CAT 2010: Curating Technocultures

Published: Feb. 3, 2010, 11 a.m.

This paper sets out to discuss issues of curation of media arts and other emergent technologised practices (e.g. digital performance). Through examining a range of media art festivals, exhibitions and events from the 1990s to 2010, this paper will argue against the curation of media arts as practices that are divorced from the contemporary arts scene. I will suggest that this curatorial approach of positive discrimination can lead to: a) establishing emergent technologised practices as peripheral to other, often more popular or mainstream, (sub-)cultures (and thus markets) and, b) technological determinism (in this case, focus on the technologies at the expense of content, social impact and/or affect).