To say I love this piece of writing is an understatement and it sums up thoughts and feelings I've had for a long time, so succinctly and gracefully.
The archivist collects and creates the weird, the broken, the esoteric,
and the ugly.
I'm an archivist.
I am drawn, increasingly, to human curation of any and all kinds: even arda's green apple gallery, or a photograph of some random cups left on a sideboard in a suburban kitchen (posted by MelonKing), and these moved me because...
The archivist champions the "useless." The corporate state seeks to monetize every second
of attention and every pixel of screen space.
And because...
The solution is not reform, but rewilding.
And because...
Useless to a corporation is not the same as
useless to a human.
MelonKing's photo of some cups on his kitchen sideboard would be at home in a modern art gallery. But, they don't need to be sanctified by the church of art
to be art.
The only other thing I would add is that it has become natural through our indoctrination into the 'content consuming asset' structure and culture to be very permission begging and audience size focused.
We must stop asking big corporations for
permission to be human and creative by handing over data and doing MFA, or expecting large audiences for the things we make.
In a landscape defined by the terrifying velocity of the feed, where culture is consumed
and discarded in 24hour cycles, the only remaining radical act is the refusal to move. The
artist must reject the role of content creator, a term designed to reduce creative work to
a filler material for ad slots.
