Curating.info

Digital Curatorship: Public Programming in the Information Age is a Connecting Principle event at Culture Lab, Newcastle University, organised in collaboration with the School of Arts and Cultures, 12th February 2008.

This mini-symposium is an opportunity to engage with the constantly evolving nature of practice in the curatorship of digital and new media art. We (Newcastle University) aim to do this by bringing together some of the different constituencies at work in the field both in the North East and beyond, and by providing a platform for different perspectives and informed debate. The event will comprise a series of short presentations from practitioners within the field followed by wider panel discussions including further invited participants.

Likely themes/questions to be addressed might include:

- The natures and identities of digital curatorship (products and processes, changing ideas of the 'artwork'/'artefact', visitor experiences)
- Different professional perspectives on digital curatorship and programming, e.g. those of the artist, artist-curator, curator, technician, educator, artist-educator, conservator, academic etc.
- Digital art and sound/music
- Digital curatorship/programming, installation and site specificity
- Net art and the gallery/exhibition
- Digital curatorship/programming in urban contexts
- Conserving and managing new media in art museum/gallery and exhibition contexts

Speakers include: Chris Whitehead, Michelle Kasprzak, Alistair Robinson, Kirk Woolford, Sarah Cook,
Atau Tanaka, Beryl Graham, Sally Jane Norman.

The panel discussions will pick up and expand upon key themes, issues and ideas which emerge in the preceding talks and will allow for dialogue between speakers and audience members.

The event is linked into the curricula for the postgraduate programmes in Art Museum and Gallery Studies and Art Museum and Gallery Education, but is also open more generally: to staff and students from other programmes, other universities, artists and cultural sector professionals from the region and beyond.

The proceedings may be disseminated in various ways -- through digital recording and streaming and possibly through web or print publication.

Register to attend this free event here.

Links:
Culture Lab
Connecting Principle
Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies
Fine Art Department

The eighth Dutch Electronic Art Festival (DEAF) opens today in Rotterdam. One of the most important international art and technology festivals, DEAF is organized every two years by V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media. This is a special year, as V2_ is also celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary during DEAF07 with a night of music and performances at Staal in Rotterdam on Saturday, April 14. The theme this year is Interact or Die!

Of special interest to curators is the GLOBAL BENDING: Opening Creative Space - Rooting Curatorial Media Practice in China panel discussion that will take place on Friday, 13 April, from 14.00 - 16.30. I am an invited respondent to this panel and look forward to engaging with the panelists. If you are unable to make it to Rotterdam, you can watch live streams for many of the events, including this panel on curating.

Download the full DEAF 07 programme (PDF file) here, read more about how to tune into the live streams here, and follow along on the DEAF 07 blog here.

To start off the new month (and I promise none of these will lead you to a silly April Fool's joke) I thought I'd provide a little "pick 'n mix" of what I've browsed lately that is of interest to curators:

• Hanne Mugaas and Cory Arcangel have compiled (curated!) a very interesting list of art videos on YouTube, as part of a larger project entitled Art Since 1960 (According to the Internet). Definitely worth a look, set aside a bit of time if you dare click here!


• Interviews on curating.info are coming up in the next few months (they are still in the incubator!) but for now go read this good (though brief) interview with curator Lu Jie on Artkrush.


• In a détournement of the office football pool, Leisure Arts has created a championship pool for curators. While I'm unsure how it works precisely (sports pools are clear since there are matches of one team versus another, and I'm uncertain how one curator is pitted against another) it is an amusing concept nonetheless. Check it out here.


• The Museums and the Web conference is in just ten days! Read the conference abstracts and full papers here.


• d/Lux/MediaArts has just released the Coding Cultures Handbook, which offers some interesting perspectives on digital tools, social networks, and open labs - all concepts which have, will, and in some cases, truly should influence curatorial and museological models.

Méta Femmes br@nchées 05 – Nat Muller
October 5th 2006, 10AM, at Studio XX

StudioXX celebrates its 10th birthday under the auspices of Event X, 2 days of conferences, round table discussions and performances. In connection with this event StudioXX will host visitor Nat Muller to present her own curatorial practice.

Nat Muller will be at StudioXX in the morning, on the 5th of October to host an intimate talk on her curatorial work. Her primary research directions have concentrated on the intersections between aesthetics, technology and politics, as well as new media and art practices in the Middle East. Nat will update us on her position as curator working between Europe and the Middle East, bringing up questions emerging from this networked practice which is, according to her, often schizophrenic. You are cordially invited to take part in this discussion.

In order to orient and animate the discussion we have invited active local curator Alice Ming Wai Jim who has recently returned to Montreal after working for 3 years in conservation at the Vancouver International Center for Contemporary Asian Art (Center A). Alice is now a professor at Concordia University. Her main fields of interest include contemporary Asian art, the art of the Diaspora, new medias, theories of representation, globalization, urban studies and curatorial practices. The links between the practices and orientations of Alice Min Wai Jim and Nat Muller promise to foster a dynamic discussion between these two interventionists and the attending public.

The discussion will be in English. $5, free admission for members. Register: programmation@studioxx.org or call (514) 845-7934

Studio XX
338 Terrasse Saint-Denis, Montréal (Québec) H2X 1E8 Canada