FULL STACK FABULATOR (OR THE PROMETHEAN CURATOR)

Curatorial practice is often associated with open processes of meaning-making (and -unmaking), as provisional relations between artworks are catalysed through artful exhibition design, writing and live programming. In the process, ‘curatorial fabulation’ may conjure speculative worlds, while also allowing us to reconsider persistent holes of official histories. Building on the thought of Ursula Le Guin, curators may be seen as stitching temporary ‘carrier bags’, for divergent histories and futures; a practice that is particularly pertinent to online curating. The work of online curating requires beguiling storytelling, where multi-layered fabulations of back- and front-end forms, are replete with gaps that invite recursive re-thinking.

FULL STACK FABULATOR is an experimental work of confessional fictocriticism that uses programmatic citation, free-association and readymade pop graphics to tell one of many possible stories of online curating. Drawing on source materials from seminal texts, Curating Digital Art (Dekker 2021), Patchwork Girl (Jackson 1995) and Frankenstein (Shelley 1818), the essay highlights how online curating engages in a process of narrating itself into existence, knitting itself a loose ‘carrier bag’ to gather invisible and invisible forms. Through this work, FULL STACK FABULATOR, invites readers to consider house online curating destabilises technological and cultural fictions, while weaving its own tales.