Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Issue 1 | Page 60

curatorial studies, media studies, and digital culture. The value of this work
lies primarily in its multidisciplinary and exploratory approach to the issue
of curating as well its empirical and reflective engagement with a specific
site of inquiry, namely the example of the digital platform, Autopoiesis (www.
autopoiesis.io).
Autopoiesis is a public art project supported by the Cultural Institute at
King’s College London and led by the author of this article. It focuses on
the interplay between curation, participation and ethics, especially with
regard to the role of digital platforms in facilitating more participatory and
democratic forms of cultural and audience engagement. Taking the United
Arab Emirates (UAE) as the background of its inquiry, the project seeks
to collect, curate, and display an online selection of artwork received from
members of the public who are from, living in or transiting through the
UAE.
The project considers the idea of curating as a “digital activity” (Cairns and
Birchall ����) whose task is/ought to be primarily about the normative act
of enabling; enabling wider representations and more diverse voices within
the process of cultural praxis, “prosumption” and exhibition, through the
use of Web �.� technologies as a tool to “decentralize authority” (Shahani et
al. ����:�). Traditionally, curation has been partly about the act of selection
which is linked to what Cairns and Birchall (����) refers to as “the core
requirement of deciding what of a culture to keep, and how best to do
so”. However, selection and exclusion often go hand in hand insofar as
selection inevitably involves demarcating the lines between what is deemed
worthy of preservation and transmission and what is not, and acting as a
filter of “cultural abundance” (ibid.). It is through selection that curators
and institutions derive their authority and power, and with it the ability to
include and exclude.
In his discussion on emergent curatorial models and the role of electronic
technology, the media artist and theorist Patrick Lichty (����:�) argues that
“the legitimization of the work or the institution itself does not [traditionally]
come from populist or democratic impulses, but from oligarchic materialist
practices originated with the birth of the museum”. Therefore, traditional
models of curation that rest on mainstream museum practices are often
monopolistic and hierarchal. But with the advent of the Internet, Lichty
argues, the top-down approach to cultural production and the centrality
of museum practices are increasingly being challenged through alternative
curatorial efforts and Web-based cultural and artistic practices.
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