Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Issue 1 | Page 79

in the region, including the Louvre Abu Dhabi and Guggenheim Abu
Dhabi. Underlying these projects is the desire to gain instant recognition
and prestige on the international stage of arts and culture by heavily
investing in branding activities in the form of a rather costly association
with already established Western cultural brands (e.g. Louvre) and the
commissioning of celebrity architects to design these colossal “signature”
museum buildings (e.g. Norman Foster, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, and Jean
Nouvel) (see McClellan ����). While these cultural branding activities help
“spectacularize” the urban environment of the Emirates and promote the
country as a progressive and civilised place, as Ponzini (����:���) argues, they
also risk obscuring the more diverse cultural forms and expressions of the
ethnically varied groups that represent the region. Finding ways to account
for, represent, and communicate this diversity and multiplicity of cultures
and identities is a necessary curatorial task. One of the aims of Autopoiesis, as
a curatorial project, was indeed to contribute to this process by stimulating
further engagement with the wider socio-political and cultural issues and
contexts surrounding artistic production and dissemination in the UAE and
beyond.
At the same time and in constituting an experimental exploration into
the curatorial potential of Web �.�, Autopoiesis has been able to critically
shed some light on the value and limitations of a user-centred and digitally
mediated curatorial practice, including the conceptual and practical tensions
between the virtual and the physical dimensions of Web �.� which, as
mentioned earlier, prompt the need to consider the wider local realities and
material contexts of digital projects and their platforms instead of regarding
them in a purely technological sense. Overall, what Autopoiesis raises as an
overarching question is also the changing role of curator in light of the advent
of digital communication environments and the exigencies of a globalized,
postcolonial, and networked world, whereby curating is no longer merely
about the behind-the scenes activities of collating artworks and finding a
meaningful thread to bind them, but also about actively facilitating and
motivating audience/user engagement, input and collaboration through
various means, including Web �.�. It is therefore crucial to continue to
observe, analyze, and empirically explore this growing interplay between the
practices of curating and the technologies of Web �.�, especially in terms of
how, and the extent to which, their combination can critically contribute to
a more inclusive and ethical representation of the diversity and hybridity of
contemporary societies within processes of cultural production, mediation,
and exhibition.
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