Roddy Hunter (b. Glasgow, 1970) is an artist, curator, educator and writer based in York, England. He is currently Senior Lecturer & Head of Programme, Fine Arts at York St John University. He has worked internationally across Asia, Europe, Middle East and North America since the 1990s. This work appears in Ice Cream: Contemporary Art in Culture (Phaidon, 2007) and Civil Twilight & Other Social Works (Trace Samizdat, 2007). Curatorial practice includes current doctoral research at CRUMB, University of Sunderland, Span2 (London, 2001) and Rootless ’97: The Nomad Domain (Hull, 1997). He taught at Dartington College of Arts from 1998-2007 and was co-Consul General of The Nomad Territories in England between 1996-1998. He holds an MA Contemporary Arts from Nottingham Trent University and earlier studied literature and theatre at the University of Glasgow. Critical writings include a co-authored history of the Art of Action in Great Britain (Heddon and Klein, 2012) and earlier monograph essays on Alastair MacLennan, John Newling and André Stitt. Numerous public lectures, talks and workshops have been given internationally.

At CRUMB, I am working on ‘Curating The Eternal Network After Globalisation’. The Eternal Network, co-created by artists George Brecht and Robert Filliou in 1968, is an unusual instance of creativity in which arguably the network itself is the artwork. Filliou in particular explored how the network-as-artwork-as-network could enable collaboration, exchange and dialogue across space and time. More than solely a means of distribution or medium of production, The Eternal Network became for him a conceptual context for ‘permanent creation’ (Filliou 1996). The research explores the attractiveness of networks as decentralized or distributed environments bypassing institutional curatorial spaces. How far though has the ‘globalism’ of communication sought by Filliou and others been supplanted by ‘globalisation’ in its neoliberal, doctrinal sense? (Chomsky 1999). Can the network as artwork be effective beyond conceptualisation in material terms? How can we rethink curatorial strategies in respect of the network-as-artwork’s media of production, means of distribution and experience of reception? In short, how can we find ways to curate The Eternal Network after globalisation?