Collection-making: Podcasting as a contemporary curation practice.

Fox, Neil ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2959-2877 (2019) Collection-making: Podcasting as a contemporary curation practice. In: MeCCSA 2020, 8-10 January 2020, University of Brighton.

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Abstract / Summary

Terry Smith writes that ‘the title of curator is assumed by anyone who has a more than minimal role in bringing about a situation which something creative might be done’ (2012, 18). It certainly feels as those curating and curators are ubiquitous, identified by brands and corporations eager to create experiences that are meaningful, and self-identified by people online in various forms on various platforms curating their own lives - ‘Google invites us to curate our profile […] certain restaurants proudly display mis curated by a food expert […] the Whitney Museum encourages members to curate their own […] Biennal by planning their attendance’ (Smith: 2012, 18). Podcasting is no different, but what can be learned from considering different forms of podcasting in the art-practice context from which curating is traditionally understood?

This paper will discuss podcasting as curation in three ways - podcasting as the creation of curated archives, podcasting as re/animating existing archives and podcasting as an act of what Ashley Clark calls ‘narrative correction’. Podcasts under discussion include The Touré Show, The John Robb Tapes, The Paris Review, Black Men Can’t Jump In Hollywood and the presenter’s own successful film podcast The Cinematologists, all considered in the context of ‘collection-making’, because as Hans Ulrich Obrist writes ‘to make a collection is […] inevitably, a way of thinking about the world - the connections and principles [containing] assumptions, juxtapositions, findings, experimental possibilities and associations’ (2014, 39).

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