Curating the Digital: Curating and Art Practice: Contemporary Considerations on Automation, Place, and Digital Communication

This one part of two editorials with oncurating.org that span over five years of research. The initial aim of the two Issues were to understanding curation through estrangement and contemporary methods towards social engagement and politics and the second was to follow up from a digital perspective to further examine the contexts of collaboration, society and engagement. Issue 31, Spheres of Estrangement: Art, Politics and Curating includes contributions from Joesphine Baker-Heaslip, Jonas Becker, Franco ‘Bifo’ Beradi, Benjamin T. Busch, Dan Bustillo, Lilian Cameron, Joey Cannizzaro, Carson Chan, Jeni Fulton, Ken Gonzales-Day, Matthew Hanson, Anke Hennig, Alistair Hudson, Alison Hugill, Suzana Milevska, Jared Pappas Kelley, Penny Rafferty, PUNK IS DADA, Claire Ruud, Jack Schneider, Adrian Shaw, Paul Stewart, Sam Thorne. The significance of this journal being a re-examination of estrangement as fully incorporated component of the modern experience, a stimulant for ‘surplus alienation’. Therefore, this issue asked what artistic, architectural and curatorial approaches to estrangement offer current discourse in organisation, aesthetics and activism. The articles unpack estrangement for the political, social and cultural sprint of our time. Issue 45 Curating the Digital: Contemporary Considerations on Automation, Place, and Digital Communication followed this interrogation up by considering the imfluance of production through contemporary digital networks as well as increased reliance on digital technologies. This included contributions from Helen Hester, Amanda Beech, Dorothee Richter, New Scenario, Manel Rossner and others. The editorial research framework examined what the relationship of place, automation, labour, and archives have in relation to technological effects in production under neoliberalism. This includes four interviews focused on art practice and digital art-making and also how the digital is an asset in the making and production of art and society. The issue also seeks to consider media artworks that are process-oriented or immaterial (for example, only software), or networked systems and how they exist in gallery collecting processes and preserving of media art.