The Nostalgia of a Yesterday With Less Crap
What is "Crap" really? What does it mean when we "Curate" something to remove "Crap"?
When we think of Crap we are actually thinking of the Other. Newness. Difference. Views outside of our own.
Postmodernism is a rejection of the narrative. An exchange of consistency and meta-narrative of truth for inconsistency and truths.
Our current culture of Crap is inconsistency. It is ideals and concepts colliding with the narratives of our lives.
Crap is Fear
Crap in the modern world is pervasive. While one could previously ignore the threat of Crap and the challenge to self, it is most certainly a more difficult task.All that is left is to summon the spectres of a fictional nostalgic bygone era of Less Crap.
The Beauty of Crap
Crap, given enough time, builds gravity, and in turn, attracts more Crap. There is inertia there. Momentum. The walls of Crap form coral Crap reefs to harbour a diversity of living Crap.Over time, these Crap reefs can produce such a magnitude of Crap that the Crap ceases to be the Other. Perhaps the Crap trickles over via a viral Tweet . Or shared amongst minds that have been pushed out to the periphery. The recontextualisation of this Crap becomes inevitable.
Crap becomes pertinent. Meaningful. Ultimately important[1].
So perhaps it is time to call the Curators out for what they are; hegemonists in pursuit of the status quo. They are the Curators of a museum that, whether willing and conscious or not, seeks to extend the privilege of the past.
The supporters of Curators are nothing more than some Stolkholm Syndrome captive of a grande Milgram Experiment gone awry.
Crap is symptomatic of a flourishing ecosystem.
[1] There is another side that can yield challenging, and potentially culturally destructive forces, but that is likely another topic that crosses into the defense of liberties in the face of adversity.
3 comments:
I'm reading Johnson's Future Perfect right now and he talks about a lot of this. Diversity and degrees of isolation. Just like in ecosystems, diversity is good.
But curation only comes after the creation or existence of some thing or things.
Of course, reading any book on events (or anything) inevitably involves curation. You are only getting part of the story or necessary simplification of the story. Anybody that is truly interested in learning more would review multiple curatorial creations or possibly the source material.
But not everyone has the time or is interested in reading/reviewing all of the source material.
Digital data and cheap storage will certainly alter the way this period of time is analyzed and understood in the future. If all of this stored contemporary data (crap) remains accessible. The invention of writing systems, inexpensive printing and microfiche has already done this to previous eras.
Maybe you are talking about a future similar to the one in the book “1984” where the documents of history are changed out from under us? Or the way our news sources don't provide the most complete or accurate depiction of contemporary events that we are unable to experience directly with our own senses?
Regardless, the curators are rarely anything other than people attempting to help us understand a given topic or series of events/objects (usually for a fee). The individual is ultimately responsible for their interpretation of the material, whether it be culled from primary, secondary or tertiary sources. Making curators out to be the villain is as much a generalization and misunderstanding as you seem to be arguing against.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment Jason.
I'd suggest that the darker side of curation comes from the almost invisible Foucault power dynamic. In the Foucaultian sense, power is less something to be imposed but rather a byproduct of action similar to friction.
"Making curators out to be the villain is as much a generalization and misunderstanding as you seem to be arguing against"
This is precisely the point however. Curation _is_ a power dynamic. When curation is peddled under some shameful guise of protection or security, we should at least question it and consider the negative impacts. Who is being marginalized? Why?
Consider for a moment YouTube, often considered the greatest crap dump in the interwebs.
Who is suggesting that the majority of YouTube content is crap? To whom? What percentage is acceptable to them? What is their ideology behind such selection?
What happens when agency / voice is silenced under the banner of curation? I'm sure we can look back to our collective pasts and see darkness from such actions.
It is no more acceptable now than it was then, however we choose to paint it.
The curators, behind the complex veil of selection, control the ideology.
Problematic at best. Villainous at worst.
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