In the article "Ferguson images evoke civil rights era...", Kennedy & Schuessler write, "In the civil rights era, the visual stamp of the movement was determined by newspapers and the nightly news. Today, the imagery one sees depends on the filters one uses." Although there is a much broader spectrum of images out there since anyone with a camera and a computer can publish theirs, filters are personal criteria that narrow it down almost to what one wants to see.
There is a connection between the idea of using filters and the idea of curation. Images can be filtered/curated in a narrow sense or used to incorporate a broader perspective. Jared Sexton's article uses the term "democratic possibility" in regards to aesthetic representation. The articles about the Yams Collective from the Whitney biennial further question how curators can best represent a broad range of artists and artistic styles as well as how to shift attitudes of white supremacy within long-standing institutions that perpetuate them. Curation is a way of filtering out images that are deemed acceptable within a certain context (museums/galleries/biennials) usally by a single person (curator) - which determines who has visibility within these systems.
I agree with The Yams Collective in their interview when they say what is needed in this process of filtering/curating images is "...more transparency. Also, the idea of looking at inclusion not from the
perspective of, “we need numbers,” but actually of having the knowledge
to understand different aesthetics, about where different art comes
from and what that means. Not just, “We need two black people. We need
an Asian. We need some queer people.” We want to see people actually
genuinely appreciate the aesthetic of the diversity that is America, and
propel that into the art world."
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