The curator’s job sounds relatively simple: just surprise us. Show us something we haven’t seen before, or lately, or in such depth, or with such clarity. Try to avoid the predictable and familiar, the market-approved or academically sanctioned, or what other curators have already done. Try to step outside your museum’s comfort zone or carefully manicured institutional persona with something eccentric, an intuitive leap. After all, there is plenty of art out there.
Okay, why have I posted this?
I am mulling over ideas on how people choose ignorance. That people choose conformity and that people choose division.
I am thinking that people choose not to be curious and that they choose to hold ill-informed judgments and that they choose predictability over spontaneity and that they long for the bland over the fabulous.
The flamboyant never stands a chance against the dreary.
I am growing contemptuous of people who choose not to extend themselves and not to challenge themselves and instead choose the safety and comfort of just blending into the bigotry that casually surrounds them.
And what does any of this have to do with Pauline Hanson?
Initially I was one of those that explained Hanson in Australia and Trump in America as simply being the consequences of the failures of neoliberalism.
I am now quietly backing away from my original thinking. Or at least I am starting to view the situation with a bit more differentiation.
With regards to Hanson she is not overly removed from the sentiments one regularly hears in public places in central Victoria. While her support is dominantly in her home state of Queensland she has admirers throughout Australia. The people that I encounter who express support for Hanson are not people who have been left behind by the economy but rather people with a degree of lifestyle comfort and overall prosperity.
Admittedly my personal experience is extremely limited, but I suspect that much of what Hanson says is actually closer to the norm, in particularly in regional Australia, of what is believed than some would like to admit.
Sadly, Hanson is not that removed from what the typical Liberal, National, or even conservative Labor voter may hold as viewpoints.
Explaining "Hanson" - I use the surname as representing something beyond the particular individual - is now best left to the social researchers and documentary makers and journalists who immerse themselves in the story.
Fair enough, but what is the point you are trying to make?
This week Pauline Hanson stood up in Australia's senate and made claims that contained untruths and outright lies.
And for some people that holds some sort of strange attraction. They can willfully look beyond any evidence that runs clearly against what they hold as opinion.
How on earth do you counteract that?
I am not sure but I am growing tired of lazy and stupid people. And people who not only won't embrace the unfamiliar but who won't even consider it.
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