"What I am doing in this process is basically what any curator does. Starting from my own subjective views of the world, I try to organize, to give meaning, to make sense out of the cultural production I'm interested in. I include them in my discourse, using them to pass a message. The choices I make have a purpose, they are not random, and consequences can arise from them. The practice of curating remains the same, only the context changes." - Luís Silva
there's nothing pointless about decontextualized quotation in and of itself. it does allow the reader to consider rhetoric or language outside the boundaries by which it was originally limned, but that's by no means a pointless exercise. indeed, it can be rather illuminating for the exact reason it can also trouble original authors: it dissolves ownership over a single meaning and invites the creation of new ones.
I agree, your quotation is very much "out of context".
In fact, I think that the way in which I recontextualized your words is what makes this post function. By employing this particular piece of your post, and allowing the use of the first person to frame your language as possibly mine, I had hoped to define my blogging practice as a curatorial one; which I believe it to be. I was trying to allow my thoughts to come through your words, and for your words to seem like my thoughts. I was performing the function of a curator...
I might also add, that the very structure of both the web (blogs in particular) and the gallery is one of recontextualization. Curators have been experts in this field since the Renaissance. Quoting, both in print and on screen also behaves this way, and has for an equally long period of time.
In the age of linking at least, the reader is often offered a path towards a primary source, a primary context. I provided such a path in the post above (as I always do in my ongoing Quotations series), so that my readers could deconstruct the post for themselves, much the way that I have here, and in the process discover meaning.
I do not know if I have been successful, and am guaranteed not to be with every reader; such is the nature of putting work into the public sphere. I hope, after reading this explanation, my motivations and choices seem a bit more deliberate.
Thanks for being part of this discourse, your thoughts were, and are, appreciated.
spot-on.
slogrl
there's nothing pointless about decontextualized quotation in and of itself. it does allow the reader to consider rhetoric or language outside the boundaries by which it was originally limned, but that's by no means a pointless exercise. indeed, it can be rather illuminating for the exact reason it can also trouble original authors: it dissolves ownership over a single meaning and invites the creation of new ones.
Luís,
I agree, your quotation is very much "out of context".
In fact, I think that the way in which I recontextualized your words is what makes this post function. By employing this particular piece of your post, and allowing the use of the first person to frame your language as possibly mine, I had hoped to define my blogging practice as a curatorial one; which I believe it to be. I was trying to allow my thoughts to come through your words, and for your words to seem like my thoughts. I was performing the function of a curator...
I might also add, that the very structure of both the web (blogs in particular) and the gallery is one of recontextualization. Curators have been experts in this field since the Renaissance. Quoting, both in print and on screen also behaves this way, and has for an equally long period of time.
In the age of linking at least, the reader is often offered a path towards a primary source, a primary context. I provided such a path in the post above (as I always do in my ongoing Quotations series), so that my readers could deconstruct the post for themselves, much the way that I have here, and in the process discover meaning.
I do not know if I have been successful, and am guaranteed not to be with every reader; such is the nature of putting work into the public sphere. I hope, after reading this explanation, my motivations and choices seem a bit more deliberate.
Thanks for being part of this discourse, your thoughts were, and are, appreciated.
My best to you,
A.
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