Curating in the Gap: Inhabiting the Digital Space

This presentation asks if digital spaces such as social media platforms, live streams, and cell phone apps can function as curated visual arts exhibition spaces. If so, do these digital spaces offer an opportunity for curators and existing visual arts institutions to connect with groups that are currently marginalised by the museum/gallery exhibition structure? By inhabiting the digital space (the gap) marginalised groups can have a place of display that does not support the binary that historically separates the notion of the arts institution and those on the outside of that existing structure. Can the gaps between contemporary art institutions and marginalised groups become powerful structures that can serve not just as places of display, but also as primary generators of cultural meaning in a diverse and globalised world? How can emerging technologies become tools of self-representation for those who do not usually have access to current exhibition structures? This presentation aims to form a critical theoretical framework for how to curate within that gap.