[-empyre-] curators and reflexivity

[Gair <gair@easynet.co.uk>]

> - On juxtaposition - and the boundaries of new media curators-
> These boundaries pre-figure in the process of individuation, the ergonomics,
> the modes and platforms of reception of "new media or digital art".

I think I was a bit sweeping in my position to start; what I find
interesting is the way production and dissemination fluidity has
produced uncertanties in art institutions, which then faces curators as
functionaries of institutional needs with choices about their relation
to new media production; whether to attempt a regulatory or dialogic function.

> Relational aesthetics point to social interstices - as you suggest
> "the individual viewer/experiencers'relation to the demotic, to
> slang, to minority knowledges becomes a live factor in the reception
> and the unknowability of result in the artists mind".
> Could social interstices as such be habit forming or potentially
> recuperated and commodified to be  "theoretically correct"?

see Debords' theory on the derive which informs research patterns in
what I do.
 "Among the various Situationist methods is the derive
[literally:?drifting?], a technique of transient passage through varied
ambiances. The derive entails playful-constructive behaviour and
awareness of psychogeographical effects; which completely distinguishes
it from the classical notions of the journey and the stroll.
In a derive one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual
motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure
activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the
terrain and the encounters they find there. The element of chance is
less than one might think:from the derive point of view cities have a
psychogeographical relief, with constant currents, fixed points and
vortexes which strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain
zones.Chance plays an important role in derives precisely because the
methodology of psychogeographical observation is still in its infancy.
But the action of chance is naturally conservative and in a new setting
tends to reduce everything to an alteration between a limited number of
variants, and to habit. Progress is nothing other than breaking through
a field where chance holds sway by creating new conditions more
favourable to our purposes. We can say, then, that the randomness of the
derive is fundamentally different from that of the stroll, but also that
the first psychogeographical attractions discovered run the risk of
fixating the deriving individual or group around new habitual axes, to
which they will constantly be drawn back [?]" 

Substitute the idea of the field of research for the idea of the city
and you have an interesting recipe for play with elements of given
structure, and a sense of freedom to use these elements according to
will or chance.
Of course it's not necessary to have justification for acting like this,
but theory can be carried lightly after all.