Annoying recent trends

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Saying that a person is "curating" a music festival.

― PB, Thursday, 11 August 2005 17:09 (twenty years ago)

this is recent?

― kingfish completely hatstand (Kingfish), Thursday, 11 August 2005 17:11 (twenty years ago)

Every newsflash about a big festival on websites and blogs invariably tells us who is "curating" it. I definitely do not recall reading that dumb word in every single news item until this year or last. Used to be you'd read who was curating ATP every year; that was fine. But now it's everywhere. I don't recall hearing in the early nineties how Perry Farrell was "curating" Lollapalooza. Why do we need a trendy word for "organizing"?

― PB, Thursday, 11 August 2005 17:33 (twenty years ago)

new weird nu metal
electro peanuts
pollyanna polka
beard grass
juvebile
Moo Blues
Cat Dancing
Lickin and Stickin
Tonal Timbre Festivals
Hi Gloss
Wet Wet Dry
Guns to the One Heart Walks

― dan bunnybrain (dan bunnybrain), Thursday, 11 August 2005 17:35 (twenty years ago)

I agree, PB, "curating" is an awfully lofty word for it. I'm busy curating many different bottles for my refridgerated beer library.

x-post

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Thursday, 11 August 2005 17:36 (twenty years ago)

I don't know what that list means, but it's genius nevertheless.

(xpost)

― PB, Thursday, 11 August 2005 17:37 (twenty years ago)

Because curating is not the same thing as organizing. The curators at your local museum are not primarily involved in things like staffing the ticket booths and outsourcing the cafe service: they are just deciding what art goes up and where. This would have been a fine word to use about Lollapalooza, insofar as I am going to go out on a limb and guess that Perry Farrell's involvement did not require a great deal of math.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 11 August 2005 17:39 (twenty years ago)

maybe it did...and maybe that xplains the shut down for those few years

― b b, Thursday, 11 August 2005 17:41 (twenty years ago)

(xpost)

Still, as Alex said, it's a little lofty. Especially if it had been used to describe Perry Farrell...

― PB, Thursday, 11 August 2005 17:44 (twenty years ago)

It's possible! I dunno, I figure ATP just ushered the word in by making that distinction very clear: none of us were about to imagine that Matt Groening was sitting in an office pricing port-o-lets and approving vendor permits, and of course it'd have looked silly to imply anything of the sort, so the word was ... well, these people "curate." They curate the art part. Someone else organizes the institution the art is hanging in.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 11 August 2005 17:44 (twenty years ago)

Agreed. "curating" is such a pompous word-choice.

― Pete Baumann, Thursday, 11 August 2005 18:10 (twenty years ago)

Forget about the word curating!
I think we can agree the most disturbing new trend is Marissa Marchant threads.

― Brooker Buckingham (Brooker B), Thursday, 11 August 2005 18:15 (twenty years ago)

marissa is exactly who I thought of when I saw this thread title...

― ianinportland (ianinportland), Thursday, 11 August 2005 18:35 (twenty years ago)

figure out a more elegant choice, then, malcontents.

― Outsider Enter Port City (sexyDancer), Thursday, 11 August 2005 18:37 (twenty years ago)

Geez, dudes, just because something's associated with visual art doesn't make it "pompous!"

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 11 August 2005 18:43 (twenty years ago)

I actually read this thread title as "annoying recent threads" -- so I'm right there with Brooker and Ian.

― belle haleine, Thursday, 11 August 2005 18:45 (twenty years ago)

Maybe not, nabisco, but it is a pretty good indication.

― Pete Baumann, Thursday, 11 August 2005 18:49 (twenty years ago)

low brow is the new high brow, or something

― -vest, Thursday, 11 August 2005 18:58 (twenty years ago)

Do anti-rockists eat junk food as a symbol of their solidarity with mainstream pop culture?

― Outsider Enter Port City (sexyDancer), Thursday, 11 August 2005 19:00 (twenty years ago)

No, but to curate an art show isn't just to select artists to be involved. It's to select specific artworks (in collaboration with the artist), to come up with a curatorial philosophy / theme that binds these things, to justify the selection in a peer review, etc etc...

― paulhw (paulhw), Thursday, 11 August 2005 19:29 (twenty years ago)

You don't think an anti-rockist would drink a Big Gulp of Dr. Pepper just to stay down?

― Outsider Enter Port City (sexyDancer), Thursday, 11 August 2005 19:31 (twenty years ago)

I think that we associate "curating" with inanimate works of art, and it just seems wrong to curate people. There's a commercial aspect to it that's interesting too, almost like it's slavery. It's almost like the way a butcher treats the best beef. Perhaps we should stamp the rumps of various rockstars with purple ink that says "Thurston's Choice" or whatever.

Also, there's a pretension to "high" art implicit in "curating" which I don't think that music festivals need.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 11 August 2005 20:43 (twenty years ago)

I should also add that it definitely makes me cringe.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 11 August 2005 20:43 (twenty years ago)

"Spencer's Prime Cuts"

"Ned's Noshing"

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 11 August 2005 20:48 (twenty years ago)

Haha, there was a DJ store on Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood called 'Prime Cuts' that was a funny place.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 11 August 2005 20:49 (twenty years ago)

The place where you could find Meatls vinyl.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 11 August 2005 20:50 (twenty years ago)

what about performance art?!??!?

― hstencil (hstencil), Thursday, 11 August 2005 21:08 (twenty years ago)

is it ok to curate film festivals?!!?!?? what about multimedia festivals?????

― hstencil (hstencil), Thursday, 11 August 2005 21:09 (twenty years ago)

curate

n : a person authorized to conduct religious worship [syn: minister, parson, pastor, rector]

alleluia.

― blunt (blunt), Thursday, 11 August 2005 22:56 (twenty years ago)

figure out a more elegant choice, then, malcontents

"Picking bands"

― PB, Friday, 12 August 2005 00:32 (twenty years ago)

Plushies. Crush porn. Strategic sex tapes.

Oh, you mean in music journalism.

In the case of Intonation Fest, by the way, the word was exactly right: P4k didn't organize the festival, they were contacted by a moneyed third party to pick and deliver the bands.

― joseph cotten (joseph cotten), Friday, 12 August 2005 01:15 (twenty years ago)

"Procuring", then.

― Curt (cgould), Friday, 12 August 2005 01:40 (twenty years ago)

"Scoring drugs"

― kingfish completely hatstand (Kingfish), Friday, 12 August 2005 01:51 (twenty years ago)

Maybe we should stop calling them 'artists' too?

― jcartledge (jcartledge), Friday, 12 August 2005 04:12 (twenty years ago)

indieish twats fucking with metal. don't fuck with metal. you'll get the horns.

― el sabor de gene (yournullfame), Friday, 12 August 2005 06:23 (twenty years ago)

indieish twats fucking with metal.

Haha, I thought I was the only one who noticed this.

― The Brainwasher (Twilight), Friday, 12 August 2005 06:25 (twenty years ago)

three years pass...

white dudes talking about albums "dropping"

― Mike Crandle, Financial Analyst, Bear Stearns, New York, NY 10185 (res), Sunday, 5 July 2009 17:24 (sixteen years ago)

Dynamic Range Compression

― Geir Hongro, Sunday, 5 July 2009 17:26 (sixteen years ago)

--If you're trying to explain that something is good, throwing "psych" (always the abbreviated) in front of it.

--Lo fi that makes no use of lo fi aesthetic.

--Noise with absolutely no performance aspect other then "I have long hair and I'm going to turn a knob for a little bit"

--Bands that aren't hardcore who say "rad" and "stoked" in interviews

― filthy dylan, Sunday, 5 July 2009 23:24 (sixteen years ago)

The Internet

― nerve_pylon, Sunday, 5 July 2009 23:32 (sixteen years ago)

wow, I was feeling annoyed about the "curated" thing recently ... and I'm trying to figure out why it bugs me. My knee jerk reaction is that the word "curated" is being devalued/cheapened somehow. It's gone from someone "curating" a festival to -- examples I've noticed in my local scene -- "curated" being used to describe picking 2-4 bands for one show, "curated" being used to describe selecting a band or people to play one set. It's obviously, as in the initial example upthread, being used as a synonym for "selected."

― incomprehensible Kool-Aid swallower (sarahel), Sunday, 5 July 2009 23:40 (sixteen years ago)

the "dropping" thing has been an annoying trend for quite a while iirc

― wilter, Sunday, 5 July 2009 23:46 (sixteen years ago)

yeah, it has, but this was the more appropriate pre-existing thread that i found.

― Mike Crandle, Financial Analyst, Bear Stearns, New York, NY 10185 (res), Monday, 6 July 2009 00:02 (sixteen years ago)

three years pass...

K. Thomas Kahn is a writer based in New York City whose criticism has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Music and Literature Magazine, Bookslut, 3:AM Magazine, The Millions, and other venues. He is the curator of @proustitute.

― j., Wednesday, 17 April 2013 04:47 (thirteen years ago)

I've never read Proust. Were there lots of prostitutes?

― how's life, Wednesday, 17 April 2013 10:38 (thirteen years ago)

lots of portmanteaustitutes

― authentically inauthentic (Pat Finn), Wednesday, 17 April 2013 11:22 (thirteen years ago)

Oh come on

― Raymond Cummings, Wednesday, 17 April 2013 12:07 (thirteen years ago)

yes there are prostitutes in proust, though it's unlikely that proust was ever in prostitutes

― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, 17 April 2013 12:42 (thirteen years ago)

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