BIO

Marcus Boon teaches contemporary literature and cultural theory at York University. His interests include literature in the digital age, critical theory, the Beats and other alternative and countercultures, sound studies, and the cultural study of spirituality and religion. He is the author of The Road of Excess: A History of Writers on Drugs (Harvard UP, 2002) which provided a global history of that topic, and In Praise of Copying (Harvard UP, 2010),  which investigates the ethics and philosophy of copying—and is available as a .pdf released under a creative commons license. Marcus Boon writes about music and sound for The Wire and is currently working on a book entitledThe Politics of Vibration. marcusboon.com

Synopsis – Curating After WikiLeaks

Reflecting back on Walter Benjamin’s ideas concerning the figure of the collector, I will explore the roles of collector and curator today, in the light of recent radical shifts in what we consider to be public, common, or property, triggered by neoliberal globalization and the co-emergence of digital cultures.