Why did I start my Live Blog of Economy by reading the curator's note? Obviously, Angela Dimitrakaki and Kirsten Lloyd want to be clear about their intentions, and I felt it was important to respect that: they have included an essay in the programme for the exhibition which is quite a few steps above the usual one page hand out with a quick biography of the artists.
But the curator is increasingly important as an artist in their own right. Buzzcut's curators insist that they are "artists making space for other artists" and the programming of a festival like manipulate gives Simon Hart a responsibility that is larger than that of the performers. Not only does he have to make sure each show conforms to the vision of the festival, he has to make sure that they fit together as a narrative.
manipulate is a good place to start: a festival of visual theatre, it focuses on a genre that does not have the easy public understanding that scripted theatre has. The selections across the ten days this year reflect the diversity of the genre, taking in a variety of scales and media.
The curator within visual art - of the group show, for example - is more clearly working on an artistic process. Dimitrakaki and Lloyd had a vision for their exhibition, and the individual pieces could be read as illustrations of the thesis.
My preliminary reading of their essay does suggest that they rather like Marxist ideas. Just because I am tentative about them, I don't think my reading of the exhibition needs to be twisted into a bourgeois anarchist polemic.
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