As-Found - Collector as Curator

I've mentioned the whole Collector as Curator problem in an earlier post, but without really addressing it properly. Basically all I was doing was pointing to Moody's observation that any collector of online material, in sharing their collection in a curatorial fashion, in essence becomes a Net artist. Now, there are many image collection or "bookmarking" sites out there (such as Ffffound! or VVork) but they often do (if not only) share images by other artists with the hopes of not only sharing interesting images to satisfy the aesthete within us but also to help expand our awareness of up-and-coming or undiscovered individuals. So what about As-Found?



Their mission statement is to collect images that are not created with artistic intentions, but are meant to be viewed with a specific (usually functional) purpose in mind: "If the image has been made by a contemporary artist we don’t want to know about it, because images created with multiple interpretations in mind are useless to us."* In posting the image on their site, they hope to take the image out of its original context and as such give the image new meaning. The image then becomes a kind of work of art; "a found image can match any image produced within the artistic field, in aesthetic, cultural or emotional qualities."*



These are the Readymades of the digital era, and although the blog does manage to take the image out of its original context, and in turn give the image new meaning, we are still made aware of this context through links back to the source, or even worse, by the "don't hotlink" image that often replaces a hotlinked image (although this has even been turned into an "exhibition" on the site). As such the gallery still maintains its position as the great de/re-contextualisor, providing official "art" status to whatever graces its walls (or monitors).

As-Found really is an interesting site to go through though, and I must admit, before reading the introduction, I couldn't always tell if an image was ironic or sincere. So much net.art aims to achieve a similar aesthetic (the "indiscernibles"), but these "non-art" images are just so perfect that they really belong in the (to quote Moody yet again) "'artists might as well retire' category." All that's left is for the collector — as curator — to become creator.