as it Frieze, ArtNet, The New York the method of delivery of its produce them. stands today. In a sense, this Times and many more. These content, and with short videos Relishing in the nos- evasion of archivability raises collaborations with institutions they manage to communicate talgia of reruns and box-set a question concerning the rea- and various networks allow facts, news, and knowledge DVD’s while experimenting sons for such a decision when DIS to share insights to their in ways that are aesthetically with science-fiction CGI, dis. lengthy CV’s full of exhibitions practice while also being a attractive, comical, and enter- art sits somewhere in the and events are the receipts, part of their practice, further taining. Their approach to pre- middle, and complicates the the proof of participation, so implicating their institutional senting cartoons, talk shows notion of the exhibition as frequently used to vouch for relationships as fodder for and documentaries, as a press an event in several ways not one’s success and contri- production and consideration.

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere release for an upcoming exhi- for their extended periods butions to the field. Instead, Similarly, the videos bition at the De Young Muse- of duration as videos rarely each video has an information on the dis.art platform explore um notes, “reveals a ‘DIS-to- exceed thirty minutes, but drop down menu that offers the possibilities of linking pian’ take on the future of rather for their condensation a description of the work, the contemporary art and popular education—decentralized and of duration; their episodes can names of collaborators and culture in television and film, open access, yet communal be accessed on different days, producers, and is accompa- and viewers can learn critical and physically connected.”298 alongside an endless array of nied by suggested reading theory from a cooking show, or The launch of the platform other open tabs or ongoing or visual material that further a watch a headless McKenzie uncannily coincides with the external experiences, they can supports the work or otherwise Wark speaking about general President of the United States’ be viewed on mobile devices, as a citation of inspiration. intellects, or find themselves solution to the rising death toll paused and returned to. While The lack of an ep- amongst a circle of children of the opioid epidemic, wherein each video appears to explore isode archive reminds that gathered around and looking he proposed making “very, a particular genre of television perhaps there is no need up at artist Babak Radboy as for one if the topics that dis. he poses the question “What 298 “Genre-Nonconforming: The DIS Edutainment Network,” De Young Museum, March 12, 2018, accessed March 20, 2018, https://deyoung.famsf.org/exhibi- art approaches are already is Money?” Episodes are tions/genre-nonconforming-dis-edutainment-network. in circulation elsewhere; the cushioned with commercials 299 Ted Johnson, “Trump’s Budget Again Proposes Elimination of Public TV, Arts Funding,” Variety, February 12, 2018, accessed March 30, 2018, ideas recycled and bound that address those in front of http://variety.com/2018/tv/news/trump-budget-eliminates-pbs-nea-fund- to repeat themselves in one the screen as if personally and 125 124 ing-1202695205/. return viewer awareness to the speaks to the indirect manner and narratives in media is a label that reads “Not For Slowing Down the Internet current state of the attention in which individuals contribute long overdue. dis.art however, Everyone” to be worn inside economy in a way that both to their content; DIS has long shares what has long been out and backwards, accom- chastises and simultaneously been inspired by the patterns pseudo-shared, and seems panied by the description “this lets you in on a secret. Recog- of consumerism and trends in to take us into the kairos in a shirt might not be for everyone, nizing the advantages of the art, commerce, fashion, pop way wherein we as viewers feel but it’s definitely for you.”301 medium it operates through,300 culture, etc., and their content comfortable, understood, per- Representation in popular albeit in a quirky, ironic and is thus derived from a reflec- haps even safe, but with just media mimics what one might often seething fashion, dis.art tion on the larger operative enough risk to gradually and find in many major cultural in- attempts to critically reflect structures of society. In a seg- deliberately push the boundar- stitutions: In the United States, on the ways that contempo- ment called Mothers and Daugh- ies of what can be done when females comprised 24% of rary society has long sought ters, stand-up comedian Casey old dogs are taught new tricks, protagonists featured in the solace in media propaganda, Jane Ellison speaks to her and new technology confronts 100 top domestic grossing and lets you know off the bat unborn baby in a dramatic talk old habits. films of 2017, Black females that this might not be the TV show setting, congealing the The potential of the not necessarily as protagonists series you imagined playing in contemporary fascination with media platform to engage in comprised 16%, and Lati- the background while you try reality television, the tropes of more inclusive practices of nas and Asian females both to zone out after a long day on females-as-mothers narratives representation than those of comprised a mere 7%.302 In a the job (“dis.art and chill,” as in media, the politics of pro-life the TV and film industries is, 1976 paper titled Living with opposed to the phrase “Netflix vs. pro-choice, the prenatal for me, the most compelling Television, researchers George and chill,” first used by Twitter worry of a child’s financial sup- reason to subscribe to their Gerbner and Larry Gross wrote user “NoFaceNina” in 2009, port or success in life, and the mailing list, which, like the @dis that representation in the seems an unlikely pick-up inflated egos of individualism, Instagram account, announces fictional world signifies social

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere line, but might soon find itself as Casey suggests naming recently added content. Their existence; absence means printed on a tote bag and her baby ‘Casey.’ The visual dedication to a different aspect symbolic annihilation. Visual pictured on a street style blog). results of the concoction seep of visibility in regards to repre- media has long contributed to The interplay of aesthetics, back into the offline wherein sentation has been central to the ways in which we under- effects, and divergent narra- we’ve grown accustomed DIS’ approach to creative pro- stand our positions in society, tives and characters presented and disturbingly comfortable duction since their inception or rather the ways in which in each segment is forceful to the exaggerated dramas as a magazine or their brand. our positions are imposed and intentioned, seeking to and re-enactments of Lifetime disown, their webstore, features upon on us and perceived by apprehend attention in a way television, the monotonous an array of objects from a HBA others; what is seen on screen that is both active and passive: recitals of newscasters, and salad bowl, or a Judith Butler becomes the depiction of what a viewer feels involved, yet is the fairytale ending of every activewear top so that you can is ‘normal,’ and anything else is always relegated to watching Julia Roberts film that has you perform performativty while an unwelcome aberration. dis. rather than directly contribut- thinking she won’t but she performing, and a t-shirt with art may be a new platform, but ing to that which plays out on always does. The opportunity

the screen. However, dis.art to create alternative endings 301 See www.disown.dismagazine.com/collections/frontpage/products/ not-for-everyone. 300 Amol Sharma, “Big Media Needs to Embrace Digital Shift-Not Fight It,” 302 Martha M. Lauzen, “It’s a Man’s (Celluloid) World: Portrayals of Female The Wall Street Journal, June 22, 2016, accessed March 20, 2018, https:// Characters in the 100 Top Films of 2017,” Center for the Study of Women in www.wsj.com/articles/big-media-needs-to-embrace-digital-shiftnot-fight- Television and Film, June 16, 2016, accessed March 21, 2018, https://wome- 127 126 it-1466568061. nintvfilm.sdsu.edu/research/. this is only another iteration of in extensive academic theses MONOSKOP canonized authors. Slowing Down the Internet their ideology manifested in a are now presented as enter- Among many dig- new medium. Recalling their tainment. It’s a gesture that ital archives and libraries, 2012 video Watermarked which says—in the way that evokes UNPACKING MY there is one that stands out: parodies the disingenuine The Yes Men’s 1999-2002 Gatt. DIGITAL LIBRARY Monoskop. A Wikipedia like representation of pluralism in org, a website that looked like a Online exhibition spaces, and website that functions as a advertising campaigns, works legitimate government owned digital libraries in particular, repository for multimedia con- on the new platform like Aria page but which decried human have facilitated the circulation tent in the form of artworks, Dean’s Euology for a Black rights and celebrated corpo- of materials, and thus ideas, literature and publications Mass, a narrated compilation rate profit—anything you can across spatial and temporal primarily associated with the by Dean herself of sourceless do, art can do better, or even limitations. These electroni- fields of art, media studies, videos that explore “blackness further, as damali ayo’s 2003 cally dependent archives are and the humanities, Monoskop through memes and memes Rent-a-Negro website reminds, transforming the reception was originally organized by through blackness,”303 or the that only art can do. Employing of information and its level of Dušan Barok in 2004. It takes series of dress tutorials by the dense sarcasm that has accessibility by engaging with its name from “the Slovak Women’s History Museum and characterized their previous various platforms for distri- equivalent of the English ‘mo- Jack Scanlan304 that revist the projects to subvert society’s bution that extend far beyond noscope’, [...] an electric tube complex history of women’s relationship to media consump- the book shop or traditional used in analogue TV broad- dress and teach us how to (re) tion, commercialism, comedic library. Sites like aaaaarg.fail, casting to produce images of dress, unflinchingly engage value, and the aetheticastion Bibliotek, UbuWeb, Pad.ma, test cards, station logotypes, with contemporary conflict of of politics, this new platform Memory of the World, and so error messages but also for consumerism’s attempt to di- might allow users to more con- many more, are committed to calibrating cameras. Mono- versify by seizing its weapons sciously connect and process the circulation and contextu- scopes were automatized tele-

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere and turning them into tools. information at their own pace alization of their content, often vision announcers designed to Here diversity and multiplici- in between virtual and mental made possible by the collab- speak to both live and machine ty are not to be achieved by clicks. dis.Art, a Netflix for the orative efforts of their users audiences about the status of statistical comparisons, nor art world, does exactly what its and authors. By asserting the a channel, broadcasting purely are they promised in the next moniker connotes as self-aware value of individual experience phatic messages.”305 Think scheduled software update; jokes expose the melancholy across class, ethnicity, race, the 1976 film Network where they are the status quo, the of modern life while criticizing status or sex, the idea that protagonist and longtime news new normal that says ‘nor- their own position of complicity, “when everyone is a librarian, anchor Howard Beale just mal’ was never an option to reminding that if the field is to library is everywhere,” aims wants you to “get mad.” be included on their diversity be changed there is work to be to restructure the hierarchies A visit to the checklist. done, but without any sense of preservation practices in Monoskop landing page shows Surely this is all noth- of relief or pleasure, a laugh at institutional collections, which the site divided into several ing short of ushering in a new the very least, we might be ren- time and time again privilege segments. Moving from left to wave of artistic propaganda dered too weak to struggle for the contributions of academ- right, a list of linked topics can as conversations that might a tomorrow, let alone a today. ics, the educated, or already leads to the organized con- otherwise only be encountered

305 Annet Dekker, “Copying as a Way to Start Something New: A Conversation 303 See www.dis.art/eulogy-for-a-black-mass. with Dušan Barok about Monoskop,” in Lost and Living (In) Archives: Collectively Shaping New 129 128 304 See www.dis.art/e2-ylang-ylang. Memories (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2017) 212. tent of the site, broken down tion of interviews or reviews background in library studies, on the Web, meaning emerges Slowing Down the Internet into categories such as “Art,” that give a better sense to the Barok’s manner of presentation from this circulation. Online, “Literature,” “Cities,” “Coun- breadth of Barok’s involvement on his own platform, which was artwork, ideas, texts, etc., are tries,” etc. that function as the and personal background expanded upon as his final proj- not necessarily tied to their scaffolding for a seemingly through a transcription of ect at the Piet Zwart Institute, original forms or sources; aura endless amount of sub-titles, communication than a simple follows a categorical indexing is shattered as things appear in genres, and sections that blurb might. The center of the of topics or major ideas, and multiple forms and can be seen both breakdown and multi- page is filled with small scale through individual articles ex- or accessed as reproductions, ply into numerous sections, images representing the site’s pands, by means of hypertextual low-res scans, PDFs, remixes, echoing Benjamin’s remark recent entries, not in accor- linking, the sources and citations memes, mash-ups, links, or in Unpacking My Library, “For dance with any particular style behind ideas to better contex- copies. Privileging authenticity what else is this collection but of categorization, and which tualise them expansively rather in this sense would do nothing a disorder to which habit has can be clicked on in order than linearly. While neoliberal more than enable exclusivity; accommodated itself to such to be redirected to an article progress may privilege novelty books, texts, or artworks, the an extent that it can appear as where most of the content is and flexibility, it does so by tangible vessels that have order?”306 Below the primary presented in bullet form and dislodging content from context, been the instruments used heading, recent changes made bolstered by additional HTML thus alienating it from the op- to communicate knowledge, on the site are logged, noting or PDF formats, recalling Mari- erative structures which initially experience, and the imagi- the latest entries, as well as a ela Yeregui’s 1999 Epithelia, an enabled it. As Barok notes in nary, would exist only in their permanent link, archives and exquisite corpse of HTML with an interview with Annet Dekker, original versions, relegated to backups, a link inventory, and Javascript popup windows, his digital library approaches a dust accruing life on a shelf, even a site that reveals the pictures, and alerts. The right contextualisation accessible only to one set of

page information in a consoli- hand side of the site displays by treating publica- eyes and white gloved hands

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere dated view of what a back-end a live Twitter feed, as updates tions as a corpus of texts that at a time. It is also important to can be accessed through an developer might see. In the to the archive are posted on unlimited number of interfaces note that while Monoskop may designed with an understanding “About Monoskop” section, both Twitter and Facebook, as of the functionality of data- track itself, it does not track its bases and an openness to the there is only a short one sen- well as an option to create an imagination of the community of visitors; there is no record of tence blurb provided about the account, which enables users users. [...] by creating layers of what has been downloaded or classification, interlinking bod- project that reads “Monoskop to edit pre-existing entries ies of texts through references, by whom—“we don’t track, we creating alternative indexes of 308 is a wiki for collaborative with the option of having their persons, things and terms, mak- don’t care.” studies of the arts, media and contribution credited. ing full-text search possible, Monoskop “makes making visual search possible— humanities.”307 Below this Getting lost in this across the whole of corpus as clear that it is offering content well as its parts [...] Isn’t this however, lies a list of select- archive is effortless—sev- what makes a difference? under the fair-use doctrine and

ed lectures, events and talks eral hours after accessing that this content is for personal that Barok has participated Monoskop for the first time, I Digital (re)production and scholarly use, not com- 309 in (hyperlinked, of course) as found myself with hundreds of has drastically shifted cult mercial use.” While copyright well as writing done about opened tabs to be bookmarked value to exhibition value, and laws can be an obstruction to Monoskop, and a presenta- for a subsequent return. With a 308 Dekker, 218. 309 Sarah Hamerman, “Cataloging Plunder: Thoughts on the Digital Text-Sharing 306 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, trans. Harry Zhorn (New York, NY: Schocken Underground,” LIS Theory, November 20, 2014, accessed March 26, 2018, http:// Books, 2007), 60. listheory.prattsils.org/cataloging-plunder-thoughts-on-the-digital-text-shar- 131 130 307 See www.monoskop.org/About_Monoskop/. ing-underground/. publishing certain materials However, despite “being at Barok’s manner of exhibiting utilize the same tools and ges- Slowing Down the Internet online in certain places, i.e. opposite ends of the spectrum, his partial perspective, the iter- tures of uploading, clicking, social platforms that have their both of these instances may ation of which is situated in the and publishing to achieve dis- own terms of service or re- be construed as operating with particular fields of media arts tinct results: the former denies strictions pertaining to infringe- assumptions of eternity and and humanities from the 1860s the obligation of reciprocity, ment, as Aymeric Mansoux, timelessness that are ultimately onward, as Haraway reminds, and the latter embraces and one of Barok’s mentors, notes cultural constructs and phan- is the only way to question the chases the fruits of exchange. in his essay How Deep is Your tasies.”311 While this particular foundational myths of tradi- We cannot account for how Source? regarding the tech- version of the digital archive, tional objectivity considering much we owe one anoth- no-legal frameworks of online and all others, may not live that claims for knowledge are er.314 True sharing seeks not publishing, forever, and those who inhabit an ongoing struggle. His digital commodity but community by

The organization of it today are confronted with the library is doubtlessly impres- contributing to the commons; such communities can effec- same reality of impermanence, sive, and yet it manages to we upload our experiences tively help rethink and reinvent the access to culture in the age it is here that the curator walks remain an attitude of vulnera- and shortcomings, log the of distributed infrastructures by opening up the institutional as if ad infinitum. bility, the “Art” page disclaims, trajectories of our research, walled gardens of conservation. Museums, art institutions and Admitting a certain artwork and writing, answer archives urgently need to look THE CRISIS OF power of the concepts of style questions on forums and use closer at the different models and movement even today, this of sharing in which the conser- CONNECTIVITY: CONTENT page can be seen as an entry hashtags in a search for com- vation of content can be global- point and contextual resource ly scaled and accessed publicly The type of sharing enabled by for modern and contemporary art panionship and connection while still benefiting from the a multiplicity of large knowledge which is not be based primarily with individuals or groups, all love and care of a network of on technique, subject matter, dedicated collectors, instead archives, Trebor Scholz says material or economic value of in the hope that generosity will of building a business model works nor on identity of their 313 around zombified works, exploit- [...] can challenge the authors or owners.” prove more contagious than ing their every possible permu- content hegemony of institution- tation, and thus replication at a greed. Such virtual reposito- al repositories (i.e. museums) Aware of the powers On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere different scale the exploitative and the selected histories that ries for art and knowledge re- cultural dead-end found in the they offer. [...] Artist contribut- of corporate surveillance, the relationship between media ed archives of cultural data can quire spectator participation, industries and copyright. 310 inspire younger generations by legal or designed oriented exposing them to artwork that collaboration, and intervention they would not find behind the restrictions of exhibiting or Those who defend in order to function, and do gates of the museum or gallery. publishing online, we continue copyright legislation seek to Knowledge, here, is not delivered so across across diffused by authorities but assembled by to upload ourselves online, maintain the rights of labour the user/producer swarm.312 points of research outside the still seeking, despite all of laden property, whether imag- frame of the work itself and Situated knowledge, these circumstances, connec- es, artworks, texts, literature, outside of a state of simplified contextualized with respect to tion—as if sharing a struggle etc. while Internet pirates full contemplation. Content individual experience denies might make it easier to bare, inversely argue for free access, production has exploded in the claims of relativist per- overcome, or at the very least, unlimited usage, and the the age of computation, and spectives of knowledge that make some sense of. The cri- circulation of information and all users can be thought of as emanate as if from nowhere sis of connectivity lies precise- material in the public domain. active or unconscious con- ly in this intention; it marks the and everywhere at once. tributors to the archive, each separation of actual sharing action subject to recording 310 Aymeric Mansoux, “How Deep is Your Source?” in Lost and Living (In) Archives: and pseudo-sharing, which Collectively Shaping New Memories, ed. Annet Dekker (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2017), 97. 311 Thomas Widlok, Anthropology and the Economy of Sharing (New York, NY: Routledge, 2017), 176-177. 313 See www.monoskop.org/Art. 312 Trebor Scholz, “The Participatory Challenge,” in Curating Immateriality: The Work 314 Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study 133 132 of the Curator in the Age of Network Systems, ed. Josia Krysa (Autonomedia, 2006), 196-197. (Wivenhoe: Minor Compositions, 2013). and surveillance. As in their judgement, the result of the where to search; the way that this is not to say divergent Slowing Down the Internet 2004 project How Do You See exercise of a specific power speaking the same language perspectives cannot co-exist. the Disappeared? A Warm Data- and authority, which involves can allow for deeper connec- The digital archive is perhaps base, when Chitra Ganesh and placing certain documents in tions. The digital archive is the most fitting place for such Mariam Ghani, in response an archive at the same time as still far from being neutral, the convergence, as it acts less to the rise in surveillance in others are discarded.”315 As curator a far from neutral link, like a claustrophobic storage the wake of 9/11, proposed Tomislav Medak writes in The and accessibility here too can space and more like porous a collection of personal but Future After the Library: UbuWeb be perceived as a wall, tower- concrete; it is permeable and non-identifiable information of and Monoskop’s Radical Gestures, ing over an illusion of connec- rigid all at once. Its construc- the lived experience of those “libraries could never close the tion. Renate Holub writes tion and maintenance requires

subjected to political invisibili- rift or between the universalist The production of in- a dynamic approach, one that ty, a “warm data,” they sought aspirations of knowledge and tellectuality is contingent on shifts away from the hierarchi- a very basic reality, namely the to express the idea that the their institutional compromise. body. That body lives within cal tendencies of education, the ‘structure of feeling’ of digital archive is destined Hence, they could never avoid a specific community, the so- and which might enable a dif- cio-psychic language of which always to exclude more than it being the battlefield where informs a person’s imagistic ferent kind of transfer: learning could ever imagine to contain. their own, and modernity’s, and symbolic referentiality. and unlearning alike, or linking … The ‘structure of feeling’ of File sharing ≠ life sharing; ambivalent epistemic and so- one community, and the expe- and de-linking. riences, assumptions and ex- but Eva and Franco Mattes, cial character was constantly clusions underlying it, are not This type of exclusion who for three years made the re-examined and ripped asun- identical with but different or inability to archive every- from the ‘structure of feeling’ contents, from e-mails to bank der.”316 Using the Web to scour from other communities.318 thing, however, tragic when statements, of their home for resources requires a spe- applied to hard drive failure, Digital libraries like computer accessible to the cialized knowledge compound- is the site of unlearning, or Monoskop, the contents of public, certainly tried to test ed with an able body, and at de-linking; in order to embrace which remain ultimately deter- On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere the possibility until it became minimum, an initial driving new methods of creating value, mined by Barok’s curatorial too difficult to maintain and query to engage with a search it is first necessary to unlearn authority, can still serve to was eventually taken offline engines latent inertia, and this the old ones. How can such empower a more authentic in 2003 and stored as a static “is just the first challenge of unlearning, which is not a re- version of sharing rather than archive. the archive.”317 This manner of gressive process but rather an a commodified exchange or No matter their gathering material, producing intellectual awakening, happen pseudo-sharing of the “struc- intention, however, such knowledge, and sifting through when we are constantly tasked ture of feelings,” which vary digital libraries are archives credible sources might, at first with the call to upgrade, seek- from individual to individual by default, and as Achille glance, opens endless oppor- ing distraction from distraction and community to community, Mbembe notes, “the archive tunities for the querent, but itself, and disciplined by the by remaining publicly acces- is primarily the product of a one must know how, what, and social conventions of habit sible and explicit in its posi- and connectivity? Distraction tions and intentions. While the is attention. To follow John 315 Achille Mbembe, “The Power of the Archive and its Limits,” in Refiguring archive cannot be conceived the Archive, ed. Carolyn Hamilton, Verne Harris, Jane Taylor, Michele Pickover, Roberts, art has the Graeme Reid, and Razia Saleh (Capetown, South Africa: Kluwer Academic Pub- of without its positioning in lishers , 2002), 20. geography and in histories, [...] ability to work 316 Tomislav Medak, “The Future After the Library: UbuWeb and Monoskop’s with, reflect on, move through Radical Gestures,” ed. Tomislav Medak and Marcell Mars, in Javna Knjižnica/ Public various non-artistic disci- Library (Zagreb: WHW & Multimedia Institute, 2015), 122. 317 Kate Crawford, “Asking the Oracle,” in Astro Noise: A Survival Guide for Living Under 318 Renate Holub, Antonio Gramsci: Beyond Marxism and Postmodernism (Routledge, 1999), 135 134 Total Surveillance (Yale University Press, 2016). 175. plines and practices without affirmative categories. This is fully investing in them. [...] art why, the questions of how the is thereby able to secure its artist possesses knowledge, and autonomy and the open-ended- it what forms and under what ness of its research programs conditions it is disseminated on the basis of the contingent and exchanged become crucial distance it is able to estab- areas of concern for all the key lish from both the reification participants in [art], as the of aesthetic reason and art’s pursuit of collective intellect assimilation of non-aesthetic strips the metaphysics of intu- reason. Thus what distinguishes itivism and ‘inner creativity’ art from other practices [...] from artist authorship.321 is that it is the only practice that operates out a direct sense of its own impossibility Here, inside the digital and impermanence.319 indexes of virtual libraries

and archives, sharing in both We speak in and through a language of gaps as artistic and curatorial practice, understanding, meaning and can function to deconstruct the questions emerge in reflec- authoritative codes of conduct tion, in thought, in the search; that are upheld by the legal thinking is not only the site of frameworks of private prop- connections, but disconnec- erty, against predetermined tions, too. Without these gaps categories and privileged nar- Still from the 1976 in artistic reception, production ratives, against colonial meth- and political engagement, “the ods of possession, against emancipatory, non-identitary the conception of a singular film Network. horizon of art is indistinguish- identity other than being itself. able from the operations of Sharing in this way repels the On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere non-aesthetic reason.”320 How monetization of knowledge as to speak in a language of gaps content as capital, and can re- in a world that demands an veal its position of enunciation, assimilation to protocols of hy- exposing that which and whom pertext? How to enlarge these has been both protected and moments of interpretation neglected by the erection of an when the clock continues to institutional partition. tick, and as production dead- lines seem to loom over small and large scale institutions like the dark clouds of digital tech- nology? Roberts continues, Knowledge is not the thing that protects the author- ity of art and culture, but the thing that dissolves or dispels art and culture as received and

319 John Roberts, Revolutionary Time and the Avant-Garde (London: Verso, 2015), 116 320 Ibid, 258. 137 136 321 Ibid, 142. CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION 5 CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION system continuously endorses tives, and to make their the attempt to approach actual Conclusion As we continue to connect, to it, but while immediate escape materials both financially and sharing in the practice of share, and to upload content also remains an impossibility, temporally more easily curating as caretaking is then to polished platforms, the risk global alliances and the accessible for their audiences. to remain methodical and yet of disconnect paradoxically sustained struggle for intersec- Without financial and economic accessible to the community rises, the transparency of the tional solidarity however, can backing, there is no promise of one seeks not only to serve but screen reveals an opacity, a be the most powerful sites of preservation for these works to be a part of, neither as mental dullness of the so- resistance that can bring about made online; the archive is native nor as immigrant, but as cio-economic conditions that more than just cosmetic repair more about the future than it is one who is already and always enable its proliferation. It to an unsightly system. Online, the past, projecting value into both with and worldwide. appears as though critical the multidimensional and a future that is difficult to While the Internet thinking has been outsourced mobile situatedness of content imagine wherein profitability remains a space of govern- from our bodies and assigned is still subject to the same and production are not ment, corporate and institu- to our devices; habitual material and immaterial markers of success. Tied to tional surveillance and control, patterns of usage breed a qualities of non-virtual labour, patterns and demands of it can also be a medium, a sense of normalized compla- still unable to plot an adequate commerce, their employees, subject, a space for exhibi- cency while individual agency exit strategy; afterall, art under artists, and contributors still tions, and most importantly, a is disregarded to better serve capitalism can never be requiring a salary to live and tool that can be used to the more profitable masses; anything but art under capital- survive in the offline, those reshape the operative struc- the danger now is not so much ism, even when it critiques working on the aforementioned tures of the offline world that it the impending rise of artificial capitalism. digital platforms have shown reflects, or, as the Bureau of intelligence, but its byproduct These online exhibi- that time as a currency is the Inverse Technology who in of natural ignorance. Online, tion spaces and digital most valuable natural resource 1997 flew a remote control

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere users are both the laborers archives are neither answers of them all. Building communi- plane with a miniature video and the commodity, coating nor replacements to traditional ty, addressing the contempo- camera and transmitter screen protectors with layers exhibition and pseudo-sharing rary, recirculating, repeating, through Silicon Valley showed, of greasy affect while generat- practices, but they do threaten resounding; these are the a tool for counter-surveillance. ing offline profit for those who the stringent content hegemo- aspects of cultural work that Without having to explicitly hide behind the glossy ny and narratives of major can empower a different way adhere to the conditions of surfaces of cyberspace. cultural institutions and of doing as a forceful move- physical structures or temporal Corporate capitalism cannot propose alternative reimagina- ment that cannot be ignored limitations, although still not be reformed no matter how tions of collective progress. As by major museums and art entirely free from all restric- frequently it rebrands, refresh- more affordable alternative institutions. Rather than tions, such as bandwidth or es, or updates itself, and within spaces for presenting content, looking for answers to put local network legislation, its framework, political or these online exhibition spaces upon plinths and display, it exhibiting online has allowed economic justice for the are able to more easily expand might be the search that yields curators and artists to propose working class, impoverished, the potential of their platforms not the the most recent or best alternative ways to understand people of color, and women by conducting more thorough match, but yet another search a relationship with the present remain as impossibilities. research on their subject that questions the conditions tech-obsessed moment—nei- Working within, updating to, matters, by inviting contribu- that underlie the act of ther celebrating recent and pseudo-sharing in this tions from an array of perspec- searching itself. Embodying technological advancements 141 140 as progressive achievements multiplicity of forms and value than its immediate result, economic, or creative Conclusion nor campaigning for a retreat platforms for creative expres- privileging vulnerability over spheres, these approaches to back to a bygone era, but sion however, are the first steps authority. Situated within and exhibition practices have the instead sustaining the struggle to be taken in order to put forth subject to the demands of potential to expand conversa- against the forces of past and alternative plans for restructur- existing power dynamics while tions not by giving a voice but present by remaining open to ing the field of contemporary seeking not only to reshape by turning their platforms into reflection, criticism, change art and rethinking its hypocriti- them, doing so explicitly by stages upon which those long and connection rather than cal aims and exclusionary naming them and exposing silenced can speak if they so opting for immediate distinc- politics. Working online, them, exhibitions online can call choose. If as curators we are tion or celebrity status. curators are fighting a multitude attention to the urgency of the destined to infinitely wander in Curators are thus not “curating of battles: against advertisers, offline wherein, through public the archives of recycled immateriality,” as the 2006 against the politics of network political intervention, a more trends in popular culture, Autonomedia publication by legislation and censorship, democratic Internet might one down the aisles of data the same name suggests, but against the privatization of day reflect a more democratic centers in the middle of the rather curating against the information, new technologies, world. desert, to and fro the publish- threat of immateriality, mani- and they are doing so in the The world, or rather ing house to the backend of a fested as the disappearance of context of an already deeply the representation of the website, exhibitions are then natural world resources as well contested field of contemporary world within worlds, is not the exits, but rather they as the disappearing narratives art that is itself situated within increasingly dictated by are points of entry. If we throw of those buried under the by an unjust society. Despite algorithms; power, both on away the gatekeepers keys in products of the West’s material knowing that the odds are and offline, lies with those exchange for keyboards, the obsessions. While an unravel- severely stacked against those deemed responsible and spaces we create should ing of fibre-optic submarine using the Internet as a medium capable of establishing and serve only to welcome, not

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere Internet cables seems at this for the distribution of informa- altering those algorithms and users but all beings, regard- point highly unlikely and tion, the struggle to redistribute the input of data required to less of the status of their equally as unproductive, the resources in the center fuel them. Behind every citizenship, to join and to walk technology continues to continues. One must first algorithm however, is a human alongside one another spread along a legislatively recognize oneself as already being, meaning that our amongst the stacks of books, defined path and there is still being-with, and this act of love, lifeless devices are both periodicals and browser hope to grab hold of the or care, in a more true sense of handmade and handheld, and histories of today where these cables, to crawl out from the sharing, underlies an under- can thus be repurposed tools echoing voices do not fall on rocky crevice and reroute the standing that singular-plurality that are more attuned to the deaf ears. To allow ourselves race toward the ever retreating is not a closed gesture of natural world and its finite to be lost and listening to finish line of neoliberal prog- othering, but rather an opening resources and made accessi- these archives is to slow ress. with others. In practice, this can ble not only by a sliver of a down, to resist the ‘fear of There cannot be a become a durational unfolding privileged portion of the missing out’ by becoming singular synthetic solution that unfixes the exclusivity of population. Not simply inhabitants of experience, to applied to the preservation or the exhibition as event, denying seeking a motionless aware- live in them as witnesses who exhibition of artworks and ideas a premeditated transcription, ness but rather demanding when taken out of time can that attempt universality or to and which allows the process action and accountability in realize that something will achieve a consensus. A of connection it affords more different aspects of social, always be missed. These 143 142 Conclusion spaces of loss are the gaps remains generous, somehow and exploitation.324 suspend economic calculus, interrupt exchange, and break wherein de-linking occurs, forgiving, and presents itself with equivalence. If there re- Of course, one first where users are no longer still in every moment and in ally is gift, then, according to needs time in order to give it. Derrida, it opens the circular others, where questions widen every decision: to be more process of exchange, because it In order to understand what opposes the levelling mea- the openings of understanding ecologically aware, inclusive, sure.325 it means to give time requires to make room for interjection to decolonize institutions, to a repositioning of the now as True sharing, unlike and amelioration “as a means create safer and properly com- less of an accumulating pro- exchange, becomes a space of establishing a [...] space for pensated working conditions. cess which stacks past upon of intimacy that enables others the entrance of those “others” The present is here in slow- past like bricks only to shield to access what is valued and chronically excluded from [...] ness is dilated; it resists the the inner structure from the when used more like a “Back- dogmatists and power language of the “never before elements, or as a point fixed on rub” than “Google,” provides interests.”322 seen,” the “unprecedented,” a timeline like an event, but as a conceptual and practical As Adrienne Rich the “once in a lifetime,” and the a circulation which both goes alternative to market and gift writes in the foreword of On aura of originality in exchange and comes in all directions at exchange.326 True sharing, as Lies, Secrets and Silence, I for the interconnectedness once. In practice, this becomes opposed to pseudo-sharing, portend that our task as of all things, movements, and the duty of the curatorial role is non-reciprocal and cannot curators is not to emerge from moments across temporalities afforded by both the privilege be calculated or manifested the labyrinth of information and borders. Actual sharing, and responsibility inherent in as capital, and can therefore with answers, but enacted by the individuals and the coupling of being and its limit the expansion of ex- cultural workers, so deeply To question every- professionalized version. It change. The call for sincerity thing. To remember what it has embedded within the categor- been forbidden even to mention. necessitates the act of care and generosity in the context To come together telling our ical domination of a capitalist stories, to look afresh at, and when rethinking ways of both of community building is surely then to describe for ourselves, society, so fixated on produc- being and (un)learning togeth- as cliché as it is platitudinous. On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere the frescoes of the Ice Age, tivity while trying to organize the nudes of “high art,” the er. It is more than corporate However, if this synthesis of Minoan seals and figurines, an encrypted strategy for rev- the moon-landscape embossed backed mindfulness or the Aristotelian ethos, pathos, and with the booted print of a male olution on Whatsapp, remains foot, the microscopic virus, self care of neoliberalism that logos, not in chronos but in at best a utopian ideal, but, as the scarred and tortured body strips engaged thinking from this emerging kairos,327 is to of the planet Earth. To do this Isabell Lorey notes kind of work takes a capacity the sources of distress—it is be answered and embodied for constant active presence, a If capital exploits all naturalist’s attention to minute social activities and therefore instead a situated mindfulness, by any field it is that of the arts phenomena, for reading between life itself, however, this does one that although it occurs on and humanities. This is the the lines, watching closely for not mean that, in turn, resis- symbolic arrangements, de- tance is no longer possible, no an individual level, requires task of curators, artists, and coding difficult and complex other living practices, no other messages left for us by [those] modes of passing time. As the contextualization within exist- cultural workers, if we desire of the past.323 debt and finance economy in- ing power structures in order creasingly enjoys access to all to keep our titles. Yet, as the The moment for active social activities through mea- to be a site of resistance. age of accountability reflects, suring and evaluation, a break presence, critical thinking, and with the concomitant partition- Care and support, too many of whom already ing of time becomes necessary. which make survival possible, questioning is overdue, flawed, We need time, a time of break, can be excessive gifts that claim these identities appear and certainly any attempt will one in which the general mobil- isation can be stalled, a time that suspends the time of debt be messy, but that moment 324 Lorey, 2016. 325 Ibid. 322 Page, 196. 326 Widlok, 23. 323 Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966-1978 (New York: W.W. 327 Interestingly, Kairos is the name of a new “empathetic” Artificial Intel- 145 144 Norton, 1995). ligence facial recognition software. See www.kairos.com. to have been overcome with line can become a site wherein Conclusion a convenient case of amne- care can not only survive but Atlantis by W.H. Auden Being set on the idea sia for far too long. Dasein, thrive, then perhaps it will Of getting to Atlantis, You have discovered of course like curating, is characterized cross the digital divide and Only the Ship of Fools is Making the voyage this year, by ‘cura,’ positioning being plant roots in reality. As gales of abnormal force Are predicted, and that you together in the world as care, Must therefore be ready to Behave absurdly enough and being together with things To pass for one of The Boys, At least appearing to love as taking care, evoking the Hard liquor, horseplay and noise. phrase “sharing is caring” Should storms, as may well happen, Drive you to anchor a week here not in the sense of a fake In some old harbour-city Of Ionia, then speak smile from a retail associate or With her witty sholars, men Who have proved there cannot be the one-dimensional altruis- Such a place as Atlantis: Learn their logic, but notice tic “Californian ideology” of How its subtlety betrays Their enormous simple grief; kindness as counter-culture, Thus they shall teach you the ways To doubt that you may believe. but meaning that the world If, later, you run aground concerns us, particularly those Among the headlands of Thrace, Where with torches all night long who are compensated for A naked barbaric race Leaps frenziedly to the sound their concern. However, it is Of conch and dissonant gong: On that stony savage shore the “average everydayness of Strip off your clothes and dance, for Unless you are capable taking care of things becomes Of forgetting completely About Atlantis, you will blind to possibility and gets Never finish your journey. tranquilized,”328 as the weight Again, should you come to gay Carthage or Corinth, take part of the future in discourse, in In their endless gaiety; And if in some bar a tart, On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere commerce, and in art are com- As she strokes your hair, should say "This is Atlantis, dearie," pounded with an “an insuffi- Listen with attentiveness To her life-story: unless cient recognition of the specific You become acquainted now With each refuge that tries to temporality as it is built into Counterfeit Atlantis, how Will you recognise the true? successful sharing practic- Assuming you beach at last es,”329 drastically compressing Near Atlantis, and begin That terrible trek inland the possibility to perceive the Through squalid woods and frozen Thundras where all are soon lost; power and long term effects of If, forsaken then, you stand, Dismissal everywhere, every and everyday actions on Stone and now, silence and air, O remember the great dead individual or common fronts. And honour the fate you are, Travelling and tormented, If the Web functions Dialectic and bizarre. as a mirror reflecting the Stagger onward rejoicing; And even then if, perhaps tendencies of the offline, there Having actually got To the last col, you collapse is hope that the reflection can With all Atlantis shining Below you yet you cannot also work in reverse: if the on- Descend, you should still be proud Even to have been allowed Just to peep at Atlantis In a poetic vision: Give thanks and lie down in peace, 328 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time: A Translation of Sein und Zeit, trans. Having seen your salvation. Joan Stambaugh (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1996) 181-182. 147 146 329 Widlok, 194. CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS 6 CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS CITATIONS Aikens, Nick, and Stephen Citations Wright, eds. Toward a Lexicon of B Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. #’s Usership. Eindhoven: Van Abbe- Bailey, Stephanie. “OurSpace: Translated by Harry Zhorn. New III, Ashley Halsey. “Eyes down, museum, 2014. Take the Net in Your Hands.” York, NY: Schocken Books, minds elsewhere, ‘deadwalkers’ In You Are Here: Art After the 2007. are among us.” Washington Anderson, Matthew. Martin Internet, edited by Omar Kholeif, Post. September 27, 2015. Heidegger and Jean-Luc Nan- 128-35. Manchester: HOME Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Accessed March 02, 2018. cy on Community. MA diss., and SPACE, 2017. Art in the Age of its Technological University of Ottawa, 2010. Reproducibility, and Other Writings “2017 Internet Trends Report.” https://ruor.uottawa.ca/ Bajarin, Tim. “Why We Need on Media. Edited by Michael W. May 31, 2017. Accessed Febru- bitstream/10393/28642/1/ Liberal Arts In Technology’s Jennings, Brigid Doherty, and ary 03, 2018. http://www.kpcb. MR69081.PDF. Age Of Distraction.” Time. July Thomas Y. Levin. Cambridge, com/internet-trends. 24, 2017. Accessed March 18, MA: The Belknap Press of Har- An Incomplete History of Protest: 2018. http://time.com/4870642/ vard Uni. Press, 2008. Selections from the Whitney’s liberal-arts-technology-distrac- A Collection 1940–2017. Whitney tion/. Benjamin, Walter, et al. “The Abbate, Janet. Inventing the Museum of American Art. 99 Work of Art in the Age of . Cambridge, Mass: MIT Internet Gansevoort Street, New York, Bal, Mieke, and Edwin Janssen. Mechanical Reproduction.” Press, 1999. NY 10014. August 2017. Double Exposures: The Subject Illuminations. Edited and with an of Cultural Analysis. New York: Introduction by Hannah Arendt. “About.” Triple Canopy. Anderson, Maxwell L. Metrics Routledge, 1996. Translated by Harry Zohn, Accessed January 29, 2018. of Success in Art Museums. The Pimlico, 1999. https://www.canopycanopy- Getty Leadership Institute, J. Barabási, Albert-László. Linked: canopy.com/about. On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere Paul Getty Trust, 2004. the New Science of Networks. Berardi, Franco “Bifo”. “Trap of Plume, 2003. Identity and Delusion of Truth.” Ahmed, Saeed. “Fast Internet Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the In Authenticity? Observations and Access Becomes a Legal Right Mind. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Barbrook, Richard, and Andy Artistic Strategies in the Post-Digi- in Finland.” CNN. Accessed Inc., 1977. Cameron. “The Californian tal Age, edited by Barbara Cue- March 24, 2018. http://edition. Ideology.” Mute. September to and Bas Hendrikx, 136-43. cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/15/ “Art Museums By the Numbers 1995. Accessed March 03, Amsterdam: Valiz, 2017. finland.internet.rights/. 2016.” Association of Art Muse- 2018. http://www.metamute. um Directors. January 9, 2017. org/editorial/articles/califor- Bishop, Claire. “SWEEPING, Ahmed, Sara. “Making Fem- Accessed January 27, 2018. nian-ideology. DUMB, AND AGGRESSIVELY inist Points.” Feministkilljoys. https://aamd.org/our-members/ IGNORANT! REVISITING ‘DIG- September 11, 2013. Accessed from-the-field/art-museums-by- Benhabib, Seyla. “Feminist ITAL DIVIDE.’” In Mass Effect, January 20, 2018. http://fem- the-numbers-2016. theory and Hannah Arendt’s edited by Lauren Cornell and inistkilljoys.com/2013/09/11/ concept of public space.” Ed Halter, 353-55. MIT Press, making-feminist-points/. “Art Statistics.” 2017. Accessed History of the Human Sciences 2015. January 29, 2018. http://www. 6, no. 2 (1993): 97-114. 2011. havenforthedispossessed.org/. http://hhs.sagepub.com/con- tent/6/2/97. 151 150 Citations Blunt, Alison, and Cheryl McE- Butler, Judith. Excitable Speech: Chidambaram, Laku, and Lai Cramer, Florian. “What is wan. Postcolonial Geographies. A Politics of the Performative. Lai Tung. “Is Out of Sight, Out ‘Post-digital’?” A peer-reviewed New York: Continuum, 2002. New York: Routledge, 1997. of Mind? An Empirical Study journal about_. January 23, of Social Loafing in Technolo- 2014. Accessed February 01, Bookchin, Natalie, and Alexei gy-Supported Groups.” Infor- 2018. http://www.aprja.net/ Shulgin. “Introduction to net. C mation Systems Research 16, no. 2 what-is-post-digital/. art (1994-1999).” Introduction Castells, Manuel. “Public Space (June 2005): 149-68. to net.art (1994-1999). March & in the Information Society.” Christensson, Per. “DNS.” Crawford, Kate. “Asking the april 1999. Accessed February Public Space. 1994. Accessed DNS (Domain Name System) Oracle.” In Astro Noise: A Sur- 01, 2018. http://www.easylife. March 24, 2018. http://www. Definition. August 30, 2014. vival Guide for Living Under Total org/netart/. publicspace.org/en/text-li- Accessed January 15, 2018. Surveillance, 138. Yale Universi- brary/eng/1-espacios-publi- https://techterms.com/defini- ty Press, 2016. Bratton, Benjamin H. “Some cos-en-la-sociedad-informa- tion/dns. Trace Effects of the Post-An- cional. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “The thropocene: On Acceler- Christiansen, Keith. “Growing Urgency of Intersectionality.” ationist Geopolitical Aes- Castells, Manuel. “The Impact The Met’s Collection of Europe- TED: Ideas worth spreading. thetics.” E-flux. June 2013. of the Internet on Society: an Paintings.” The Metropolitan October 2016. Accessed March Accessed March 21, 2018. A Global Perspective.” MIT Museum of Art, i.e. The Met 14, 2018. https://www.ted.com/ http://www.e-flux.com/jour- Technology Review. September Museum. December 12, 2016. talks/kimberle_crenshaw_the_ nal/46/60076/some-trace-ef- 8, 2014. Accessed March 11, Accessed February 28, 2018. urgency_of_intersectionality. fects-of-the-post-anthropo- 2018. https://www.technolo- https://www.metmuseum.org/ cene-on-accelerationist-geopo- gyreview.com/s/530566/the-im- blogs/now-at-the-met/2016/ Cross, Charlotte. “African gov- litical-aesthetics/. pact-of-the-internet-on-society- european-paintings-grow- ernments versus social media:

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere a-global-perspective/. ing-the-collection. Why the uneasy relationship?” Brown, Jessica. “Future - Is The Conversation. March 06, social media bad for you? The Chamberlain, Colby. “The “Comments of Verizon and Ver- 2017. Accessed February 08, evidence and the unknowns.” Binder and the Server.” Art izon Wireless.” Department of 2018. http://theconversation. BBC. January 05, 2018. Journal Open. February 18, Commerce, December 6, 2010. com/african-governments-ver- Accessed March 10, 2018. 2012. Accessed January 29, Accessed January 15, 2018. sus-social-media-why-the-un- http://www.bbc.com/future/ 2018. http://artjournal.college- https://www.ntia.doc. easy-relationship-73292. story/20180104-is-social-me- art.org/?p=2644. gov/files/ntia/com- dia-bad-for-you-the-evidence- ments/100921457-0457-” Curran, James, Natalie Fenton, and-the-unknowns. Chan, Jennifer. “From Brows- and Des Freedman. Misunder- er to Gallery (and Back): The Connor, Michael. “Speaking in standing the Internet. New York: Bullock, Marcus, and Michael Commodification of Net Art Net Language: My Boyfriend Routledge, 2012. W. Jennings, eds. Walter Ben- 1990-2011.” Pool. December Came Back from the War.” jamin: Selected Writings Volume 28, 2011. http://pooool.info/ Rhizome. November 10, 2016. 1 1913-1926. Cambridge, MA: from-browser-to-gallery-and- Accessed February 13, 2018. D Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. back-the-commodification-of- https://rhizome.org/editori- Davis, Ben. “DIS Magazine, Press, 1996. net-art-1990-2011/. al/2016/nov/10/my-boyfriend- New York’s Hippest Art Media came-back-from-the-war/. Outlet, Is Launching a ‘PBS for 153 152 Gen Z’.” Artnet News. Decem- Droitcour, Brian, and William S. Fong, Greg, Dena Yago, Sean Frere-Jones, Sasha. “Triple Citations ber 04, 2017. Accessed March Smith. “The Digitized Museum.” Monahan, Chris Sherron, Canopy: “Slowing Down the 20, 2018. https://news.artnet. Art in America. September 1, and Emily Segal. “K-Hole #1 Internet”.” The New Yorker. com/art-world/dis-makes-the- 2016. Accessed November 20, FragMOREtation: A Report on June 17, 2012. Accessed pivot-to-video-1158761. 2017. http://www.artinameri- Visibility.” K-Hole, May 2011. March 26, 2018. https://www. camagazine.com/news-fea- Accessed March 13, 2018. newyorker.com/culture/cul- Dekker, Annet, ed. Lost and tures/magazines/the-digi- http://khole.net/. ture-desk/triple-canopy-slow- Living (In) Archives: Collectively tized-museum/. ing-down-the-internet. Shaping New Memories. Amster- Foucault, Michel. “Des Espace dam: Valiz, 2017. D’Souza, Aruna. “Worst-Case Autres.” Translated by Jay Mis- Scenarios: Contemporary kowiec. Architecture /Mouvement/ G Dekker, Annet. “Copying as a Art’s #Metoo Handwringing.” Continuité, October 1984. Galloway, Alexander R. Proto- Way to Start Something New: A Momus. March 22, 2018. Ac- col: How Control Exists after De- Conversation with Dušan Barok cessed March 26, 2018. http:// Foucault, Michel. Discipline and centralization. MIT Press, 2004. about Monoskop.” In Lost and momus.ca/worst-case-sce- Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Living (In) Archives: Collectively narios-contemporary-arts-me- Translated by Alan Sheridan. “Genre-Nonconforming: The Shaping New Memories, 212-27. too-handwringing/. New York: Vintage Books, DIS Edutainment Network.” Amsterdam: Valiz, 2017. 1977. De Young Museum. March 12, 2018. Accessed March 20, Derrida, Jacques, and Eric E Foucault, Michel. “The Mean- 2018. https://deyoung.famsf. Prenowitz. “Archive Fever: A Eleey, Peter. “What About Re- ing and Evolution of the Word org/exhibitions/genre-noncon- Freudian Impression.” Dia- sponsibility?” In Ten Fundamental Parrhesia.” Michel Foucault forming-dis-edutainment-net- critics 25, no. 2 (1995): 9-63. Questions of Curating, edited by Info. August 26, 2017. Ac- work.

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere doi:10.2307/465337. Jens Hoffman, 113. Mousse cessed March 21, 2018. https:// Publishing, 2013. foucault.info/doc/documents/ Gill, Rosalind, and Andy Pratt. Dewey, John. Experience and parrhesia/foucault-dt1-word- “Precarity and Cultural Work In Nature. Dover, 1958. “Exhibition.” Merriam-Webster. parrhesia-en-html. the Social Factory? Immaterial January 27, 2018. Accessed Labour, Precariousness and “Digital Technology.” Dictionary February 09, 2018. https:// Fraser, Andrea. “From the Cultural Work.” On Curating: of American History. 2003. www.merriam-webster.com/ Critique of Institutions to an Precarious Labour in the Field of Accessed February 03, 2018. dictionary/exhibition. Institution of Critique.” Artforum, Art, no. 16 (2013): 26-40. http:// http://www.encyclopedia.com/ September 2005, 100-106. www.on-curating.org/files/oc/ history/dictionaries-thesaurus- dateiverwaltung/old%20Issues/ es-pictures-and-press-releas- F Frederici, Sylvia. “Precarious ONCURATING_Issue16.pdf. es/digital-technology. Filipovic, Elena. “When Exhi- Labor: A Feminist Viewpoint.” In bitions Become Form: On the the Middle of a Whirlwind. July Groys, Boris. In the Flow. Lon- Drabble, Barnaby, Federica History of the Artist as Curator.” 1, 2008. Accessed February 15, don, UK: Verso, 2016. Martini, and Sibylle Omlin, eds. Mousse Magazine. August 24, 2018. https://inthemiddleofthe- “Performing the Exhibition.” On 2015. Accessed February 09, whirlwind.wordpress.com/pre- Groys, Boris. “The Truth of Art.” Curating, no. 15 (2012). http:// 2018. http://moussemagazine. carious-labor-a-feminist-view- E-flux. March 2016. Accessed www.on-curating.org/. it/taac0/. point/. March 28, 2018. http://ww- 155 154 Citations w.e-flux.com/journal/71/60513/ Graham, Beryl, and Sarah nomics: Why Smaller Galleries ing Hsieh. Out of Now: The Life- the-truth-of-art/. Cook. “Space, Materiality, and Are Forced to Gamble.” Artnet works of Tehching Hsieh. London: the Audience.” Beryl Gra- News. June 13, 2017. Accessed Live Art Development Agency Goldstein, Andrew. “Has Art ham and Sarah Cook (2010). March 18, 2018. https://news. and The MIT Press, 2009. Basel Become the Facebook Rethinking Curating - Art after artnet.com/market/art-fair-eco- of the Art World? An Interview New Media. 2010. Accessed nomics-small-galleries-gam- Hefty, Kathleen. “Liam Gil- With Marc Spiegler.” Artnet February 24, 2018. http://www. ble-989555. lick.” MUSE Magazine. 2016. News. March 19, 2018. Ac- immersence.com/. Accessed February 12, 2018. cessed March 20, 2018. https:// Halter, Ed. “Foreward.” In You http://www.musemagazine.it/ news.artnet.com/market/marc- Graj, Simon. “Skill Set of a Are Here Art After the Internet, liam-gillick/. spiegler-art-basel-facebook-in- Brand Curator.” Forbes. April edited by Omar Kholeif, 11- terview-1235456. 16, 2012. Accessed March 03, 13. Manchester: HOME and Heidegger, Martin. Being 2018. https://www.forbes.com/ SPACE, 2017. and Time: A Translation of Sein Goldstein, Andrew. “Team sites/simongraj/2012/04/16/ und Zeit. Translated by Joan Gallery’s Jose Freire on Why skill-set-of-a-brand-curator/#- Hamerman, Sarah. “Catalog- Stambaugh. Albany, NY: State He Is Quitting Art Fairs for 6d0a7905ee18. ing Plunder: Thoughts on the University of New York, 1996. Good.” Artnet News. March Digital Text-Sharing Under- 06, 2018. Accessed March 30, Green, Lelia. The Internet: An ground.” LIS Theory. November Heimlich, Russell. “Internet 2018. https://news.artnet.com/ Introduction to New Media. New 20, 2014. Accessed March Gains on Television as Pub- market/jose-freire-art-fairs-in- York, NY: Berg, 2010. 26, 2018. http://listheory. lic’s Main News Source.” Pew terview-1235624. prattsils.org/cataloging-plun- Research Center for the People Greene, Rachel. “Web Work: A der-thoughts-on-the-digi- and the Press. January 04, Goode, Luke. Jürgen Habermas: History of Internet Art.” Artfo- tal-text-sharing-underground/. 2011. Accessed February 12,

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere Democracy and the Public Sphere. rum, May 2000, 162-90. 2018. http://www.people-press. London: Pluto Press, 2005. Haraway, Donna. Situated org/2011/01/04/internet-gains- Grossman, Lawrence K. The Knowledges: The Science Question on-television-as-publics-main- Goriunova, Olga, and Alexei Electronic Republic: Reshaping in Feminism and the Privilege of news-source/. Shulgin. “From Art on Networks Democracy in the Information Age. Partial Perspective. Vol. 14, No. to Art on Platforms: (Case Stud- New York: Viking, 1995. 3. Feminist Studies, 1988. Hempel, Jessi. “Social Me- ies: Runme.org, Micromusic. dia Made the Arab Spring, net, and Udaff.com).” In Cu- Groys, Boris. “Politics of Instal- Harney, Stefano, and Fred But Couldnt Save It.” Wired. rating Immateriality: The Work of lation.” Politics of Installation Moten. The Undercommons: January 26, 2016. Accessed the Curator in the Age of Network - Journal #2 January 2009 - Fugitive Planning & Black Study. February 08, 2018. https:// Systems, edited by Joasia Krysa, e-flux. January 2009. Accessed Wivenhoe: Minor Compositions, www.wired.com/2016/01/ 237-65. Autonomedia, 2006. January 29, 2018. http://ww- 2013. social-media-made-the-arab- w.e-flux.com/journal/02/68504/ spring-but-couldnt-save-it/. Graham, Beryl, and Sarah politics-of-installation/. Harris, Jonathan, ed. Global- Cook. Rethinking Curating: Art ization and Contemporary Art. Hindman, Matthew Scott. After New Media. Cambridge, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. The Myth of Digital Democracy. MA: MIT Press, 2010. H Princeton: Princeton University Halperin, Julia. “Art Fair Eco- Heathfield, Adrian, and Tehch- Press, 2009. 157 156 cessed March 30, 2018. http:// from the US to Hong Kong.” Citations Hobson, Ben. “Galleries around variety.com/2018/tv/news/ South China Morning Post. July the world are finally “starting trump-budget-eliminates-pbs- 05, 2016. Accessed March 11, L Lanoix, Monique. “Labor as to take digital art serious- nea-funding-1202695205/. 2018. http://www.scmp.com/ Embodied Practice: The Les- ly”.” Dezeen. February 17, news/hong-kong/health-en- sons of Care Work.” In 2015. Accessed March 15, Johnston, Megan. “Slow Curat- vironment/article/1984534/ Hypatia: , 2018. https://www.dezeen. ing: Re-thinking and Extending revealed-toxic-trail-e-waste- A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 85-100. 1st ed. Vol. 28. Hypatia, com/2015/02/17/movie-gal- Socially Engaged Art in the leads-us-hong-kong. 2013. leries-around-world-start- Context of Northern Ireland.” ing-to-take-digital-art-serious- On Curating: After the turn: art Kholeif, Omar. “Preamble.” In Lauzen, Martha M. “It’s a Man’s ly/. education beyond the museum, no. You Are Here Art After the Internet, (Celluloid) World: Portrayals of 24 (December 2014): 23-33. edited by Omar Kholeif, 11- Female Characters in the 100 Holt, Elizabeth Basye Gilmore. 13. Manchester: HOME and Top Films of 2017.” Center for The Triumph of Art for the Pub- Johnston, Michael. Publication. SPACE, 2017. the Study of Women in Televi- lic, 1785-1848: The Emerging Department of Political Sci- sion and Film. June 16, 2016. Role of Exhibitions and Critics. ence, Colgate University. 2016. Kircz, Joost, and Adriaan Van Accessed March 21, 2018. Princeton: Princeton University Accessed March 10, 2018. Der Weel. The Unbound Book. https://womenintvfilm.sdsu. Press, 1983. http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/ Amsterdam: Amsterdam Uni- edu/research/. groups/public/documents/un/ versity Press, 2013. Holub, Renate. Antonio Gramsci: unpan010193.pdf. Ledecouvreur, Adriana. “Tran- Beyond Marxism and Postmodern- Knight, Christopher. “MOCA zit.ro.” Temporary Art Review. ism. Routledge, 1999. 162. Jones, Caitlin. “My Art World Is Fires Its Chief Curator.” Los April 06, 2017. Accessed March Bigger Than Your Art World.” Angeles Times. March 13, 22, 2018. http://temporaryartre- On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere “How we started and where we The Believer. December 01, 2018. Accessed March 14, view.com/tranzit-ro/. are today.” Google. Accessed 2005. Accessed January 22, 2018. http://www.latimes.com/ January 22, 2018. https://www. 2018. https://www.believermag. entertainment/arts/la-et-cm- Limerick, Brigid, Tracey Bur- google.com/intl/en/about/ com/issues/200512/?read=arti- moca-fires-molesworth-vergne- gess-Limerick, and Margaret our-story/. cle_jones. 20180313-story.html. Grace. “The politics of inter- viewing: power relations and Huberman, Anthony. “Pay Kuo, Lily. “Tanzania is threat- accepting the gift.” Attention.” Frieze. June 1, K ening more citizens with jail for International 2015. Accessed February 20, Kaplan, Zachary. “A History of insulting the president on social Journal of Qualitative Studies in , no. 4 (1996). 2018. https://frieze.com/article/ Internet Art.” Very Interactive | A media.” September 15, 2016. Education 9 pay-attention. History of Internet Art. January Accessed February 08, 2018. Lind, Maria. “Why Medi- 13, 2016. Accessed February https://qz.com/782239/five-tan- ate Art?” In 03, 2018. http://veryinteractive. zanians-were-charged-with-cy- Ten Fundamental , edited by J net/resources/history-of-inter- bercrime-for-insulting-pres- Questions of Curating Jens Hoffman, 85-91. Mousse Johnson, Ted. “Trump’s Budget net-art. ident-john-magufuli-on-so- Publishing, 2013. Again Proposes Elimination cial-media/. of Public TV, Arts Funding.” Karacs, Sarah. “Revealed: the Variety. February 12, 2018. Ac- toxic trail of e-waste that leads 159 158 Lorey, Isabell. “Precarisation, Mauri, Maurizio, Pietro Cipres- nytimes.com/2015/11/19/fash- Morton, Tom. “A brief history Citations Indebtedness, Giving Time so, Anna Balgera, Marco Villa- ion/a-feminist-t-shirt-resurfac- of the word ‘curator’ | Art | Interlacing Lines Across Maria mira, and Giuseppe Riva. “Why es-from-the-70s.html. Agenda.” Phaidon. September Eichhorn’s 5 weeks, 25 days, Is Facebook So Successful? 9, 2011. Accessed January 24, 175 hours.” Edited by Maria Psychophysiological Measures Metahaven. “Black Transpar- 2018. http://de.phaidon.com/ Eichorn. 5 weeks, 25 days, 175 Describe a Core Flow State ency - The Right To Know In agenda/art/articles/2011/sep- hours, 2016, 38-50. While Using Facebook.” CY- The Age Of Mass Surveillance.” tember/09/a-brief-history-of- BERPSYCHOLOGY, BEHAVIOR, Bureau europa. March 2013. the-word-curator/. Luke, Ben. “Nairy Baghramian: AND SOCIAL NETWORKING 14, Accessed March 13, 2018. check your privilege.” The Art no. 12 (2011). doi:10.1089/cy- https://www.bureau-europa.nl/ Mouffe, Chantal. “Critique as Newspaper. May 31, 2017. ber.2010.0377. en/manifestations/black_trans- Counter-Hegemonic Inter- Accessed February 12, 2018. parency_the_right_to_know_in_ vention.” Eipcp. April 2008. https://www.theartnewspaper. Mbembe, Achille. “The Power the_age_of_mass_surveillance/. Accessed February 17, 2018. com/feature/nairy-baghramian- of the Archive and its Limits .” http://eipcp.net/transver- check-your-privilege. In Refiguring the Archive, edited Metahaven. “Captives of the sal/0808/mouffe/en/base_edit. by Carolyn Hamilton, Verne Cloud: Part I.” Captives of the Harris, Jane Taylor, Michele Cloud: Part I - Journal #37 Mouffe, Chantal. “Deliberative M Pickover, Graeme Reid, and September 2012 - e-flux. Sep- Democracy or Agonistic Plural- Mansoux, Aymeric. “How Deep Razia Saleh, 19-26. Capetown, tember 2012. http://www.e-flux. ism?” Social Research 66, no. 3 is Your Source?” In Lost and South Africa: Kluwer Academic com/journal/37/61232/captives- (1999): 745-58. Living (In) Archives: Collectively Publishers , 2002. of-the-cloud-part-i/. Shaping New Memories, edited by Mouffe, Chantal. “Deliberative Annet Dekker, 80-97. Amster- McLuhan, Marshall. The Me- Morgan, Jessica. “What is a Democracy or Agonistic Plural-

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere dam: Valiz, 2017. dium is the Massage. Edited by Curator?” In Ten Fundamental ism.” Political Science Series, no. Jerome Agel. London: Penguin Questions of Curating, edited by 72 (December 2000). “Marx’s Theory of Commod- Books, 2008. Jens Hoffman, 21-29. Mousse ity Fetishism.” Libcom.org. Publishing, 2013. Moyo, Last. “Rethinking the 2017. Accessed March 03, Medak, Tomislav. “The Future Information Society: A Decolo- 2018. https://libcom.org/li- After the Library: UbuWeb and Morozov, Evgeny. “Internets nial and Border Gnosis of the brary/i-marxs-theory-commodi- Monoskop’s Radical Gestures.” Past.” Canadian Centre for Digital Divide in Africa and the ty-fetishism. Edited by Tomislav Medak and Architecture. December 2017. Global South.” In Theorizing Marcell Mars. In Javna Knjižnica/ Accessed March 20, 2018. Digital Divides, edited by Mas- Maure, Marc. “The Exhibition Public Library, 121-37. Zagreb: https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/ simo Ragnedda and Glenn W. as Theatre- On the Staging WHW & Multimedia Institute, issues/3/technology-some- Muschert, 133-45. New York, of Museum Objects.” Nordisk 2015. times-falls-short/55160/inter- NY: Routledge, 2018. Museologi, no. 2 (1995): 155-68. nets-past. Accessed February 12, 2018. Meltzer, Marisa. “A Feminist “Museum Facts.” Ameri- https://www.journals.uio.no/ T-Shirt Resurfaces From the Morozov, Evgeny. The Net can Alliance of Museums. index.php/museolog/article/ ‘70s.” The New York Times. Delusion: How Not to Liberate the 2013. Accessed January 27, viewFile/3729/3186. November 18, 2015. Accessed World. London: Penguin, 2012. 2018. http://www.aam-us. March 11, 2018. https://www. org/about-museums/muse- 161 160 um-facts. Paul, Christiane. “Flexible Statista. Accessed January Citations Contexts, Democratic Filtering 22, 2018. https://www.statista. P and Computer-Aided Curating: com/markets/424/topic/537/ N Page, Barbara. “Women Writ- Models for Online Curatorial demographics-use/. ers and the Restive Text: Femi- Nancy, Jean-Luc. Being Singular Practice.” In Curating Immaterial- nism, Experimental Writing and Plural. Edited by Werner Har- ity: The Work of the Curator in the Provan, Alexander, ed. The Hypertext.” nacher and David E. Wellbery. Postmodern Culture Age of Network Systems, edited by Binder and the Server. New York, , no. 2 (January 1996). http:// Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. 6 Joasia Krysa, 81. Autonomedia, NY: Canopy Canopy Canopy, pmc.iath.virginia.edu/text-only/ Press, 2000. 2006. 2012. issue.196/page.196. Nancy, Jean-Luc, and Peter Perez, Carlota. “The Double Paglen, Trevor. The Last Pictures. Connor. The Inoperative Commu- Bubble at the Turn of the Q New York: Creative Time nity. Minneapolis, MN: Universi- Century: Technological Roots Quaranta, Domenico. “The First Books, 2012. ty of Minnesota Press, 2012. and Structural Implications.” Life of Net Art: UBERMORGEN, Cambridge Journal of Economics JODI, Vuk Cosic, Olia Lialina.” Panova, Tayana, and Alejandro Noys, Benjamin. Malign Veloci- 33, no. 4 (2009): 779-805. Spike Art Magazine. October Lleras. “Avoidance or Bore- ties: Accelerationism & Capitalism. 20, 2016. Accessed February dom: Negative Mental Health Winchester, UK: Zero Books, Petrešin-Bachelez, Nataša. 01, 2018. https://www.spike- Outcomes Associated with Use 2014. Decolonizing Museums. PDF. artmagazine.com/en/articles/ of Information and Communi- L’Internationale Online, 2015. netart. cation Technologies Depend on

O Users’ Motivations.” Comput- Petrešin-Bachelez, Nataša. Quaranta, Domenico. “What’s (May “Olia Lialina interview Ljublja- ers in Human Behavior 58 “For Slow Institutions.” October (Really) Specific about New Me- 2016): 249-58. doi:https://doi. On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere na.” Interview by Josephine 2017. Accessed March 24, dia Art? Curating in the Infor- org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.12.062. Bosma. August 5, 1997. 2018. http://www.e-flux.com/ mation Age.” Rhizome. Decem- Accessed February 11, 2018. journal/85/155520/for-slow-in- ber 6, 2012. Accessed March Pardes, Arielle. “The Rise of the http://www.nettime.org/ stitutions/. 24, 2018. http://rhizome.org/ Made-for-Instagram Museum.” Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9708/ editorial/2012/dec/6/whats-re- Wired. September 27, 2017. msg00009.html. Pettman, Dominic. Infinite Dis- ally-specific-about-new-me- Accessed March 24, 2018. traction: Paying Attention to Social dia-art-curating/. https://www.wired.com/story/ Olson, Marisa. “PostInternet.” Media. Cambridge, UK: Polity, selfie-factories-instagram-mu- FOAM Magazine, no. 29 (2012): 2016. Quinn, Ben. “Tate artist in seum/. 59-63. residence quits, claiming gallery Playgrounds: Reinventing the is failing women.” The Guard- Pasquinelli, Matteo. “Cultural O’Neill, Paul, and Claire Square. Museo Nacional Centro ian. March 07, 2018. Accessed Labour and Immaterial Ma- Doherty, eds. Locating the de Arte Reina Sofia. Calle Santa March 11, 2018. https://www. chines.” In Curating Immaterial- Producers: Durational Approaches Isabel 52 Madrid 28012. April theguardian.com/artandde- ity: The Work of the Curator in the to Public Art. Amsterdam: Valiz, 30 - September 22, 2014. sign/2018/mar/07/tate-modern- , edited by 2011. Age of Network Systems artist-quits-saying-gallery-is- Joasia Krysa, 267-75. Autono- Peng, Daven, and Lodovica failing-women. media, 2006. Biagi. “Demographics & Use.” 163 162 Ross, Kristin. “French Quo- Citations R tidian.” In The Art of the Every- Slater, Josephine Berry. “Un- Steigler, Bernard. “Relation- Raqs Media Collective. “Is the day: The Quotidian in Postwar assignable Leakage: A Crisis al Ecology and the Digital World Sleeping, Sleepless, or French Culture, edited by Lynn of Measure and Judgement in Pharmakon.” Culture Machine 13 Awake or Dreaming?” E-flux. Gumpert, 19-29. New York, NY: Immaterial (Art) Production.” In (2013): 1-19. www.culturema- June 2014. Accessed March New York Uni. Press, 1997. Curating Immateriality: The Work chine.net. 23, 2018. http://www.e-flux. of the Curator in the Age of Net- com/journal/56/60349/is-the- Routley, Nick. “Map: Internet work Systems, edited by Joasia Stewart, Elizabeth. Catastrophe world-sleeping-sleepless-or- Censorship Around the World.” Krysa, 137-44. Autonomedia, and Survival: Walter Benjamin and awake-or-dreaming/. Visual Capitalist. September 2006. Psychoanalysis. New York, NY: 30, 2017. Accessed March 24, Continuum, 2010. Raunig, Gerald. “Instituent 2018. http://www.visualcap- Solnit, Rebecca. “Protest and Practices.” Eipcp. 2006. Ac- italist.com/internet-censor- Persist: Why Giving Up Hope Steyerl, Hito. “Politics of Art: cessed March 22, 2018. http:// ship-map/. is Not an Option.” The Guard- Contemporary Art and the eipcp.net/transversal/0106/ ian. March 13, 2017. Accessed Transition to Post-Democracy.” raunig/en/base_edit. Scholz, Trebor. “The Partici- March 14, 2018. https://www. In The Wretched of the Screen, 52. patory Challenge.” In Curating theguardian.com/world/2017/ Sternberg Press, 2012. Reilly, Maura. “Toward a Immateriality: The Work of the mar/13/protest-per- Curatorial Activism.” 2018. Ac- Curator in the Age of Network sist-hope-trump-activism-an- Steyerl, Hito. “Too Much World: cessed March 11, 2018. http:// Systems, edited by Josia Krysa, ti-nuclear-movement. Is the Internet Dead?” In The www.maurareilly.com/pdf/es- 189-204. Autonomedia, 2006. Internet Does Not Exist, 11-26. says/CIAFessay.pdf. Solnit, Rebecca. “The Visibility Sternberg Press, 2015. Wars.” In Mass Effect: Art and the On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere Rich, Adrienne. On Lies, Secrets, S Internet in the Twenty-first Century, and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966- Sharma, Amol. “Big Media edited by Lauren Cornell and T 1978. New York: W.W. Norton, Needs to Embrace Digital Shift- Ed Halter, 243-53. Cambridge, Take Your Pills. Directed by 1995. Not Fight It.” The Wall Street MA: MIT Press, 2015. Alison Klayman. Take Your Pills. Journal. June 22, 2016. Ac- March 9, 2018. Roberts, John. Revolutionary cessed March 20, 2018. https:// Srnicek, Nick. Platform Capi- Time and the Avant-Garde. Lon- www.wsj.com/articles/big-me- talism. Cambridge, UK: Polity, Taylor, Adam. “47 percent of don: Verso, 2015. dia-needs-to-embrace-digital- 2017. the world’s population now shiftnot-fight-it-1466568061. use the Internet, study says.” Rogoff, Irit. “Starting in the Stagg, Natasha. “The The Washington Post. No- Middle: NGOs and Emergent Sheikh, Simon. “Circula- Path-breaking, Piss-taking Leg- vember 22, 2016. Accessed Forms For Cultural Institutions.” tion and Withdrawal, Part II: acy of DIS Magazine.” Dazed. March 11, 2018. https://www. In Public Servants: Art and the Cri- Withdrawal.” E-flux. March February 22, 2018. Accessed washingtonpost.com/news/ sis of the Common Good, edited 2015. Accessed March 22, March 26, 2018. http://www. worldviews/wp/2016/11/22/47- by Johanna Burton, Shannon 2018. http://www.e-flux. dazeddigital.com/art-photog- percent-of-the-worlds-popu- Jackson, and Dominic Willis- com/journal/63/60924/ raphy/article/39117/1/dis-mag- lation-now-use-the-internet- don. MIT Press, 2016. circulation-and-withdraw- azine-bernadette-corpora- users-study-says/?utm_term=. al-part-ii-withdrawal/. tion-print-video-rip. b3df664540b9. 165 164 first-look-review/. (2006): 41-49. doi:10.1080/1059 Citations 8650.1990.11510141. Taylor, Astra. The People’s Weiss, Dan. “What Makes a Platform: Taking Back Power and V Museum Successful?” Yale Culture in the Digital Age. New Vale, Ronald D. “The Value of Insights. August 3, 2016. Y York: Picador, 2015. Asking Questions.” Molecu- Accessed January 27, 2018. Yin, Jennifer, Kathryn Jaller, lar Biology of the Cell. March https://insights.som.yale.edu/ Sarah Bailey Hogarty, and Willa Tett, Gillian. “We’d Be Lost 15, 2013. Accessed March insights/what-makes-muse- Koerner. “Everyone’s a Curator: Without GPS.” Financial 14, 2018. https://www.ncbi. um-successful. Do Museums Still Matter?” Lec- Times. May 20, 2016. Ac- nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/ ture, SXSW Interactive, Omni cessed February 11, 2018. PMC3596240/. Widlok, Thomas. Anthropology Downtown, San Jacinto, March https://www.ft.com/con- and the Economy of Sharing. New 9, 2014. Accessed February tent/35180898-1d44-11e6- Vilkuna, Janne, and Pirjo York, NY: Routledge, 2017. 15, 2018. https://schedule. a7bc-ee846770ec15. Vuorinen. “Museums as mirrors sxsw.com/2014/events/event_ of society: a case study of Williams, J. B. “Going Online: IAP20388. “The Art Happens Here: Net Finnish Museums.” The Museum The Internet.” SpringerLink. Art Anthology Launch.” New Review 2, no. 1 (2017). https:// January 01, 1970. Accessed Museum. October 2016. themuseumreview.atavist.com/ January 22, 2018. https://doi. Z Accessed February 03, 2018. vol2no1finlandmuseums. org/10.1007/978-3-319-49088- Žerovc, Beti.When Attitudes Be- https://www.newmuseum.org/ 5_22. come the Norm: The Contemporary calendar/view/1106/the-art- Virno, Paolo., A Grammar of the Curator and Institutional Art. Lju- happens-here-net-art-antholo- Multitude. New York: Semiotex- Wolffe, Richard. “The Evil bljana: Igor Zabel Association gy-launch-1. te, 2004. Genius of Cambridge Analytica for Culture and Theory, 2017.

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere Was to Exploit Those We Trust Tokumitsu, Miya. “The Politics Vishmidt, Marina. “Twilight of Most.” The Guardian. March of the Curation Craze.” The the Widgets.” In Curating Imma- 21, 2018. Accessed March 22, New Republic. August 24, teriality: The Work of the Curator 2018. https://www.theguardian. 2015. Accessed March 18, in the Age of Network Systems, com/uk-news/2018/mar/21/ 2018. https://newrepublic.com/ edited by Joasia Krysa, 45. cambridge-analytica-face- article/122589/when-did-we- Autonomedia, 2006. book-exploited-trust. all-become-curators. Work, Sean. “Kissmetrics Trend, Nick. “Louvre Abu Dha- W Blog.” How Loading Time bi: first look inside the £1 billion Wallis, Claudia. “A Textbook Affects Your Bottom Line. art museum in the desert.” The Dilemma: Digital or Paper?” Accessed March 20, 2018. Telegraph. November 07, 2017. The Hechinger Report. August https://blog.kissmetrics.com/ Accessed January 30, 2018. 23, 2017. Accessed March 19, loading-time/. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ 2018. http://hechingerreport. Worts, Douglas. “Measuring travel/destinations/middle-east/ org/textbook-dilemma-digi- Museum Meaning: A Critical united-arab-emirates/abu-dha- tal-paper/. Assessment Framework.” Jour- bi/articles/louvre-abu-dhabi- nal of Museum Education 31, no. 1 167 166 IMAGE INDEX IMAGE INDEX IMAGE INDEX IMAGE INDEX IMAGE INDEX IMAGE INDEX IMAGE INDEX IMAGE INDEX IMAGE INDEX IMAGE INDEX IMAGE INDEX IMAGE INDEX IMAGE INDEX IMAGE INDEX IMAGE INDEX 7 IMAGE INDEX IMAGE INDEX IMAGE INDEX IMAGE INDEX IMAGE INDEX IMAGE INDEX IMAGE INDEX IMAGE INDEX IMAGE INDEX IMAGE INDEX IMAGE INDEX IMAGE INDEX Image Index P. 59 P. 63

© Roy Export SAS Still from the 1940’s film The Great Dictator

P. 28 Transatlantic Sub-Marine Cables Reaching Land, VSNL International, Avon, New Jersey

These VSNL sub-marine telecommunications cables extend 8,037.4 miles across the Atlantic Ocean. Capable of transmitting over 60 million simultaneous voice conversations, these underwater fiber- optic cables stretch from Saunton Sands in the United Kingdom to the coast of New Jersey. The cables run below ground and emerge directly into the VSNL International headquarters, where signals are amplified Each year, hundreds of thousands of tons of and split into distinctive wavelengths electronic waste is shipped from Europe and enabling transatlantic phone calls and the USA into developing countries. A large internet transmissions.

On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere proportion ends up in Ghana. An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, 2007 A topography of e-waste, Ghana, 2012 Photograph by Taryn Simon. Photograph by Kai Löffelbein from his series Ctrl-X.

P. 16

Detail from GRAMMATRON (Animated GIF Remix), 2017 Artwork by Mark Amerika.

171 170 P. 83 P. 90 Image Index

National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. Seoul, South Korea. Screenshot by Mario Santamaria from The Phantom in the Mirror, 2013 - ongoing.

P. 96

Graphic reproduced from Hannah Arendt’s 1977 book The Life of the Mind.

NSA-Tapped Undersea Cables, North Pacifi c Ocean, 2016 Photograph by Trevor Paglen. On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere

P. 137

Still from the 1976 film Network.

173 172