Page 185 - The Black Box Book

the web to produce a universal archive, cast as digital heritage” (Dewdney, with a wild geotagging flavor – but also from the resilience shown by
Dibosa & Walsh 2013, p.330). Gervais also speculated on this conundrum the public figure whose image was being curated. Sanders benevolently
when she observed: accepted the spotlight and reclaimed his own image only for the greater
good: to raise $1.5 Million in support of Vermont Charities through the sale
“Too bad museums are always late and getting on with stuff once its of his line of meme merchandise. How come, then, that museums remain
history. I often wonder if it is that way because they want to make largely indifferent to these aesthetic currents and their wider social and
sure the general public is following them or because they need to political implications? How can these aesthetic currents be redirected to
have an historical point of view on things once they can grasp it as produce new forms of cultural value?
an actual thing.” (Gervais, 2019) As I have argued elsewhere (Tedone, 2022), the answer to these
questions considers two distinct yet interrelated factors, both of which
The MoI project’s denomination and its archival mandate suggests are a consequence of the unresolved clash between the old paradigm of
the urgency of narrowing the divide between the museum and networked aesthetic modernism (Dewdney, Dibosa & Walsh, 2013) and the current
culture and points to the necessity of reassessing the very premise of conditions of online circulation and “circulationism” (Steyerl, 2013) that
the museum’s mandate, starting from its formats and operations. Under characterize the dissemination of content on the Web: first, the difficulty
this light, what arguably presented itself as a discrete, almost accidental for the galleries and museums to radically rethink the notion of aesthetics;
and light-touch artistic operation, provides today a valuable insight when second, the resistance to reimagine its categorical distinctions, as well as
assessing the complicated relationship between the museum and net- its curatorial formats and the whereabouts of its operations.
worked culture. Even before the pandemic, this relationship was already The theories put forward by new media theorist Olga Goriunova are
being challenged by the widespread use of social media as platforms for very useful for reframing aesthetics as simultaneously a practice in a con-
art documentation and the parallel outburst of museums of various kinds, stant process of becoming, whose very constitution is being changed by
such as the Museum of Ice Cream, designed with the intention of acting networked technologies and as a “major mode of operation for contempo-
as stage sets for the production of selfies and for brand engagement. rary society” (Goriunova 2012, p.94). To acknowledge this expanded defi-
As artist and writer Dena Yago argues, what can be defined as a cultural nition of aesthetics, I would argue, is the first step for rethinking the role
experience has expanded greatly over the last decade, as something of the museum within networked culture and for framing online curating
increasingly defined by the eye of the individual user rather than by as a processual and networked practice that transcends the traditional
the mandate of the cultural institution. This bears some important eco- category of art – what Tyzlic-Carver refers to as “not-just-art-curating”
nomic consequences, since, as she states, “the social media feed has (2017) – in order to embrace a more fluid and inclusive notion of creativity.
flattened any experience into content that is immediately shared on
centralized platforms, such as Instagram or TikTok, where that content GLIMMERS OF HOPE: TOWARDS
profits the platforms, not the content creator” (Yago, 2022, p.111). How
the museum is enmeshed within such a complex ecosystem is a question N E T WO R KED C O - C U RAT I O N
which would require further scrutiny and a self-reflexive engagement from Several initiatives were set up during the pandemic at both ends of
the side of the cultural institutions themselves. the curatorial digital divide, that pointed to the possibility of approaching
In spite of the museums’ fervent engagement with social media online curating as a distributed, collaborative, networked and performative
during the pandemic, it was rather surprising that no cultural institution process and practice. In other words, as networked co-curation: a process
attempted a systematic operation of archiving the richness and variety forging strategic alliances between different agents (both humans and
of memes and visual content that was created and exchanged by users machinic), objects (art and mundane objects) and practices (independent
worldwide during the lockdowns via WhatsApp chains and social media and institutional curating, hacking and commercial endeavours) and that
platforms. Such a task was left to be uncovered by research institutes and aggregates each time a specific constellation of relationships (Tedone,
academic projects which identified social value in these forms of cultural 2019, Dekker & Tedone, 2019).
production, pointing to the agency of creativity and humour in a time of One of such initiatives was the 48 hours live streaming of the work
crisis (see Giselinde Kuipers & Mark Boukes, 2020). by artist Arthur Jafa entitled Love is the message, the message is death
As the aesthetic current of the global pandemic began to decelerate (2016) initiated by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Hirshhorn
in early 2021, another strong participatory wave surfaced: the phenomenon Museum and Sculpture Garden in consultation with the artist. Thirteen
of the Bernie Sanders meme and the virality of the site Bernie Sanders art museums and collections around the world, each of which holds
goes place. This was a particularly interesting case not only for its spread an edition of the artwork in their collection, were gathered to orchestrate
and the kind of performativity it produced – a truly networked performance a simultaneous streaming of the work to make it accessible to the broad-
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