Rethinking Curating: Art after New Media

(Paperback)

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Redefining curatorial practice for those working with new kinds of art.As curator Steve Dietz has observed, new media art is like contemporary art-but different. New media art involves interactivity, networks, and computation and is often about process rather than objects. New media artworks are difficult to classify according to the traditional art museum categories determined by medium, geography, and chronology and present the curator with novel challenges involving interpretation, exhibition, and dissemination. This book views these challenges as opportunities to rethink curatorial practice. It helps curators of new media art develop a set of flexible tools for working in this fast-moving field, and it offers useful lessons from curators and artists for those working in such other areas of art as distributive and participatory systems. The authors, both of whom have extensive experience as curators, offer numerous examples of artworks and exhibitions to illustrate how the roles of curators and audiences can be redefined in light of new media art's characteristics. Rethinking Curating offers curators a route through the hype around platforms and autonomous zones by following the lead of current artists' practice.

Reviews

Humorous and surprising, smart and provocative.

Author Bio

Beryl Graham, an arts organizer and educator, is Professor of New Media Art at the University of Sunderland, and coeditor of CRUMB (the Curatorial Resource for Upstart Media Bliss Web site). Sarah Cook is a curator and researcher working at the intersection of art, digital and electronic media, and science. She is the coauthor (with Beryl Graham) of Rethinking Curating- Art After New Media (MIT Press), and in 2004 cocurated the touring exhibition, "Database Imaginary." She is Dundee Fellow at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee.