Page 187 - The Black Box Book

est possible audience. Although the curatorial operation can be described of the Internet, starting with giving visibility to the difficulty of connect-
simply in terms of live broadcasting, the museums network it created ing to Zoom at the time of the event. The Screen Walk thus became
and the political undertone of the work, which denounces ongoing police an opportunity to circumnavigate problems of access and connectivity
violence and racial oppression faced by Black Americans, produced a re- and to explore alternative ways for engaging with online audiences.
markable impact, reaching an audience of 125.000 people across different These examples reveal that, when technology is treated as ‘culture’
time zones. Viewers were encouraged to submit questions and reactions and the logic of cooperation combined with techno-social alliances replace
to the video online, responding to the preposition that museums can be cultural gatekeeping and single authorship, it is possible to begin rethink-
safe spaces for difficult conversations (Stebich, 2020). ing the role of the museum in networked culture as a node within a much
Another effective use of online infrastructure was conducted by wider constellation, or ecosystem, shaped by human and non-human
the Chronus Art Centre in Shanghai in occasion of the online project cu- agents, software, images, and users. In this context, the museums should
rated by Zhang Ga entitled We=Link: Ten Easy Pieces (2020). The project approach online curating not merely as a counterstrategy to conventional
was a direct and swift response to the lockdown in China in the early models of curating, but as a way to stage synchronic participation and
year 2020 and was made possible by the participation of two additional interaction with audiences, connecting distant geographies and different
international institutions, the Art Center Nabi in Seoul and Rhizome in New socio-technical conditions. Through this formulation, the museum could
York, which contributed the budget to commission artists and organize become an active participant in processes of networked co-curation,
the show. The project aimed to reaffirm the importance of Net art as creating a de-centralized and collaborative alternative to the dynamics of
a practice which responds to the infrastructure of the network. The dis- hyper-individualism and cultural gatekeeping that are often at the core of
positif of the ‘link’ was used as a central device in the experience of the current art world systems and social media platforms.
online exhibition. Artists of various backgrounds were involved in the pro- Overall, the pandemic taught cultural institutions a number of impor-
ject, merging in this sense Bishop’s art digital divide and aimed at creating tant lessons, some of which might take years to be fully comprehended.
a community of solidarity and a network of empowerment across creative One of the most important ones, was to gauge how the Web operates as
practitioners in a moment of profound crisis. The role of the curator Zhang a catalyst for various art communities and audiences, which rarely interact
Ga, who works across both the contemporary art world and the media with one another, and to point to the necessity for a deeper integration
community, was key in narrowing the curatorial digital divide. When asked between them which could be potentially conducted by progressive mu-
to comment on such a divide, Ga speculated that the problem consists seums. The knowledge gap identified regarding network technology could
essentially in a knowledge gap from the side of the contemporary art world be overcome through sharing resources consistently and literature about
and that the solution might lie in deeper understanding of the intricacies the history of Net art and digital art practices. Or, additionally, through the
of technology from a practical perspective as well as from a philosophical creation of novel training programmes for cultural operators which could
one, and a better integration of these two communities of stakeholders. integrate technical and computational studies inside the curriculum of
The project We=Link evolved into an ongoing programme, a platform for humanities. Concerning the role of the museums more specifically, it has
presenting online art, with a second exhibition entitled We=Link: Sideways become apparent that the process of recasting a new social role for them
(2020–2021) which integrated both the online space and the physical should start from a self-reflexive evaluation of how art and creativity are
environment of the gallery. imbricated within the wider dynamics of the attention economy as much
In another case, two international museums decided to join forces as the creative exuberance of the networked culture. In this respect, there
to create a brand-new curatorial format. The programme of Screen Walks are still many avenues that museums can explore to redirect the aggre-
(2020) was conceived by the digital curators of The Photographers Gallery gative power of online platforms towards radical forms of communality,
in London and Fotomuseum Winterthur Jon Uriarte and Marco de Mutiis. solidarity, and participation in concert with online audiences.
This online format, which relied upon the video conferencing platform
Zoom, used the devise screen sharing as a mode of entry into an artistic
and creative practice, enabling artists and researchers to open the black
box of their computers and to blend the boundaries between a studio
visit, a networked performance and an online workshop. Various practi-
tioners, such as artists, curators, researchers, were invited to creatively
respond to the possibilities and limitations offered by this format and by
the technology enabling it. When asked to participate in the programme,
I took the opportunity to collaborate with Cuban artist Nestor Siré and to
stage several blockages Cuban users experience in their daily navigation
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