{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"d1c31cd8-6afd-4ea5-b7b0-085c26a4e406","title":"Curation in the Age of Platform Capitalism  The Value of Selection, Narration, and Expertise in New Media Cultures","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781032023007","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"d1c31cd8-6afd-4ea5-b7b0-085c26a4e406","id":"d1c31cd8-6afd-4ea5-b7b0-085c26a4e406","uuid":"d1c31cd8-6afd-4ea5-b7b0-085c26a4e406","title":"Curation in the Age of Platform Capitalism  The Value of Selection, Narration, and Expertise in New Media Cultures","normalized_title":"curationintheageofplatformcapitalismthevalueofselectionnarrationandexpertiseinnewmediacultures","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781032023007","isbns":["9781032023007","9781032023014","9781003182801"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":177,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/d1c31cd8-6afd-4ea5-b7b0-085c26a4e406","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Curation%20in%20the%20Age%20of%20Platform%20Capitalism%20%20The%20Value%20of%20Selection%2C%20Narration%2C%20and%20Expertise%20in%20New%20Media%20Cultures","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/d1c31cd8-6afd-4ea5-b7b0-085c26a4e406/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/d1c31cd8-6afd-4ea5-b7b0-085c26a4e406/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/d1c31cd8-6afd-4ea5-b7b0-085c26a4e406","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/d1c31cd8-6afd-4ea5-b7b0-085c26a4e406/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/d1c31cd8-6afd-4ea5-b7b0-085c26a4e406/search"},"page":{"printed_page":103,"pdf_page":113,"physical_index":113,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"350e3ac657f46fd91912119599fe440b8dc8125b8cb50100ce9af7d167c49efe"},"chapter":"CURATION IN THE AGE OF PLATFORM CAPITALISM","content":"riots in California in the 1990s. For Gleb and the UB6, mediation is a process open to the viewer’s feedback, quite the opposite of the babushka model where the rigid explanation of what “the artist wants to say” prevails. In its paralyzing stifness, the babushka model was too close-minded, too conservative, too sclerotic to adapt to the viewer’s feedback.\n\nThe same day, however, I encountered a babushka, whose uncompromising stifness was mobilized as a key asset in the experience economy instead of discarded as old school. This was a local Airbnb Experience titled PELMENI WITH BABUSHKA (capitalized in the original), where pelmeni refers to a traditional Russian ravioli-like dish. According to this Experience, the visitor pays 5,000 rubles (around €60 at the time) for a 2.5-hour training session led by a babushka on how to cook hand-made, authentic pelmeni, which they would eat with local beverages. While it was implied that the babushka was the organizer’s grandmother, her picture was absent from the advertisement so that it could be potentially any babushka: a generic babushka, as the floating signifier “babushka” was mobilized to uplift the practice of cooking. The concepts surrounding this signifier, including rigidity and inflexibility, were here mobilized positively, denoting authenticity and dedication.\n\nNo doubt, for the biennial world of mediators, it would probably be cringeworthy—rather than cool—to mobilize the babushka as a prop for gaining status; yet for the world of experience tourism the babushka was the perfect prop. I wrote a message to Katya, the organizer of this Experience, to clarify the presence of this totemic figure—the babushka—in the event and book an Experience. Katya got back to me with bad news: unfortunately, the babushka could not cook with us because of the COVID-19 escalation in Yekaterinburg at the time of visiting but she and her friend could guide the cooking experience of pelmeni instead. However, the babushka’s absence made the Experience look uninteresting as an ethnographic event and, in an ironic reversal of the terms, turned the Experience too generic, almost unauthentic: “Why”, one could ask, “learn how to cook pelmeni from a young Airbnb entrepreneur and her friend?” The babushka was the figure gluing the unique character of the Experience together, as it ofered a story to narrate that could be shared with oneself and others; she was the curatorial linchpin around which the food Experience revolved.\n\nBoth these instances—the biennial and the Airbnb Experience—are part of the same urban plateau of the creative economy, referring, however, to diferent types of creativity that correspond to diferent worlds of production and consumption. If the biennial is part of the highbrow, conceptual milieu, as seen in the previous chapter, then the Airbnb Experience actors are lifestyle entrepreneurs conceiving themselves or their immediate surroundings “as a form of capital to be invested, and of their income as the return on such investment” (Bandinelli, 2020: 5). Katya mobilized a generically authentic babushka as a form of symbolic capital whose investment could yield financial capital by tapping into the experiencescapes of contemporary tourism (Mossberg, 2008; Mei, Hågensen and Kristiansen, 2020). Contrary to highbrow actors aiming for the niche, luxury, and sophisticated worlds— intellectually, artistically, or economically—the target in Airbnb is mass society and curation is customer-oriented.\n\nThe Babushka–Nonna Experience\n\n103","previous_page":null,"next_page":104}