Talk: Post Internet Curation: Online Art Ecologies of the Web 2.0 Era
Pita Arreola-Burns and Elliott Burns

Summary

Pita Arreola-Burns and Elliott Burns present their online curatorial platform, Offsite Project, and trace how Web 2.0 galleries reshape exhibition design by borrowing from both internet aesthetics and physical display conventions. They compare the dense, hierarchical hanging of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition with the contained frame of the laptop screen, arguing that scrolling replaces the salon wall with a vertical axis of attention. They locate “post-internet” art in Marisa Olson’s writing as work made after the internet has become ordinary, where artists move fluidly between online and offline worlds. They contrast Web 1.0 hub-and-spoke platforms such as adaweb and Gallery 9 with the later ecology of social media and template-based sites, then examine four Web 2.0 platforms—isthisit, arebyte’s plug-in programme, the “Well, Now, What The Fuck?” GIF gathering and Distant Gallery/Common Garden—to show how curation can use pop-ups, social feeds, navigable maps and shared digital space. They conclude by discussing Web 3.0 metaverse spaces, warning that faithful replicas of real galleries risk limiting imagination, while more inventive platforms such as New Art City and Occupy White Walls offer playful, game-like curatorial potential.

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