| ::I uploaded [Re]Cuts on YouTube. The Resolution is not great, but at least it is easier to share the video. Original link to FLV version here: http://navasse.net/recuts
Video exhibited as part of Dead Fingers Talk at IMT Gallery, London.
A documentary consisting of brief interviews with not just musicians, but visual artists, writers, VJs and lawyers. The intro is creative.
on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt0ASo_6Sdg&
feature=channel
A VIDEO PROJECT BY EDUARDO NAVAS
[Re]Cuts was specifically developed in January of 2010 for an exhibition at IMT Gallery in London. The video is inspired by Burroughs’s experimentation with tape recordings. The exhibit takes place from May 28 through July 18 2010. I thank Mark Jackson for the invitation and the opportunity to exhibit my work.
excerpt from the actual project webpage:
[Re]Cuts is a remix of image, sound, and text inspired by William Burroughs’s aesthetics of tape recording. The video is also influenced by his cut-up method as defined for writing in “The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin.” The video does not follow the strict cup-up rules professed by Burroughs, but rather considers his aesthetics as a point of reference to develop a non-sensical narrative.
The following is a presentation separated into two parts; it was produced for the conference Re*-Recycling_Sampling_Jamming, which took place in Berlin during February 2009.
Part One: Remix[ing]. The Three Chronological Stages of Sampling
Part One (above) introduces the three chronological stages of Remix, while part two (below) defines how the three chronological stages are linked to the concept of Authorship, as defined by Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault. Also see my previous entry “The Author Function in Remix” which is a written excerpt of the theory proposed in part two.
Part Two: Remix[ing]. The Three Chronological Stages of Sampling
Below is the abstract that summarizes the content of the two videos. Total running time is around fifteen minutes.
———–
Text originally published on Re*- on February 2009:
SAMSTAG_28.02.2009_SEKTION IV_15-20 UHR
12_15:00 Remix[ing]. The Three Chronological Stages of Sampling
Eduardo Navas, Künstler und Medienwissenschaftler, University of California in San Diego (USA)
Sampling is the key element that makes the act of remixing possible. In order for Remix to take effect, an originating source must be sampled in part or as a whole. Sampling is often associated with music; however, this text will show that sampling has roots in mechanical reproduction, initially explored in visual culture with photography. A theory of sampling will be presented which consists of three stages: The first took place in the nineteenth century with the development of photography and film, along with sound recording. In this first stage, the world sampled itself. The second stage took place at the beginning of the twentieth century, once mechanical recording became conventionalized, and early forms of cutting and pasting were explored. This is the time of collage and photo-montage. And the third stage is found in new media in which the two previous stages are combined at a meta-level, giving users the option to cut or copy (the current most popular form of sampling) based on aesthetics, rather than limitations of media. This is not to say that new media does not have limitations, but exactly what these limitations may be is what will be entertained at greater length.The analysis of the three stages of sampling that inform Remix as discourse is framed by critical theory. A particular focus is placed on how the role of the author in contemporary media practice is being redefined in content production due to the tendency to share and collaborate. The theories on authorship by Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault are entertained in direct relation to the complexities that sampling has brought forth since it became ubiquitous in popular activities of global media, such as social networking and blogging.
Image and text source: IMT Gallery
Note: Press release about an upcoming exhibition in which I participate taking place in London at IMT Gallery during May through June of 2010.
———-
Dead Fingers Talk is an ambitious forthcoming exhibition presenting two unreleased tape experiments by William Burroughs from the mid 1960s alongside responses by 23 artists, musicians, writers, composers and curators.
Few writers have exerted as great an influence over such a diverse range of art forms as William Burroughs. Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch, The Soft Machine and Junky, continues to be regularly referenced in music, visual art, sound art, film, web-based practice and literature. One typically overlooked, yet critically important, manifestation of his radical ideas about manipulation, technology and society is found in his extensive experiments with tape recorders in the 1960s and ’70s. Dead Fingers Talk: The Tape Experiments of William S. Burroughs is the first exhibition to truly demonstrate the diversity of resonance in the arts of Burroughs’ theories of sound.
listen to your present time tapes and you will begin to see who you are and what you are doing here mix yesterday in with today and hear tomorrow your future rising out of old recordings
everybody splice himself in with everybody else
The exhibition includes work by Joe Ambrose, Steve Aylett, Alex Baker & Kit Poulson, Lawrence English, The Human Separation, Riccardo Iacono, Anthony Joseph, Cathy Lane, Eduardo Navas, Negativland, o.blaat, Aki Onda, Jörg Piringer, Plastique Fantastique, Simon Ruben White, Giorgio Sadotti, Scanner, Terre Thaemlitz, Thomson & Craighead, Laureana Toledo and Ultra-red, with performances by Ascsoms and Solina Hi-Fi.
Inspired by the expelled Surrealist painter Brion Gysin, and yet never meant as art but as a pseudo-scientific investigation of sounds and our relationship to technology and material, the experiments provide early examples of interactions which are essential listening for artists working in the digital age.
In the case of the work in the exhibition the contributors were asked to provide a “recording” in response to Burroughs’ tape experiments. The works, which vary significantly in media and focus, demonstrate the diversity of attitudes to such a groundbreaking period of investigation.
Dead Fingers Talk: The Tape Experiments of William S. Burroughs is curated by Mark Jackson. The project is supported by the London College of Communication, CRiSAP and ADi Audiovisual and has been made possible by the kind assistance of the William Burroughs Trust, Riflemaker and the British Library.
Still from video documentation, available at Dropbox
The Rotten Machine (La Maquina Podrida) is currently on display at the MEIAC, in Badajoz, Spain. On the 8th of May 2004, Brian Mackern, born and living in Montevideo, Uruguay, put for sale his personal laptop computer, in which he developed his early net art projects. He also used the machine to document early online activity–particularly from around the Americas.
When considering the history of new media, the sale was made at a moment when web 2.0 was about to change: the blog, for instance, which was one of the pivotal tools of the next stage of web development, became quite popular at this time. Simultaneously, the machine’s sale is an overt commentary on the preciousness of the work of art, which was the subject of several attempts of dematerialization during the heyday of conceptualism. The fetishization of the object of art was an issue to consider for many early online art practitioners, since in online practice there appeared to be no “object of art” to deal with directly. The Rotten Machine turns this convention on its head, and shows that “anything” can be commodified.
These are some of my brief observations on a work that deserves more analysis, and that I hope now that it enjoys its first exhibit, will be acknowledged around the world as an important contribution to the history of art.
Hard disk of the rotten machine with the fingerprint of its owner, brian mackern
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/la_podrida/c.JPG
A text was written in 2004 by Raquel Herrera: http://www.cibersociedad.net/congres2004/grups/fitxacom_publica2.php?idioma=ca&id=95&grup=60
Below is part of the official press release written by curator, Nilo Casares:
——
exhibition:::::::::::::::::::the rotten machine aka the toothless old thing
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::1999-2004
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::all net.art in a brian mackern’s laptop
works of:::::::::::::::::::::brian mackern
curator::::::::::::::::::::::nilo casares
technical coordination:::::::àngela montesinos
production:::::::::::::::::::
and organization:::::::::::::meiac
texts of catalogue:::::::::::rodrigo alonso
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::andrés burbano
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::nilo casares
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::gabriel galli
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::brian mackern
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::àngela montesinos
edited by::::::::::::::::::::nilo casares
translation::::::::::::::::::polisemia
designer:::::::::::::::::::::fundc [http://www.fundc.com]
publisher::::::::::::::::::::meiac
opening::::::::::::::::::::::[20h00m/05.02.10]
schedule:::::::::::::::::::::[05.02.10)(04.04.10]
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::from tuesdays until saturdays
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::10h00m-13h30m/17h00m-21h00m
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::sundays
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::10h00m-13h30m
gallery::::::::::::::::::::::3th floor
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::meiac
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::virgen de guadalupe, 7.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::e46001-badajoz
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::+34924013060
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::[meiac@juntaextremadura.net ]
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::[http://www.meiac.es]
press contact::::::::::::::::àngela montesinos
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::[angela.montesinos@juntaextremadura.net
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::exhibition intro::::::::::::::::::::::
the rotten machine is a surprising exhibition that emanates from an old laptop from 1999, owned by the uruguayan netartist brian mackern, to recreate the time when net.art had its peak brightness, and perhaps therefore, the rattle before the emergence of web 2.0 (known as social network).
brian mackern is a founding artist who was ahead of the time in the development of online and offline soundvisual interfaces. founder of online directories artef@ctos virtuales [http://www.internet.com.uy/vibri] and latin netart database [http://netart.org.uy/latino/index.html] (currently owned by meiac).his reference sites are http://netart.org.uy, http://34s56w.org and http://no-content.net.
his computer, the rotten machine, it’s full and complete of all the data collected until the moment it was decided to be sold, on the 8th of may, 2004. it was the working tool (the studio, in classical terms) that accompanied brian mackern between 1999 and 2004, both in his personal work and in collaborative works for other artists and net jamms, apart from his work as a vj, conferences and workshops. in short, his tool.
a computer full of information and history, acquired by the meiac in order to expose it to posterity, when the development of hardware and software will prevent us from viewing many of the art pieces hosted on this computer.
the exhibition is divided into 5 audiovisual stations navigated by brian mackern himself.
1 - anthropological station: content and hardware components of the machine. sounds generated by its operation. references to files, etc.
2 - studio station: personal work (source files and visible works). the source code of his own work and at the same time the navigation of it.
3 - internet and networking station: content related to many of the projects and online/offline collaborative groups in which brian mackern has intervened.
4 - file, documentation and analysis station: random collection of information about net.art and internet culture of that time.
5 - history station. history of net.art: remix of endless net.art sites, in different states of preservation, many of them with retrofitted code to allow navigation within the machine without internet connection.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::pics:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
a: starting point for the auction of the “rotten machine”. peam,
pescara (italy), 2004
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/la_podrida/a.JPG
b: display of directories contained in the computer
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/la_podrida/b.JPG
c: hard disk of the rotten machine with the fingerprint of its owner,
brian mackern
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/la_podrida/c.JPG
d: some of the stickers on the computer
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/la_podrida/d.JPG
e: keys that are missing, the reason why this computer is also called
*the toothless old thing*
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/la_podrida/e.JPG
f: way in which *the rotten machine* was exposed for auction in peam,
pescara (italy), 2004
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/la_podrida/f.JPG
g: accompanying monster for the rotten machine during countless
tours, alongside with the backpack shown in the picture above
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/la_podrida/g.JPG
h: the rotten machine working, during the exhibition for its auction
at peam, pescara (italy), 2004
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/la_podrida/h.JPG
Image source: Renditions
Images still from
Vicent van Gogh, 1833 - 1890
Self-portrait With a Straw Hat, 1887
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Footage taken on March 2009
I’m officially making available online an ongoing video project, which was started in March 2009:http://navasse.net/renditions/
More videos to be uploaded periodically so make sure to check my main website from time to time.
Excerpt from the project page:
RENDITIONS “The Museum Series” offers a perspective on how works of art are displayed in museums.
Each video project explores the relation of video footage and photo-stills. This formal juxtaposition is designed to offer an open-ended reading of the visitor’s relation to the work of art.
Jeremy Douglass (left) and Lev Manovich (far right) demonstrate how to analyze data on the Hyper Wall at Calit2.
The Cultural Analytics seminar took place at Calit2 on December 16 and 17 of 2009. The event brought together researchers and students from Bergen University and University of California San Diego. The two day event consisted of research presentations and demos of software tools.
Part One of Hyper Wall Demonstration during Cultural Analytics Seminar at Calit2, San Diego, December 16-17, 2009. Introduction to principles of Cultural Analytics.
I will not spend much time in this entry defining Cultural Analytics. This subject has been well covered by excellent blogs such as Open Reflections. For this reason, at the end of this entry I include a number of links to resources that focus on Cultural Analytics. Instead, I will briefly share what I believe Cultural Analytics offers to researchers in the humanities.
Part Two of Hyper Wall Demonstration during Cultural Analytics Seminar at Calit2, San Diego, December 16-17, 2009. Analysis of Vertov’s motion in scenes from Man with a Movie Camera.
This emerging field can be defined as a hybrid practice that utilizes tools of quantitative analysis often found in the hard sciences for the enhancing of qualitative analysis in the humanities. The official definition of the term follows:
Cultural analytics refers to a range of quantitive and analytical methodologies drawn from the natural and social sciences for the study of aesthetics, cultural artifacts and cultural change. The methods include data visualization techniques, the statistical analysis of large data sets, the use of image processing software to extract data from still and moving video, and so forth. Despite its use of empirical methodologies, the goals of cultural analytics generally align with those of the humanities.
One thing that separates the humanities from the hard sciences is the emphasis of qualitative over quantitative analysis. In very general terms qualitative analysis is often used to evaluate the how and why of particular case studies, while quantitative analysis focuses on patterns and trends, that may not always be concerned with social or political implications.
Part Three of Hyper Wall Demonstration during Cultural Analytics Seminar at Calit2, San Diego, December 16-17, 2009. Jeremy Douglass analyzes comic books.
What Cultural Analytics is doing, in my view, is bringing together qualitative and quantitative analysis for the interests of the humanities. In a way Cultural Analytics could be seen as a bridge between specialized fields that in the past have not always communicated well.
Consequently, when new ground is being explored, questions of purpose are bound to emerge, which is exactly what happened during seminar conversations. As the videos that accompany this brief entry will demonstrate, the real challenge is for researchers in the humanities to engage not only with Cultural Analytics tools and envision how such tools can enhance their practice, but to actually embrace new philosophical approaches that blur the lines between the hard sciences and the humanities.
Part Four of Hyper Wall Demonstration during Cultural Analytics Seminar at Calit2, San Diego, December 16-17, 2009. Cicero Da Silva explains his collaborative project, Macro.
To be specific on the possibilities that Cultural Analytics offers to the humanities, I will cite two demonstrations by Lev Manovich and Jeremy Douglass.
Lev Manovich at one point presented Hamlet by William Shakespeare in its entirety on Calit2’s Hyper Wall, which consists of several screens that enable users to navigate data at a very high resolution.
When seeing the entire text at once, one is likely to realize that this methodology is more like mapping. To this effect, soon after, we were shown a version of the text in which Manovich had isolated the repetition of certain words throughout the literary work.
This approach could be used by a literature scholar to study certain linguistic strategies, such as sentence structure, by an author. Let’s take this a step further and say that it has been agreed that a contemporary author is influenced by a canonical writer. How this supposed influence takes effect can be evaluated by studying certain patterns of sentences from both authors by isolating parts of literary texts for direct comparison. One could then evaluate if the supposed influence is formal, conceptual or both: perhaps the contemporary author might make ideological references that are clearly linked to the canonical author, but which are not necessarily influenced at a formal level; or it could be the other way around, or both. In this case, quantitative and qualitative analysis are combined to evaluate a case study. In other words, pattern comparison is used to understand the similarities and differences between two or more works of literature.
To this effect, Jeremy Douglass’s presentation of a comic book is important. He explained how by seeing an entire publication of a comic book story one can study how certain patterns in the narrative come to define the aesthetics for the reader.
While the reader may be able to experience the story in time, by actually reading it, the visualization of the comic book in grid-like fashion–as a structural map–allows the researcher to apply analysis of patterns and trends that may be more common in flows of networks to an actual narrative. Again, in this case we find quantitative and qualitative analysis complementing each other.
As noted at the end of the article “Culture is Data” (also provided below) from Open Reflections, it appears that Manovich is at times understood to argue that one should privilege quantitative over qualitative analysis. This proposition implies an either or mentality by certain researchers that needs to be reevaluated. Janneke Adema explains his answer better than I ever could:
But, on the other hand, won’t we loose a sense of meaning if we analyze culture like a thing? Manovich argues that this is of course a complementary method, we should not throw away our other ways of establishing meaning. It is a way of expanding them. And it is also an important expansion, for how is one going to ask about the meaning of large datasets? We need to combine the traditionally [sic]humanities approach of interpretation with digital techniques to find out more. And again, meaning is not the only thing to look at. It is also about creating an experience. Patterns are the new real of our society.
The most important thing to understand when evaluating the videos available with this entry is that one need not have a hyper wall to do research with Cultural Analytics methodologies; many of the tools can run on a personal computer. It’s more about adopting an attitude and willingness to do research by way of combining quantitative and qualitative analysis. At the moment I am evaluating the implementation of Cultural Analytics in my research on Remix.
References worth perusing:
Cultural Analytics Seminar Schedule: http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2009/11/cultural-analytics-seminar-software.html
Software Studies, Website: http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2008/09/cultural-analytics.html
“Culture is Data,” article: http://openreflections.wordpress.com/2009/05/23/culture-is-data/
Culture Vis, Website: http://culturevis.com/cultural_analytics.html
“Cultural Analytics,” Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_analytics
“The Next Big Thing in Humanities, Arts and Social Science Computing: Cultural Analytics,” article: http://www.hpcwire.com/features/The_Next_Big_Thing_in_Humanities_Arts_and_Social_Science_Computing_Cultural_Analytics.html
“Lev Manovich: Studying Culture With Search Algorithms,” article: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/query/tag/cultural-analytics/
“Cultural Analytics: a new field that combines arts, media and IT,” article: http://knowledge.smu.edu.sg/article.cfm?articleid=1201
Image source: CBS 60 Minutes
Revising my evaluation of mashups led me to this journalistic piece from June 13, 2006 by Scott Conroy from 60 minutes. It is mentioned here mainly for historical purposes, as some things discussed have obviously changed since the feature was produced.
——
Teens don’t have to work very hard to be entertained anymore. Rather than trekking to the record store, they can buy their favorite music with a few clicks — and maybe try out something new while they’re at it. Reality TV, the preferred genre of many, is always on the air. They don’t even have to get up from their chairs to share photographs and gossip with friends.
American society has been assigning all-encompassing labels to generations of young people for a long time. The tendency to pigeonhole a diverse group of individuals is, in some respects, dishonest — not every Flower Child spent the ’60s tiptoeing through tulips, and many members of Generation X surely thought flannel best confined to the realm of the lumberjack.
Read the entire feature at 60 minutes.
Image source: Göteborgs Konsthall
Tim Etchells (born 1962, lives and works in Great Britain)
City Changes (2008) inkjet prints
As part of my residency at the Swedish Traveling Exhibitions, I visited a number of museums in the City of Gothenburg. I was not alone in this trip. I travelled with Melissa Mboweni, a contemporary art curator from South Africa, who was also a Correspondent in Residence.
This entry includes brief notes on some of the places we visited while in Gothenburg. This is also the last entry of my travels in Sweden. Other details of my research will appear in longer texts to be published at a later date in the Swedish Traveling Exhibitions’ Spana magazine.
On the afternoon of November 9, our first stop was Gothenburg’s Art Museum (Göteborgs Konstmuseum), where we were greeted by Curator Johan Sjöström. We spent sometime with an exhibition he curated on Ivar Arosenius, a prolific nineteenth century artist. The exhibit features 250 works, which, as Sjöström explained, was a selection from a larger body of work. Arosenius was a Swedish artist who grew up in Älvängen, a small town north of Gothenburg. He died in January 2, 1909 at the age of thirty due to complications of Haemophilia. I was overwhelmed by the amount of pieces on display–as I realized that an entire day would not allow for anyone to view properly all of the works. Sjöström explained that Arosenius would at times produce several pieces in one night.
“Bollywood,” an exhibit on the film industry in India, at display at the Museum of World Culture until May of 2010.
The next day, November 10, we visited Världskulturmuseet (The Museum of World Culture). Our host was Cajsa Lagerkvist, Head of Exhibitions and Research. We spent the morning with a few of her colleagues discussing the museum’s mission. I realized that the institution was unlike any other I had visited up to this point, as it focuses on what Cajsa and her colleagues referred to as contemporary global issues. This premise is rather open ended, and gives the museum, in my view, quite a bit of freedom to develop exhibitions that are sensitive to the ever changing facets of globalization.
South African Curator, Melissa Mboweni, during her lecture at the Museum of World Culture
At the time of my visit they featured an exhibit on Vodou, and another on Bollywood. I was told by our hosts that last year the museum enjoyed 240,000 visits, and that many people who attend are younger than thirty. It became understandable why the Museum of World Culture emphasizes education as part of their mission. During that afternoon, Melissa Mboweni and I presented our research to curators of various museums in the city.
Facade of the City Museum of Gothenburg
On the morning of November 11, we visited the Stadsmuseet (City Museum of Gothenburg). Curator Christian Penalva and Project Manager Charlotta Dohlvik, along with three of their colleagues took us around the numerous galleries. The City Museum is in essence a hybrid of collections that fit well under the term cultural history. It holds a number of important archeological pieces from the Viking era as well as artifacts from the early days of trade in the eighteenth and nineteenth century; it also hosts an impressive collection of Swedish theatre and dance costumes.
The City Museum also supports contemporary activities. At the time of our visit, it featured selections of the Gothenburg Art Biennale, titled What a Wonderful World, curated by Celia prado and Johan Pousette. We had a very animated discussion as Penalva explained the museum’s interest in implementing innovative approaches to exhibiting. The museum is considering how the concept of interactivity as defined in new media practice can be beneficial to the development of future as well as already existing exhibitions.
Main exhibition gallery at the Maritime Museum
During the afternoon we visited Sjöfartsmuseet (The Maritime Museum), where we were greeted by Curators Britta Söderqvist, Linda Noreen and their colleagues. They took us around the different exhibitions while explaining the special role of the museum in Gothenburg, which is important given that the Little London ( a popular reference) is a port city. Like the other museums, the Maritime Museum places an emphasis on youth education. Noreen, specifically, heads a project titled “Shoreline,” in which young citizens are encouraged to reflect through art, writing, and other creative forms of communication on what it means to live in a port city. Much of this activity is extended online.
A Virtual Aquarium display at the Maritime Museum. Direct camera feed from the ocean.
In general, the curators appear invested in exploring new forms of display. At the time, a historical exhibition of the port was on view. The idea was to present information and material in similar fashion as would be found in a working space. One display that caught my attention was a “virtual aquarium,” placed on one of the working tables (see video above). The aquarium actually is a camera feed from the sea presented on a large screen, also available online. Instead of viewing fish in a large container, the visitor can observe them in their natural environment and therefore get a sense of actual marine life.
Another place that we visited on the early evening of November 10 is Gothenburgs Konsthall, which is one of the venues hosting the Gothenburg Biennal. Curator Stina Edblom showed us around. There were quite a few good pieces in the exhibition, but I will only name one in this case, to be brief. I was particularly taken aback by Tim Echels’s “City Changes” (2008), [see image at the top of this entry]. The work consists of colored inkjet prints of a simple story about a small town. As the story is edited, the changes are recorded in different colors. Each draft is displayed in linear fashion from left to right across two gallery walls. Anyone who has a consistent relationship with writing will find Echels’s obvious–yet unexpected–focus on the act of editing quite refreshing.
Admittedly, since I struggle with ongoing edits of my own, I could not help but notice how meaning changed from one draft to the next; but I also wondered about edits that were between the drafts. Upon closer reflection, one could contemplate the possibility that the changes from one version to the next were deliberate to emphasize the flux in meaning as process, rather than trying to get a specific point across. The edits (additions and deletions) became metaphors for the physical changes in a town. Things were constructed and demolished according to the moment described within each draft. “City Changes” exposes our anxiety in trying to pin down meaning, in making it stable and fixed, when in reality ideas and their forms of manifestation are always prone for constant change.
Given my own tendency and focus on Remix as discourse, I could not help but wonder on how Echels was in some way exposing principles of selectivity: one of the basic elements necessary to develop a critical voice in a time when appropriation and recycling have become the most efficient forms of production at all levels of culture, especially the fine arts.
Our visit to Gothenburg was swift but fully packed. The purpose was to expose both Melissa Mboweni and myself to different curating approaches. Given that my own practice is in the arts, I have to admit that I learned quite a bit about aesthetics in museum display. Art exhibitions tend to be minimal in their approach, always showing only what is essential in order to do justice to the work of art. But I found the museums I visited in Gothenburg to be much more creative in their displays. This can definitely be a good thing, if the venue has a critical mission in the enrichment of culture.