{"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":78,"pdf_page":88,"physical_index":88,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"feb8b3eb3d756632af46dfe8d88e244c9497b1e2e498084b1e96e08a2f8066ff"},"chapter":"CURATION IN THE AGE OF PLATFORM CAPITALISM","content":"Douglas is just one of countless transnational actors, aspiring or accomplished, in the neoliberal cultural industries, who wander around diverse creative fields and inhabit the incessant blurring of disciplines, professional identities, and the borders between high and low. This chapter looks at the productive aspect of this crisscrossing and, in particular, the eclectic interweaving between classic avant-garde strategies and commercial fashion design in banal luxury; banal luxury “artifies” fashion via the legacy of conceptual art and is thus key for disseminating the curatorial apparatus in both highbrow milieus (e.g., traditional fashion consumers) as well as ordinary internet users (e.g., via platform sharing). The references to Obrist, Douglas, Imhof, and Demna are cursors to a metropolitan, transnational, and conceptual high-end culture, which transports the mass aesthetic to high-end cultural production—a gesture reminiscent of milieus around Duchamp and Warhol. This scene inhabits physical spaces, that is biennials, openings, and fashion shows as well as online platform connectivities, including posts, stories, tags, check-ins, memes, and other relational practices (van Dijck, 2013). Similar to how the historical avant-garde, like Dadaism and Surrealism, became part of the mainstream via curators-mediators in the 1960s and the 1970s, banal luxury, as an anti-fashion gesture, needs to be curated in order to attain legibility and value.\n\nThe banal luxury complex inhabits interdisciplinary creative scenes varying from art and fashion to music and dining. Elizabeth Currid-Halkett argues that a similar interdisciplinary interweaving was the strongest economic asset of post-1990s New York, which she calls the “Warhol Economy” (2020). Owing its legacy to Andy Warhol, the visionary who mingled the avantgarde, the countercultural, and the mainstream around event socializations in his studio the Factory, the Warhol Economy harvests continuous cool atmospheres across networks of creativity. Currid-Halkett’s concept is celebratory, similar to that of early creative economy enthusiasts like Richard Florida, overlooking issues around artistic exploitation, precarity, and ideology (Zukin, 2020; de Peuter, 2014), yet useful as a descriptive tool for the purpose of this chapter. Insofar as banal luxury is stylistically the reverse of exceptional luxury, it shapes countercultural and symbolically rich atmospheres that are nevertheless economically productive. To illustrate this with an example, let us look at the productivity of banal luxury in a promotional event that the fashion brand Burberry staged in September 2020 as a homage to Imhof. This event, according to one of its reviews, curated a “cosmopolitan” and “international” selection of “stars”, including Douglas who performed some of her tracks “exclusively for #Burberry ahead of the Spring/Summer 2021 show” (Bruno, 2021). These songs adopted a Sonic Youth-like, “dirty” distortion guitar and looped, coarse vocals with Douglas simulating a later-generation Kim Gordon.4 Burberry celebrated “the artist’s freedom of expression” (Bruno, 2021), linking the concept of freedom to a musical underground style as part of the brand’s identity. Here, capital produces a simulation of the underground that crisscrosses contemporary art, grunge aesthetics, stylized photography, and sophisticated fashion so that creative networks coalesce and flow across the brand. The performance curates Burberry as a daring, edgy, and cool brand in the overarching context of “cool capitalism” (McGuigan, 2015).5\n\n78\n\nCultures of Platform Capitalism","previous_page":null,"next_page":79}