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Article
The Citizen Curating Project Confronts the Pulse Nightclub Shooting
Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
  • Barry J Mauer, University of Central Florida
Keywords
  • Curating, Archiving, Gregory Ulmer, Orlando, Omar Mateen, Eliminationism
Abstract

The Citizen Curator Project, established in 2014 in Orlando, encourages ordinary citizens to try curating for themselves and to approach the task as a form of public policy consultation. Curating as activism requires that we assume the identity of uninvited consultants who have witnessed catastrophe, deliberated about it, and wish to share our epiphanies and policy recommendations with policy makers and other members of society. Because curating has been crucial to ideas of community in the modern era—for example, museums arose with nations and reflected national priorities—we want citizens to think of curating as another means of building and shaping community, a means of increasing their own agency within a more democratic and participatory process. The Citizen Curator Project invites participants from the area to create a series of exhibitions on various themes. In spring and summer 2017, we are focusing on the theme of “Eliminationism and Resilience.” A particularly potent example of eliminationism, defined as discourses, actions, and social policies that seek to suppress, exile, or exterminate perceived opponents, is the recent Pulse nightclub attack, whereas the Orlando United campaign may be viewed as an act of resilience.

Publication Date
1-1-2017
Document Type
Paper
Publication Version
Publisher's version
College
College of Arts and Humanities
Location
Orlando (Main) Campus
Department
English
Citation Information

“The Citizen Curating Project Confronts the Pulse Nightclub Shooting.” The St. John’s University Humanities Review. Volume 14, Issue 1, Spring 2017 http://stjenglish.com/wp-content/uploads/St.-JohnUniversity-Humanities-Review-14.2Spring-2017-1.pdf