Building Communities as a Distributed Curatorial Practice

[Tatiana Bazzichelli]

This presentation gives an insight into the process of building communities as a distributed curatorial practice, through the analysis of methodologies of networking and cultural production as a sharing knowledge and peer2peer process.

The main case presented in this context will be the “reSource transmedial culture berlin” the year-round initiative of transmediale festival directed at local and international artists, cultural producers, hackers, activists, and gender-situated communities in the city of Berlin, curated by Tatiana Bazzichelli.

The term networking is often used to describe collective activities, based on the principles of exchange and equal one-to-one collaboration.
Participation, interaction and collaboration have been the conceptual starting points in the art of the 20th century, from Dadaism to Fluxus, from mail art to hacker art. With the emergence of social media and Web 2.0, enabling communities became a successful model of interaction, but also a pervasive business strategy.

If hacker and artistic practices are developing in the context of a deep transformation of praticipatory platforms, often reflecting a precarious cultural and economical configuration, what is the responsibility and the role of cultural institutions engaging with art and digital technologies, towards a critical articulation of culture production?

This presentation aims to engage in a conversation and exchange with the participants reflecting on:

– practices of networking used to investigate new models of cultural production explored by distributed communities working with media and art;
– alternative models of participation and cultural production developed by artists and activists after the emergence of social media, reflecting on distributive, iterative and socially engaged practices;
– new modes of producing and distributing cultural contents, as well as new ways of participating and forming a cultural public;
– decentralized methods of curating within institutions engaging with art and digital technologies (starting from the example of the reSource).

Keywords: networking, social communities, networked art, participation, cultural production, peer2peer, collaborative networks.

Presentation: 40 minutes + open discussion.

Beiträge