Page 180 - The Black Box Book

to figure out how to survive in the professional indeterminacy they will be
facing in the next months” (De Luca, 2020) as numerous projects and
jobs had to be postponed or even cancelled.
Oscillating between some accelerated aesthetic flows and some
blatant institutional flows, the pandemic exacerbated the inner inequal-
ities of the art worlds and their systems, as well as reinforced curatorial
digital divides between traditional art institutions and digital art com-
munities. In this situation, some international galleries and smaller-scale
institutions specialized in digital art, which had already been organizing
online exhibitions for decades, decided to define themselves against
the mass exodus of art events online by stopping their activities on
the web for a while. Instead, they often issued thought-provoking state-
ments, such as for instance, gallery New Scenario in Germany which
featured on its homepage the text “due to the Corona crisis this website
is closed until further notice” (New Scenario, 15.04.2020). Or Green Cube
Gallery suggested that it was better to do nothing at that times rather
than to do something without thinking, as expressed through the follow-
ing words on their website: “URL ISN’T ENOUGH. Covid online events are
lockdown propaganda (we’re closed: you don’t need another crappy online
exhibition)” (Green Cube Gallery, 02.10.2020).
What an account of these examples and statements reveals, is that
online curators and digital galleries found themselves uncomfortable with
the move of the traditional galleries and museums projects online. This
is because the latter often misplaced the practice of online curating with
that of broadcasting and live streaming, discarding the rich genealogy of
digital art, and net art projects which had formerly been investigating and
cultivating different kinds of creative engagements with the environment
of the Web. This state of affair pointed to the problematic but widespread
translations of the logic of the white cube and of the conventional exhibi-
tion formats to virtual spaces and online platforms. In other words, online
viewing rooms were not to be seen, by default, as sufficiently creative
responses to the systemic challenges brought about by the pandemic
that the art world had to face. On the contrary, they provided only a quick
fix to preserve a superficial engagement between institutions and their
online audiences, calling into question the flirtatious relationship between
galleries, museums and the attention economy as well as the more fraught
relationship between galleries, museums and online cultural production.
Additionally, the crisis caused by the pandemic and lockdowns revealed
the inner flows of the whole art world system, since its main actors – art-
ists and creative practitioners – were left with no safety net in a time of
deep trouble. Fast forwarding to the present moment the words of Uriarte
and De Mutiis read as almost prophetic:
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“Cultural institutions might have increased their website traffic and
gained new followers on social media over the pandemic but it is
unclear, to say the least, how offering their audiences access to
the #museumfromhome will help them to recover in the upcoming
post-pandemic scenario which will see a reduction in tourism, fund-
ing struggles and likely an ongoing aversion towards indoor events.
(…) The initiatives launched during the lockdown that will manage to
remain and be relevant in the post-covid landscape will attest which
of the institutional approaches – if any – has been successful in
overcoming one of the greatest challenges that cultural institutions
have ever faced.” (Uriarte & De Mutiis, 2021)
In order to understand the implications of these considerations, it is
important to address the skeleton in the closet, that is the fraught rela-
tionship between the museum and online cultural production. I want to
argue that the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated an earlier identity crisis
of the museum, which has been struggling for a while to face the social,
educational and aesthetic challenges brought about by the networked
culture and to explore its creative and aesthetic potential.
THE SKELETON IN THE CLOSET:
MUSEUMS & NETWORKED CULTURE
A brief excursus into the recent ‘post-critical museology’ (Dewdney,
Dibosa & Walsh, 2013) would reveal that the Web has been approached by
the majority of cultural institutions according to the following three types
of logic: first, as a mere marketing tool for self-promotion and audience
engagement; second, as a means to produce a universal archive for con-
tent; third, as the equivalent of social media, by “framing the virtual visitor
as an expanded audience and to a lesser extent the user as a generator
of valued content” (Dewdney, Dibosa & Walsh, 2013, p. 330). This state of
affair has left little space up until now for the exploration of the creative
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