1.4 Chapter Breakdown
Although I have touched on the chapters above, here I give a more methodical breakdown of the content of this book. Chapter 2 explores the figure of the curator from its early appearance in ancient Rome to its genealogies in art, museum, and biennial contexts and its subsequent widespread circulation in contemporary mediascapes. The purpose of this chapter is to outline the cultural and aesthetic registers via which curation enters platform cultural economies. I argue that the rise of curators to an expanded valueadding figure relates to the popularization of the term itself as well as their practice of presenting items as experts. The market employment of the curator is thus capitalizing on its rise in the discourse of the creative and art industries as an independent, nomadic, and refined cultural intermediary. Drawing on material culture approaches, I look at how expertise constructs social and economic value around objects by grouping them under historical, epistemological, and scientific narratives. Platform curating draws from and expands the process of valorizing and capitalizing on expert narratives which is specific to the histories of the Duchampian readymade, the institutionalization of conceptual art, and the rise of the curator as an authoritative intermediary in the art field.
Chapter 3 turns to curating in and through digital platforms. Platforms, and especially social media, curate landscapes of incessant communication which results in information overload as they strive to acquire data, generate network efects, and grow. In turn, they ofer co-coordinated possibilities for self-curation both to ordinary users and micro-entrepreneurs who want to monetize their online activity. I look at curatorial labor and curated consumption as practices that harvest aspirational lifestyles of flexibility and individuation respectively. Platform capitalism is thus not simply a regime for accumulation but a structure mediating the formation of larger social practices and identities.
Introducing the Curatorial Imperative
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