I'm very happy to give a keynote lecture at the Art, Museums and Digital Cultures Conference, organized by MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon. The conference date is 22-23 April 2021, my talk is on the second day, 10:00 AM
The digital condition and reconstitution of the public(s)
The digital condition has eroded many of the categories that have structured modernity. In this talk, I want to focus on two of them which are directly relevant to museums and other memory organizations, defining institutions of modern culture. One is the distinction between "public" and "private", the other is between "professional" and "amateur". These categories are no longer useful to structure the relations between these institutions and the wider environment in which they are embedded. Contemporary cultural production is defined by ubiquitous patterns of referentiality, communality, and algorithmicity. They transform the public into publics and give rise to "mass creativity" that threatens to bypass existing memory institutions.
