On Curation as Movement of Labor
1. To curate is to bring things to the forefront while leaving other things at the back. These things are parts within a work of art and wholes between artworks.
2. Artistry is creation of a whole with work from parts. Its result’s public display as artwork makes it recognized as work of art. Curation displays art. It evaluates parts within wholes that are different from parts artistry uses to assemble wholes.
3. Curation and creation are different engagements with art. An artist creates a whole while the curator looks at its parts. Both engagements involve work and create work.
4. Curation consumes wholes according to value judgments and selects artworks based on their parts to display. This produces work through consumption of wholes for consumption of wholes while hiding its selective process between parts. Creation hides no such thing because it does not engage with artworks alone.
5. Curation is the simultaneous emphasization and concealment of value judgments.
6. Desire to apply these value judgments is the starting point of curation. These values change upon fulfilling this desire which makes curation itself its raison d’être.
7. To curate is to seek out parts and wholes for evaluation. Selection considers curatorial values and difference from these values in time and display. It’s concerned with present selection as itself and as different self from past and future selection while looking at selection as difference from past and future selections. Values are concealed and emphasized in selection in time that creates selves different from selves created for display with emphasis and concealment. Difference in time and display harkens back to the past and what isn’t displayed to imagine itself in the future on display that is and isn’t itself. This display of value judgment as expression of self changes in the act of expression and dissolves in its perception of time to which it leans on the concept of production to see itself as malleable potential capable of creating something new.
8. This newness considers artworks and conceals itself from value judgments that are at once emphasized and concealed from curation. With this concealing and emphasizing motion, curation implies clarity as it elevates artworks from chaotic abundance and purports excellence by displaying select works of art while concealing value judgments these selections are based on and the exclusion through which artworks are left behind. Artists grapple with this when they see works selected and left behind for reasons that are concealed and emphasized. Those who engage in consumption and production cannot grapple with selection and what’s left behind because concealment and emphasis of values dazzles consumers and confuses producers.
9. Parts from curated artworks stand out to artists to influence their creation while curation evaluates and displays according to values they purport to hold that at once blinds them from seeing values they have. This happens in a concurrent motion as curation influences artworks that in turn influence curation. These influences breed similarity in parts and abundance in wholes. Curation must change course in reaction to this to produce something new.
10. Digital artistry accelerates creation output in volume and variety that accentuates curation’s concurrent emphasization and deemphasization. In other words, curation cannot keep up with the volume and variety of artworks. Curators in turn ask for entry fees to decrease volume and variety. It is an invitation for entry where payment implies promise for evaluation and potential for display under the transactional logic of exchange that at once excludes those who cannot pay. Convoluted entry forms and negotiating agents between artists and curators fulfill similar roles of chance for inclusion and exclusion under the guise of exchange that offers invitation for participation while putting this invitation under forms of evaluations. Curatorial value judgments include and exclude through modes of emphasization and deemphasization that are concealed and revealed from these modes and judgments leading to the perpetuation of this dual motion of judgment generating work.
