Course Leader ‘Curating After the Internet: New Media and Digital Cultures’ at RCA
I’m delighted to be the Course Leader of the ‘Curating Contemporary Art and Design: Theory and Practice’ summer school at the Royal College of Art. Led with Prof. Victoria Walsh, our theme this year is ‘Curating After the Internet: New Media and Digital Cultures’.
Tailored to established and future curators, artists, and professionals in the contemporary art field, this year’s summer course addresses the questions and shifts in curatorial practice posed by network cultures and emerging digital technologies. Through in-depth conversations with leading curators, artists, critics, media theorists and institutions, the sessions will explore post-internet conditions of art production and distribution to reflect on the role of the curator in an increasingly hyperconnected landscape.
From examining how curatorial and artistic value is created online in our attention economy, and how platforms influence content curation amidst the complexities of censorship and shadowbanning, to the challenges presented by algorithmic curation and AI, the course will explore how emerging media are reshaping the conditions of curating and art-making.
Participants will delve into analysing emerging models of distributed curatorship and engage in critical conversations on the financialisation of cultural and creative work in the creators’ economy, tokenisation, the impact of social media on art criticism, and how art institutions are adapting to these emerging conditions.
The course responds to the urgency to provide new curatorial pathways beyond the established hierarchical organisation of creative practice and towards collaborative and distributed models of knowledge exchange within and beyond the field of art.
Touching upon questions of aesthetics, ethics, specialism, value and collaboration, the course will provide the tools to navigate the complexities of curating ‘the contemporary’ whilst offering new directions and scope to innovative curatorial practice.
Guest contributors include:
- Michael Connor (Curator and Co-Director of Rhizome at the New Museum)
- Bassam El Baroni (Curator, Researcher and Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Media at Aalto University)
- Katrina Sluis (Curator, Researcher and Head of Photography and Media Arts at ANU School of Art and Design)
- Joshua Citarella (Artist and internet culture Researcher)
- Larry Achiampong and David Blandy (Artists)
- Damien Roach (Artist and Researcher)
- Gary Zhexi Zhang (Writer and Artist)
- Nóra Ó Murchú (Curator and Artistic Director of Transmediale)
- Lucy Sollitt (Creative Director of Future Everything)
- UBERMORGEN (Artist collective)
- Kim-Leigh Pontin (Art Manager, Meta Reality Labs)
- Matthew Horsfall (Curator of Game Technologies, Science Museum)
More info is available here