On Catalogue Aesthetics

Abstract

Certain traits in art revolve around the cataloguing of content, in this way delegating performance and challenging audiences to ‘navigate’ an artwork in a dynamic and nonlinear fashion, retrieving material of interest and, eventually, co-producing own individuated experiences. Such a paradigm is shown not to be specific to database art of our times. Relevant examples are encountered throughout the history of both western and non-western culture. By virtue of such examples, this paper examines the phenomenon in its various contingencies, delineates a series of important affairs, and demonstrates how present-day art often reverberates the very same concerns of the past. It is eventually argued that catalogue æsthetic(ism)s albeit been accelerated by the digital revolution of the last few decades are not specific to it. Given that relevant instances are encountered in disparate cultural contexts since antiquity, ‘cataloguing’ should be rather thought of as a trait that has always been fundamental to how we organise, interact with, and make sense of our surroundings.