{"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":28,"pdf_page":38,"physical_index":38,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"f07d8d9af3b32b7acfda15ffa4c7036553cc2cdff4b5b4b84a0d4497790e5017"},"chapter":"CURATION IN THE AGE OF PLATFORM CAPITALISM","content":"In the post-1990s globalized visual arts field, the selections, arrangements, descriptions, and displays of the independent curator are creative gestures with the potential to span from city to city and biennial to biennial, from Athens and Dakar to Taipei and Sao Paolo (O’Neill, 2016; Green and Gardner, 2016). The work of the independent curator is both intellectual and inspirational, combining the Western (and globalized) imaginary of nomadism and cosmopolitanism with attention to local sensibilities and knowledge. While the ascent of this figure to a global art mediator cannot be reduced to a single cultural-ideological paradigm, the space it primarily inhabits is linked to the Western-driven cultural and even geographical imaginary. For instance, traditional trendsetting biennials, such as documenta and the Venice Biennale, occur in contexts that favor Western and middle-class mobility and afordability, ranging from the Schengen visa requirement to familiarity with liberalintellectual codes. Western curators, or graduates from Western institutions, are disproportionally represented in international exhibitions (Philimonos and Kompatsiaris, 2021; Chao and Kompatsiaris, 2020). Similar to the 19thcentury travelers and explorers that Mary Louis Pratt describes in her book Imperial Eyes (1992), the “global”, English-speaking curator can produce the rest of the world for art-curious publics by simplifying and storifying the complexities of local “contact zones” (Pratt, 1992: 5; Buurman, 2018; Cliford, 1988). The curatorial figure and their artistic sphere already inhabit the middle-class values of education, cosmopolitanism, improvement, and a desire to map out the “other”.\n\nThe artistic is certainly not exhausted in the curatorial aspirational address but has been infiltrating the political economy of capitalism in various ways at least since the 1970s, such as in the rise of mass advertising and consumption, and later the precaritization of labor and mass customization. Indicatively, and notably, Jean Baudrillard highlights the dominance of sign-value over use-value in post-war consumer societies (1998). Later cultural study theorists (drawing from Baudrillard, among others) show that the self in these consumer societies is increasingly aesthetically fashioned (e.g., Featherstone, 1987; Lash and Urry, 2002; Skeggs, 2013). What these debates tell us is that aestheticization is an arena of contestation, as class, gender, and ethnicity, among other variables, are marked via consumption practices (more in Chapters 3 and 6). Shapiro and Heinich maintain that aestheticization is part of an overwhelming process of what they call the “artification” of social life in modernity, afecting not only persons but a “motley collection” of phenomena, including “painting, printing, crafts, cartoons, grafiti, tribal art, outsider art, cult objects, national heritage, photography, cinema, theatre, circus, breakdancing, magic, luxury fashion, gastronomy, and jazz” (2012: 3). As mentioned in the previous chapter, artification refers to the process of individualizing, recategorizing, and intellectualizing social phenomena by linking them with art-specific tropes. There is, for instance, the example of luxury brands, which cannot simply increase supply to cover demand as they pursue growth as this would inflict damage to their luxury status (Kapferer, 2014). One way to do that, for Jean-Noël Kapferer, is to strive for artification, described as a “growing multiplication of associations of luxury brands with artists, galleries, and museums”, as a means to safeguard their status (2014: 372). Luxury brands artify themselves through these associations by linking their name with an atmosphere of exclusivity and uniqueness, traditionally associated with the art world. As we shall see in Chapter 4, fashion’s artification increasingly exploits the “subcultural capital” and bohemianism of artistic figures, as with the examples of Balenciaga, Burberry, and others (Thornton, 1996). In areas such as gastronomy and life coaching, as we shall see in Chapters 4–6, the artification of an entity (e.g., a dish, a chef, a coach, a client) is processed via curated photoshoots and highlighting discourses around individuality, inspiration, and creativity. From a political-economic perspective, artification is an outcome of the growth imperative and market competition in advanced capitalism (a point that Shapiro and Heinich do not themselves emphasize), with uniqueness and singularity being potential value adders.1\n\n28\n\nHomo Curatorius","previous_page":null,"next_page":29}