Videofreex Curator Experience

I just helped curate the Dorsky's Videofreex exhibit last Thursday with two other students from my class.  We were in charge of collecting and reviewing video submissions for the "Elements" theme of the week.  A few important questions were raised during our time down in the museum.  For one thing, are we as curators actively deciding what should and should not go into the exhibit?  If the video meets all other guidelines, who are we to question the artist's message and say it doesn't fit the theme or our narrow definition of what art is?

We came across one video in particular that caused a lot of discussion.  It was a video of a male and female student sitting on a bed.  There were large reflective balls of various sizes in the background and the boy was wearing a bandana covering his mouth and nose.  The girl was holding a cat and the boy was talking to it and stroking it with what we believe was a fake dagger or knife.  At first, the video started out okay, he was just waving the knife in the air.  The others questioned if it fit the theme, but again, who are we to argue with their vision?  What if the mirrored balls symbolized water and the boy's personality was the fire aspect of the video?  That was my original plan for my own elements video - to have different dancers and dances represent different elements in their speed and personality. I was ready to put the video into the exhibit, but then we saw the boy press the dagger to the cat's neck.  Immediately, we deleted the video and took it off of the list of accepted entries.  As soon as the video suggested cruelty to animals, or just cruelty in general, I think the curator does have the ability to step in and take it out.  Of course, the artist could have created a provocative video intended to shock the audience, but I feel as if this was not the case.  I think this experience was very helpful and let us engage in a dialogue about the curator's role and how much power they should be allowed to have.  This also relates to the material we just covered in my Art of the Later 20th Century class.  We just had a lesson on Fred Wilson and discussed the artist as a curator.  Essentially, it's the same as what we did for this class.  Instead of using art/sculptures/tools made by others, we also have our own creations submitted for the exhibit.  This creates a bias towards videos created by people in our own class as those automatically get added to the exhibit with little critique or questioning.  If that video had been a submission from our own class, there's a good change it would have been included, or at least considered more.  Just something to think about next time I have the power to decide what counts as art and what should be included in a exhibit open to the community.