Abstract

This publication is the celebration of a work-in-progress: the professional updating short course for international curators, Curating Art After New Media. As the course has been based on the generosity of many curators sharing their knowledge, the intent of this publication is to further share emerging new media art practices, and to discuss how curators can best fit their practices, so that audiences can engage with this exciting art.

The one-week annual course ran in London 2014-20, and for obvious reasons, 2021 took the form of an online reprise. The course was instigated by Sarah Cook and Beryl Graham of CRUMB at the University of Sunderland, and was originally an off-campus section of the MA Curating course, also available to international curators. PhD students from the University also co-programmed the course each year.

Course attendees have included curators and researchers from Hong Kong, Bahrain, India, the USA, Canada, Austria, the Netherlands, Greece, Ireland, France, and the UK, and have directly fed into impressive subsequent curatorial practice and projects. The organisations that we visited in London targeted a broad range of scales (Tate, Furtherfield), disciplines (Wellcome Collection, Iniva), and sectors (MachinesRoom, The Open Data Institute (ODI)). This strategy aimed to reflect the tendency of new media to cross many boundaries, where curators must also follow.

This ongoing process is reflected in the nature of the document, i.e. this is more of a collection of notes and reflections on a currently developing field than an academic closed position. By making the publication available as a free PDF, we hope to continue to get feedback and comments, which will build upon this knowledge.