Ron English, "Money is the Root of All Art", 1994

Okay so I’ve been thinking about a lot of different things, all of which deserve much more rigorous investigation than I can manage at the moment, what with my full-time job, trying to see work in NYC and, you know, trying to have a personal life (ha!) But I wanted to at least get some of these thoughts out there and expand on them, over time, as I gather more information. The conversations that happen in the comments section – complete with links, references, etc. – are really valuable and we are so grateful to the community for engaging in thoughtful discussion on these important issues. Please keep it going!

So first I want to talk about money. Every day on my way to work I would pass Occupy Wall Street and I would think about all the artists I knew that were there, who were posting about it on FB and talking about it at parties and on the street. I would stop by Zucotti every once in a while to see what was going on and found it alternately inspiring and frustrating. I am the 99% and I am, fundamentally, a progressive leftist who believes in the strategic redistribution of wealth for the stability and enhancement of society for the greater good. (See this New Yorker article on Brazil, excerpt available, subscription required for full access). I believe we should talk – and do something – about income inequality and that the government should hold the banks and financial services industry to account for their recklessness and irresponsibility. But as “socialist” as my leanings are, we – especially artists and people working in the arts – can’t and mustn’t ignore the fact that if it weren’t for corporations and the financial services industry, there would probably not be any arts in America to speak of.

The government isn’t investing enough to support an arts infrastructure in America. Check it out – the NEA’s 2012 funding request was as follows:

The National Endowment for the Arts requests a budget of $146.255 million for FY 2012, a reduction of $21.245 million or 13% from FY 2010 appropriated levels and an amount consistent with that appropriated to the NEA in FY 2008.

of which $28.063 million is for salaries and expenses. So that means that the NEA is distributing approximately $118.192 million in funds to support the arts in all 50 states of America. That’s approximately $2.36 million per state. To give a sense of perspective, BAM’s annual budget is in the $25 million range, PS122′s is, roughly, in the $1.3 million range.

NB: Full range of NEA financials are available here. And if you aren’t already familiar, you can check out any non-profit’s financials at Guidestar. (Always a good idea when donating money, researching institutions or job-seeking!)

I’m fortunate enough to live in NYC where the DCA (under the impressive leadership of the indomitable Kate Levin) is incredibly supportive. NYSCA too. If I lived in Kansas, I’d be pretty worried. So arts funding from the public sector, either nationally or on the state and local levels, is unreliable at best.

So then we have foundations – where would the arts be without foundations, large and small? They’re absolutely, vitally important to the arts ecology and they play an incredibly important role in advancing non-market-driven agendas. They support all kinds of projects – not just arts – that are significant, meaningful and vital for a civil, democratic society. Some foundations are conservative, some more liberal, you may not agree with all of their priorities and strategies, but without the philanthropic sector, America would be a much poorer place culturally. But remember – the “gift economy” and corporate economies are directly related. Most foundations, if not all, (and many arts orgs as well) have endowments, which are essentially reserves of capital managed through investment portfolios. Endowments are financial mechanisms for the growth of capital, and a foundation is obligated to spend something like 5% of their returns on their programs. (I am not a financial whiz, but I’m reaching out to some people who are to try and get more thorough data. I hope to share my findings in the new year). So foundations and other organizations that have endowments, rely on the health and success of the financial services industry to do their work.

I was employed at a foundation when the market crashed in 2008 and we had to suspend most of our programs because our endowment was “under water” – we literally had no money to give away. This was a Jewish foundation and when the market crash was followed by the Bernie Madoff scandal it was devastating. Fortunately our foundation hadn’t invested with Madoff, but many Jewish philanthropies had and they were crippled, if not entirely destroyed.

So there’s an interesting situation here – any artist who seeks or accepts a grant from a foundation is, indirectly, being supported by the financial services industry. As an artist should we be concerned or considering the investment strategies of the foundations who support us? Who are they investing in? Who manages their money? We know that fluctuations in the market affect a foundation’s ability to distribute capital, but do their investment portfolios – and advisors and relationships – influence programmatic and strategic initiatives? If we are politically opposed to the policies of a given corporation or investment firm, are we complicit when we benefit, even indirectly, from their profitability? What if you found out that the grant you just received came from a foundation that was heavily invested in Halliburton? Food for thought.

And finally we have corporations. Many large corporations – Chase, American Express, etc. – have philanthropic programs that support the arts. I haven’t been able to adequately do the research but I am going to guess that corporate philanthropic spending in the arts dwarfs the funds distributed by the NEA. If you factor in the non-philanthropic expenditures on culture (event sponsorships, etc.), corporate support of the arts is probably the single largest source of funding in the country. The arts sector as we know it would literally not exist without corporate support.

(Funny side note – I was talking to an arts manager who has been in the business for over 40 years and she was telling me how back in the day when Philip Morris was a major sponsor of BAM and other institutions, you would go to parties and events and they would have free cigarettes out on the tables next to the wine and hors d’oeuvres. Can you imagine?!)

So as artists and cultural workers we should probably think about how our work is supported, who is supporting it and what that means to us. I’m not at all suggesting that we shouldn’t be critical of “the system” – we absolutely should and must – but we need to acknowledge where these worlds intersect, how they interrelate and what the implications are.

Which leads me to Michael Kaiser, his engagement with “the system” and his thoughts on the perils of citizen criticism .

Kaiser’s DeVos Institute of Arts Management is funded by Dick DeVos, billionaire heir to the Amway forutne and Republican heavyweight. (h/t to commenter Richard Kooyman for pointing this out). DeVos has been active in right-wing groups such as the Council for National Policy and The Conservative Caucus. Kooyman also says that the Koch Brothers are supporters of the DeVos Institute, but I have not been able to find documentation of their support.

My instinct is that if Kaiser is being funded by Republican businessmen then their values and worldview are going to influence the management training. I’m still trying to acquire Kaiser-generated materials to study (please send me some if you have taken Kaiser training) but from what I’ve read on Kaiser’s blog, and as I mentioned before, he seems to be coming from a place of privilege that does not acknowledge the facts on the ground for most arts orgs in America. He seems to apply Kennedy Center models to organizations that do not have the capacity, resources or connections to actually implement them. It also tends to privilege institutions that support Ballet, Opera, Symphonies, etc.- the most conservative, institutions that primarily present the work of the White, Western, Male canon. Which is fine, but it also reinforces the elitist model of arts presenting where the educated, wealthy and privileged provide institutionally-approved “culture” for the betterment of the masses.

Interestingly, I found an article about BAM’s new Professional Development Program that will reside in the soon-to-open Richard B. Fisher Building. It is being run by BAM along with the DeVos Institute of Arts Management with the support of the Brooklyn Community Foundation and the New York Community Trust. It is designed to “aid Brooklyn arts groups looking to mount a self-produced performance in the [Fisher Building]‘s new Judith & Alan Fishman Theater Space, and enable them to develop a set of capacity building skills in areas key to their success. The program will focus on the growth and training of each organization as a whole—offered at no fee to participants—and provide a new level of support, not previously offered in Brooklyn, that culminates in a performance.”

Interesting model – providing local arts groups training in management so that they can grow enough to afford to self-produce at BAM. While I question that in and of itself, (the whole rental vs. presentation issue, etc. etc. – too much to go into here without losing my mind in frustration), I also wonder about Kaiser’s ability to adapt his Big Institution model to the sorts of groups that the BAM program will be engaging. Kaiser recently wrote a post on his blog called “Fundraising: the Dilemma of Organizations of Color” in which he asserts:

In fact, as a proportion of their funding, arts organizations receive too much from foundations. These important institutions are overly reliant on foundation and government support. Their bigger weakness is in raising funds from individual donors. Individual donors are the bedrock of American arts funding, giving more than 60% of the money received by arts organizations. Yet the average African American, Latino, Asian American or Native American arts organization receives less than 10% of its funding from individual donors.

I agree with the fundamental idea that arts orgs should focus more on individual donors than on foundation and government support. Art should be supported by, and speak to, their community. But Kaiser seems to elide the very real problem that many orgs of color come from – and serve – disadvantaged populations for whom philanthropic giving is not a reasonable, or likely, expectation. Additionally, some communities do not have a deeply ingrained culture of philanthropy. Some  minority communities don’t have a long enough history of stable wealth accumulation to support philanthropic giving and some communities, from what I have heard from colleagues working in “Organizations of Color”,  just don’t prioritize philanthropy. Even when a member of that community “makes it”, there is very little cultural precedent or pressure to “give back”, at least to the arts. (This is anecdotal, I welcome more information from the field).

Kaiser goes on to say:

As a result, the size of arts organizations of color is bounded and they tend to experience wide swings in funding, especially during bad economic times. Because of this, there are very few large, stable arts organizations of color in our nation. Apart from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater it is hard to think of any. And Ailey has been remarkably successful building its individual donor base, a testament to the skills of its Executive Director Sharon Luckman. Sharon recognized early on that the key to a strong individual fundraising effort is a strong board and she has worked relentlessly to engage strong board members and other individual donors. This is unusual for arts organizations of color whose boards tend to resemble community service organizations rather than fundraising boards. [Emphasis mine] In fact, the boards of diverse organizations typically include numerous leaders from other not-for-profit institutions (educators, pastors, political groups) for whom raising money for their own organizations is a priority. The Ailey organization, under Sharon’s leadership, has successfully broken this mold and has reaped the benefits. Any leader of a diverse arts organization would do well to study her work with Ailey over the past twenty years.

There’s a reason why many Organizations of Color have boards that look like they do. Because many of them start in communities and aim to serve their communities. They generally don’t have access to the 1% or their community equivalents. They don’t go to the same schools, or live in the same neighborhoods and rarely network at, say,  The Sun Valley Conference. Ailey’s strategy just won’t work for many of these organizations, because they’re not making work or presenting work that will be shown at Kennedy Center, etc. and thus be exposed to those donors. They’re making and presenting work in their communities, for their communities. So how do you develop a strategy that might actually work for them? And this isn’t even going into the whole issue of support (and management models) that are relevant to developing, producing and presenting contemporary work in smaller arts organizations, where the Alvin Aileys of tomorrow are being incubated.

I don’t have enough direct experience or exposure to Kaiser and his methodology to adequately critique it. But from what I’ve heard anecdotally from other arts professionals, boards love him and then bring that back to the administrative and artistic leadership, frequently creating a disconnect between expectations, capacity, program and organizational culture. I’m all for bringing sound business practices and strategies into the arts sector, but it requires entrepreneurial innovation and nimbleness, more like a start-up than a huge corporation. But it seems that Kaiser’s intent is grooming the next generation of Kennedy Center-style leadership that will propagate a similar model and set of biases. I really don’t see how this will help the overall ecology of America’s vital, diverse and dynamic, multilayered arts landscape.

Finally, I want to bring this back to my earlier response to Kaiser’s HuffPo article on the “Death of Criticism”. Just as the visual arts world has a huge infrastructure devoted to creating value around art objects, so too the large performing arts and music institutions have a structure for creating perceived value. No one is denying that symphonies, ballets, operas and traditional theater have great merit and the classics of Western Literature and Art should be taught, studied and produced. But their continued cultural value is dependent on an academic and “critical” infrastructure that insures that the audience is informed of exactly why it is important. Also, these traditional works of the Western canon have the advantage of being created, largely, by people that are now dead. No pesky live artists making troubling statements about politics, or sexuality, or racism or income inequality.  But there will always be an audience for the classics of the canon – Kaiser and his acolytes will make sure of that, because they are deeply invested in maintaining a critical infrastructure that supports their conservative taste and values.

The rise of the citizen critic undermines cultural hegemony. I agree with Kaiser to some extent – in a world where anyone can be a “critic” there are going to be a lot of people who offer uninformed, unsophisticated opinions.  Just look at the work that won the Grand Rapids ArtPrize  by popular vote (funded by DeVos!) – a huge stained glass Jesus mosaic. Nice. But to dismiss public discussion by educated and informed writers – often arts professionals, artists, writers and aficionados themselves – is irresponsible at best, elitist, dismissive and destructive at worst.

When Kaiser talks about “critics” at mainstream publications that are “vetted” by editorial staff, he perpetuates a long-outdated myth. It has been a long time since newspapers – especially local newspapers – have “vetted” their arts writers. He places a lot of faith in the intellectual acumen of, well, newspapermen. Rupert Murdoch is a newspaperman – and he doesn’t seem to have done a very good job of vetting anybody. The fact is that the age of Kenneth Tynan is long gone and the notion of serious criticism in mainstream papers is quaint. Most of today’s arts writers in major newspapers – with a few exceptions (Hi Claudia, Gia and Alastair!) – are not critics but reviewers. At least in terms of what they publish in those outlets. Their job is not to engage with the larger ideas and aesthetic considerations, history, meaning and context of work being presented. Their job is to tell the ticket-buying public whether it is worth the money and time to see a show. Critics from academia like Bonnie Maranca, Carol Martin, Tom Sellar, Andre Lepecki, et al, are invaluable to our conversation. Unfortunately these kind of writers aren’t even factored into Kaiser’s thinking.

Admittedly every web browser should probably have  some kind of “Caveat Emptor” button that would help you distinguish the good sites from the bad – but the ideas, information and conversations generated by Citizen Critics are a vital component of creating  sustainability for the arts in America. The only reason to find this “scary” – as Kaiser does – is that it represents a challenge to his authority as an arbiter of cultural value and a purveyor of conservative models of arts engagement.

We can do better.

Popularity: 5% [?]

With Performa having recently concluded and in the wake of the Marina Abramovic kerfuffle at the MOCA gala, I have been giving a lot of thought to the difference between visual art performance and contemporary performance – more specifically, Time-Based Art with its origins in dance and theater. This is an ongoing obsession of mine and one that I feel needs to be addressed critically. Thanks largely to RoseLee Goldberg, who literally wrote the book on performance art, the visual arts world has “rediscovered” performance in an unprecedented way. Unlike RoseLee, it seems that many of the visual arts curators currently working to promote visual arts performance lack knowledge in contemporary performance, and I think this presents a problem, as well as a challenge.

At the moment, Independent Curators International is offering a workshop on Curating Performance that features a group of teacher/advisors drawn entirely from the visual arts world who don’t appear to have backgrounds in contemporary performance. I find it surprising that ICI couldn’t find – or weren’t interested in finding – a single representative of the contemporary performance sector. And then I started thinking about who they could have approached and I realized that the number of performance curators who can speak eloquently and thoughtfully about why they program what they do is few and far between. Most of the curators I know are reluctant to speak about their criteria and aesthetic frameworks. I imagine this is one reason why the Institute For Curatorial Practice in Performance at Wesleyan was created. I have reached out to both ICI and ICPP for syllabi and reading lists to compare/contrast. If and when I receive those materials, I will write an addendum to this post. For now, rather than focus on the different curatorial perspectives I would like to share some of my subjective responses and thoughts related to the difference between visual art performance and contemporary performance.

In the past two weeks I have had several substantial discussions about this topic, two of which stick out for me. The first conversation was with one of New York’s most esteemed artistic director/curators and the other with a prominent director whose work has spanned both avant-garde performance and mainstream theater. From the artistic director I was told, “The visual arts world hates craft, they’re seeking ‘authenticity’,” suggesting that when a visual artist stages a performative event it should not have any degree of artifice, that it be perceived as “real”.

The director I spoke to said that the visual arts world, somewhat understandably, finds theater laughable and as a result rarely studies it. While I share the visual arts world’s distaste for popular theater predicated on “psychological realism”, I lament the fact that there are many, many devoted practitioners of contemporary performance who are as dramaturgically engaged in the construction of their time-based work as visual artists are in creating the intellectual framework around their object-based work, and that this is, apparently, not recognized or valued by the visual arts world. It is as if when visual artists and curators “discover performance” they think that they are the first to ever encounter the aesthetic issues it proposes. It would seem that they are frequently unaware of – or indifferent to – the fact that there is a long history of performance theory; that theater, and especially dance, have for many years explored issues around presence, embodiment, presentational aesthetics, the observed/observer relationship, the visual presentation of the constructed environment, the semiotics of representation, etc., etc. The visual art world might be surprised to read Hans-Thies Lehmann’s seminal writing on post-dramatic theater. They might be surprised to be exposed to the work of Rich Maxwell, Philippe Quesne, Cuqui Jerez, Xavier LeRoy and others who work extremely hard to create rigorous stagings of “the real” – who use artifice to create an experience of the real that is almost indistinguishable from the “real thing”. Or the work of Annie Dorsen who, in using computer programs and simulations, completely undermines the notion of “the real” itself.

I don’t know a lot about visual arts curatorial practice, but I have seen my fair share of both visual art performance and contemporary performance and the lack of meaningful dialogue between the two practices is troubling.

While Performa has taken the long view on visual art performance, tracing its development over the past 100 years or so, I think that when most people talk about performance art from a visual arts perspective they are referring to work that traces its precedents to the 50s through the 80′s, after which performance art fell more or less out of fashion. This may be ascribed (I’m just winging it here, but its a theory) to the rise of solo performance from a performance background – Karen Finley, et al - being labeled Performance Art and a desire by the visual art world to distance itself from that aesthetic.

There’s a revealing interview with Roselee Golberg on artinfo in which she says: “First, I think that artists who’ve never worked with performance before, they really almost don’t know where to begin” and then:

They haven’t dealt with things like performance rehearsals, they haven’t dealt with things like auditions, they haven’t dealt with things like lighting….Then there’s the next layer of questions I ask, where I’m really the guinea pig, I’m the audience member. If I’m going to walk into this room, what is it going to feel like when I walk in? What is the room going to look like? Is there going to be sound right away? What kind of feeling do you want people to have? I spent all these years thinking about performance, looking for all these things that did work or didn’t work, and I feel like that’s my role sometimes, to be critical.

Earlier in the same interview she says:

I think what Performa did was suddenly say, let’s dream up another kind of artist performance, and let’s give visual artists who maybe have never made this kind of work before a chance to create something extraordinary that is the equivalent of beautiful work that we are seeing in galleries and museums, and not backwards-looking material that seems to be getting further and further in the corner in a way and being very much about ‘70s and ‘80s and so on.

The basic idea of artists creating performance that is equivalent to the work in galleries or museums is a compelling proposition – but at the same time it suggests that only those artists identified as visual artists who are entering – naively and lacking practical knowledge and historical background – into the world of performance, are going to be making that work.  It largely ignores the signifcant body of work being created by time-based artists for whom performance is their primary discipline and does nothing to raise the value and perception of that work. To me this is problematic.

Ideally I would love to see Performa acknowledge even more work by time-based artists – directors, choreographers, ensembles – who are creating, on a regular basis, contemporary performance. That seems unlikely, in which case I would like to see the world of Contemporary Performance engage in parallel strategies to those of Performa and work harder to elevate the valuation and perception of staged or site-based performance work. Rather than the chaotic mishmash of APAP season festivals, I can imagine a new festival that ties together the most forward-focused work from UTR, Coil and American Realness under one umbrella with thoughtful dramaturgy and academic panels.

So what are some of the differences between Visual Art Performance and Contemporary Performance?

First I would suggest the notion of context and infrastructure. Visual Art, historically, is about the creation of objects – paintings, sculptures, photographs – that can be sold. One impulse behind Visual Art Performance was the rejection of making objects for sale in favor of creating non-commodifiable, ephemeral events that were meant to critique and undermine the capitalist structures of the art market. Some artists, like Marina Abramovic, have managed to commodify that work in retrospect, completely abandoning any pretense of anti-capitalism, in fact becoming major players in it. (Cue the MOCA Gala kerfuffle).

Since Visual Art has historically been about the creation of objects for sale, there is a massive infrastructure in place to create value around objects – museums, galleries, academics, journals, etc. Artists create with an accompanying intellectual framework and  put their art into the marketplace where it is contextualized by critics, academics and curators. This helps create perceived value. If it gets into a museum show, it raises the value. If the artist works assiduously to hone their public image and awareness of their “brand” the value continues to rise. Objects that were created, essentially, without value beyond the cost of materials, become more prized due to scarcity and a sort of symbolic connection to a larger cultural framework. This art object is then bought and resold over time, with the hope that it will continue to rise in value. Artists rarely share in the resale revenues of work that has significantly appreciated in value, but that’s another story. The Visual Art marketplace is, in a way, as pure an expression of capitalism as one could imagine. The irony of the art world’s frequent embrace of leftist anti-capitalist ideology is not lost on me.

The recent rediscovery of performance by the Visual Art world could be viewed, cynically, as the latest fashion in a milieu that mostly values the new and the “edgy”. Tino Sehgal is a laughable choreographer, but he’s a brilliant businessman. And the art world, to be frank, is somewhat masochistic. They love nothing more than someone who can fuck with them in a novel and ingenious way. The fact that Sehgal has monetized abstraction and ephemerality is a stroke of genius. He has taken advantage of the thrill-seeking impulse of the hyper-capitalist art market and managed, like a financial services whiz, to turn the mere idea of a performance into money. Brilliant.

I propose that when most visual artists come to performance, they are still thinking within the framework of object-making. They may be engaging with concepts around experience and representation, but from a perspective of bringing visual art to life in the time-based world using the techniques and tropes with which they are already familiar. They may not be concerned with the study of movement and embodied presence, of the craft of performance or the  challenges of the created environment. In contrast, Contemporary Performance as a genre has its roots in theater and dance. Experimental, to be sure, but rooted in explorations that are primarily focused on the performative event itself.

I’m no fan of traditional theater. That’s my background, but I long ago tired of the limitations of psychological realism and conventional narrative. I can see why people from a visual arts background might find it less than compelling. But the world of Contemporary Performance has long since distanced itself from “drama” and practitioners of contemporary performance should be acknowledged for the work they do. Dancers and choreographers train for years, and continue to train every day, to master their bodies, enabling themselves to do extraordinary things. They deeply explore the nature of movement, the way bodies moving in space convey different meanings and experiences, point to different ideas. Directors work with dramaturges to develop intellectual frameworks around the experiences they create, around how to integrate the visual and auditory experience with the performance, how does all this point to ideas beyond the performed event? How does the physical representation of ideas on a stage or at a site loop back to the concepts with which they are engaged?

One difference, I think, is that time-based artists working in contemporary performance frequently think about, as Goldberg puts it, “What kind of feeling do you want people to have?” – something that is new to visual arts practitioners. This may seem like a mild distinction, but it is key. Performance practitioners are experience-makers, not object-makers, and as such they are concerned with human engagement. Directors, choreographers and other performance-makers may be engaging with making manifest the inner life of human beings, defining the space between audience and performance as a shared field of intersecting subjectivities. And this means that we’re not only talking about thoughtful, detached examination of intellectual ideas, but, sometimes, feelings. This is where it gets tricky because what makes Traditional Theater so abhorrent to many is the unseemly focus on feelings and emotion. I’ll admit, I think there is nothing more awful than having to sit in a theater and watch some actor “act” the words of a playwright who is blatantly and unsubtly trying to evince an emotional response from the audience. In this day and age the provocation of an emotional response that doesn’t feel obvious or unearned is exceedingly difficult, and artists who are able to do this effectively are few and far between.

That being said, if a visual artist is making work in the context of creating objects for sale, it does not seem like a stretch to suggest that the framework of objectification will translate into the practice of visual art performance. In the visual art context, the body is an object to be manipulated like any other, or it is a canvas upon which the artist can project their desired meaning. If that body becomes more than object, it complicates the essential aesthetic transaction of the visual art experience. The attribution of feelings and emotions to a human being creates the possibility of empathy, moving the body from a field of abstraction into one of subjectivity. [Note: while discussing this essay with a friend of mine I was directed to the work of German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer and his study of hermeneutical aesthetics. I am only starting to research it, but it is brilliant, fascinating and relevant].

The Abramovic installation at the MOCA Gala appears to have been, based on after-the-fact accounts, objectification taken to its extreme, with human beings serving as literal centerpieces at the dining tables of the wealthy and privileged. From what I understand from performers’ accounts online some were subjected to mockery and ridicule – for instance, a pile of salt arranged like a line of coke in front of the immobile performer – and generally put in an unenviable position. I’m sure that some of the performers had a very different experience, and only those who were in attendance can speak authoritatively, but from my perspective the premise itself borders on disgusting while being emblematic of the values of a hyper-capitalist art market.

So in brief – I am proposing that visual art performance, generally, is predicated on the objectification and abstraction of the human body, whereas contemporary performance – Time-Based Art with its origins in dance and theater – is more frequently predicated on the creation of a subjective field of experience – what I will call “experience design”. The aesthetic challenges of integrating light, sound, visual representation and embodied presence – sometimes even text – into a Gesamtkunstwerk are undertaken not to create a “living object” but to create a shared experience.

So while both visual art and performance contexts rely on the vision of an artist, the path to the desired end result is different. The visual artist comes from an object-making context and approaches their work under that influence, whether by embracing or rejecting that paradigm. Contemporary performance, more often than not, actively acknowledges and celebrates the essential ephemerality of the form. The artwork exists only in the moment in which it is perceived, the audience has a role in the creation of the work itself, each performance and expression is unique depending on who is there to experience it. No two performance events are ever alike – and that is part of the beauty of it. Contemporary Performance events are rarely thought of as objects for sale, or as advancing an artist’s ability to create objects-for-sale. Maybe that should change – that’s a longer discussion for another time.

I will also propose that the practice of art-making in visual art performance versus contemporary performance is reflective of the object vs. experience framework. Performance, even from the most dictatorial choreographer or theater maker, is essentially a collaborative process. In order to bring a performance to life one requires the collaboration of directors, writers, composers, dramaturges, actors, lighting designers, set designers, technicians, programmers, videographers, choreographers, dancers, etc., etc. Visual art making is less frequently like that. Traditional visual arts practice is that of an artist alone in the studio or a master artist overseeing poorly paid laborers hired to fabricate objects under their direction. This method, I surmise, translates into visual art performance, where the same practices hold. Rather than collaboration, there are workers engaged to implement the singular, exacting vision of the artist. So we see a fundamental divide in both the practice of art making and in the theoretical constructs surrounding the creation of any given work. Yes, there are artists working in spectacle-oriented performance – Robert Wilson, for example – who are notoriously dictatorial and exacting. Never having been privy to Wilson’s practice I can’t say how collaborative he may or may not be. But I would imagine that even he must work responsively to the input of his co-creators.

Obviously this is a vast generalization. There are visual artists working with food experiences, community-engaged practices, etc. who defy the framework I’m suggesting. My concern is that for those visual artists engaged specifically in the making of “performance”, the disdain for craft and the disinterest in artists already working in contemporary performance not only results in subpar work being celebrated by the arts market and visual arts infrastructure, but continues the ongoing devaluation of contemporary performance from dance and theater makers.

This is a complicated issue – one which is far too much to fully engage here. Kaprow-style “happenings”, Chris Burden being shot, etc. are experiments in “the real” that become more problematic when “re-performed”. Nina Horisaki-Christens explores this idea in a recent essay in the ICI Journal where she discusses the Visual Art world’s discomfort with “script”. She says:

In his recent musings in Artforum on the future of Trisha Brown’s work, Douglas Crimp posits that her signature solo Watermotor, as performed by Brown, is a masterpiece. He then follows up by inquiring, “Will it ever be danceable by anyone but Brown?”  The question is not so much will it be danced by anyone else, as Crimp was likely aware that it would inevitably be performed by another at some point, but would it be danced as expressively and imaginatively by anyone else other than its maker. In Performance Art this seems to be the crux of the question of authenticity: can the work reach its full potential, retain its essential meaning and character, when performed in a different context or by a different individual?

It is such an interesting – and flawed – paradox. I saw Watermotor performed by Neal Beasley last spring at DTW (now NYLA). It was beautiful and extraordinary. Was it the same as watching Trisha Brown do it herself? Probably not. Does it make it any less authentic? Not in the least. Here is Deborah Jowitt on Beasley in Watermotor:

In 1978, with Watermotor, Brown unloosed the inborn wildness that her earlier plain-jane structures had been reining in. You can see her dancing the solo in Babette Mangolte’s black-and-white film, projected on the DTW lobby wall. Galloping, twisting flinging her limbs into moves and countermoves, she’s a marvel of ribbony obliques; this dance could pass through the eye of a needle. It’s fascinating to see the terrific Beasley perform the piece. He’s a small, muscular man—supple but taut. His Watermotoris less about cool liquid than about molten metal that has to be worked fast before it hardens. There’s no accompaniment but the sound of his breathing. The virtuosic performance lasts about two-and-a-half minutes, and we cheer. Beasley calmly rode Brown’s bronco of a dance and didn’t fall off.

I would suggest that Visual Art’s obsession with authenticity has less to do with respecting an artist’s original intent and more to do with an inherited predisposition towards protecting ownership. Once again this is a larger conversation than can be explored fully here and now. (Maybe someone will give me a grant so I can study this more deeply. LOL.)

The larger point I’m making is two-fold. First, visual art performance, because of its object-based origins and the field’s obsessions with “the real” and “authenticity” rejects craft and discipline. This is problematic because, frankly, it results in a lot of very bad performance. Second, because the visual arts world has a value-creating infrastructure, this bad performance is more highly valued in the marketplace than Contemporary Performance by time-based artists with origins in dance and theater. Performance work that is more sophisticated, thoughtful, challenging and virtuosic is de-prioritized and devalued in favor of unpracticed – but “real” – performative events created by visual artists.

There was a time when both visual art and performance valued craft. Times have changed. Experimental artists in both disciplines are uncomfortable with artifice, reject the obvious falsity of “psychological realism” and seek new modes of engagement with the public. The problem is that they do not share knowledge or even dialogue around their respective practices, aesthetics, goals and strategies. The Visual Art world has no incentive to value contemporary performance, because their work will remain remunerative regardless. Though I would like to see more visual artists reach across the fence to time-based artists and engage them in a collaborative process, I’m not optimistic. If that is not going to happen, then it is time for Contemporary Performance makers to actively re-contextualize their work and for the arts infrastructure to develop strategies for creating value around experience design. Curators, administrators, critics and artists must work together to create a value-appreciation structure that will situate performance predicated on experimental dance and theater in the wider arts world, and identify ways to either leverage or recreate the visual arts model.

Unfortunately I don’t have the time or money to go to grad school or take any of these curatorial workshops like ICPP or ICI, and as I jokingly said before, it is unlikely that I will get some kind of grant to actually research and write on these topics. I’m just a working stiff who has had to figure this out myself as I go along, self-educating as I go. This is only predicated on my life experience, not book learning. Like Michael Kaiser says, I’m just an amateur who needs to be properly instructed by the anointed Brahmins of High Culture. So who knows? Maybe I’m totally wrong. What do you think? What is your experience either lived or studied?

Please discuss in the comments section.

Popularity: 29% [?]

I tried to post this as a comment over at HuffPo, but it was too long. So here goes:

“This is a scary trend.” – Really?

God forbid that the actual audience should have a a place to voice their response to a work of art. But maybe that should be restricted to talkbacks? I’ve always believed that art encourages questions whereas entertainment confirms what we already know. The magic of live performance – even the most traditional forms – is that the audience is never really a passive watcher – they are engaged and their response informs the performance. The internet as a forum for authentic feedback and reaction is vital to the growth, development and continued relevancy of the discipline.

As to Kaiser’s lament about the death of criticism – if the commercial media are no longer able or willing to subsidize arts coverage (how many cities actually have a “local professional critic” anymore?) and Kaiser feels that criticism is an essential part of the arts ecology, then why haven’t foundations stepped in to support the field? I’ve run Culturebot.org, since December 2003. Over the past eight years I have met with numerous funders who express their admiration and appreciation of what I do but are unable or unwilling to provide funding. The Andy Warhol Foundation supports visual arts writing including blogs – artfagcity.com has received several large grants – but there is no support for performing arts writers and critics. Because the visual arts world is in the business of creating objects or sale, it recognizes the importance of criticism and writing to creating perceived value around art. The performance world has yet to glom onto that and as a result the work continues to be undervalued.

At Culturebot.org we have provided many, many artists with their first reviews and exposure, we have opened a window into the sometimes murky and non-transparent world of contemporary performance – and the process behind making the work. We have fostered dialogue and become an important resource for curators, presenters, artists and aficionados. Not to mention the support we’ve been able to give aspiring writers and critics by giving them access to artists, performances and administrators, a forum for honing their voice and an opportunity to foster discussion. And we do it for free, because we care about the arts and we want to participate.

Are we amateurs? No. Kaiser’s derogatory use of the term indicates a startling lack of respect for audience members and a lack of knowledge about the composition of that audience. He might be surprised to learn how many people in the audience actually know what they are talking about. Not everyone can afford to get a Master’s in arts admin, criticism, dance, theater, etc. only to come into a job market where your best option is a $30K/year, 60hr/wk job in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Much less take time off from their life to study with Kaiser in the Kennedy Center Fellowship for Arts Management. Thus the established arts infrastructure tends to skew to people who are either willing to live penuriously or have other resources to draw on.

Even fewer people can make a living as an artist.

So the audience for the arts – and the people who are passionate enough to frequent cultural institutions, comment on their sites or start their own blogs – are frequently educated, knowledgeable, committed individuals who, you know, have actual jobs. They are artists and former artists, they are friends and families of artists, they are people who grew up or into an appreciation of the arts for any number of reasons but because of the necessities of making a living are relegated to “amateur” status. Sure there are some ill-informed writers and commenters out there, but as I’ve watched arts writing on the internet evolve over the past eight years I’ve been surprised by the quality of writing, the knowledge of the writers and the vitality of the discussion.

It is, frequently, the programmers and the arts institutions that are completely out of touch with audiences, that make no effort to actually engage audience and communities in the process of making art or curating seasons. The infrastructure is not transparent or responsive to the community. Structured talkbacks are insufficient and if you are a presenter who produces challenging work, you should probably do some kind of humanities program that contextualizes what is being presented, offering the audience a 360-degree view, rather than just demanding that they submit to your aesthetic preferences. This doesn’t happen. Most arts institutions just present what they present as if it was a gift from on high and expect us to appreciate their refined taste and sensibilities. Guess what? Most of us went to college, too! Most of us read, see work, are informed about current events and aesthetic engagement with the world at large, most of us have been art-makers, or writers, or supporters at any number of levels and our opinions are not only important – they’re kind of the only opinions that matter. After all, we’re the audience. And if a tree falls onstage and no-one is there to see it, is it performance?

Kaiser’s article reflects how out of touch many in the arts establishment are with the reality on the ground – it is sad and frustrating. Considering how much influence he has it is a shame that he is so reactionary and ill-informed, so unwilling to affect actual change and innovation.

Popularity: 17% [?]

On September 11th, 2001 I went to work as usual at the Woolworth Building, two blocks from the World Trade Center. It was a beautiful day, warm with a clear blue sky. I got to work around 8:30 a.m., sat down at my desk and turned on my computer. Then I heard a loud bang. My blog posts from 9/11 and the subsequent days are here.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Hi. This is Andy here. Jeremy’s been hassling me to write something, since I’ve been essentially MIA for a few months. Here’s some loosely aggregated thoughts we’ve been kicking around….

There’s been a lot of talk lately about supply and demand, trying to place market economic models on the arts. Which is all well and good except for the fact that the performing arts don’t exist in a barter or mercantile economy, they exist in a gift economy which has very different customs, rules and regulations. Until we start thinking about arts funding in terms of a gift economy, we can’t really start addressing the problems.

As a gift economy, the arts are predicated on the idea – and this is something I believe – that there is social benefit to the enterprise. Support of the arts is a form of altruism in the best of circumstances or a way of conveying social status in less ideal scenarios. Still, that status is conveyed by the fact that in supporting the arts one is “doing good.” Part of the reason that we see conservative states cutting arts funding is that conservative politicians fundamentally reject the notion that the arts is a socially valuable enterprise.

It is helpful then to look at the arts through sociological rather than economic models; to understand the arts as an organic ecosystem that evolves, grows and changes along with society as a whole. The arts is not a singular, monolithic entity, nor is it a commodity. The performing arts in particular is not about the creation of objects for sale in a marketplace – it is about human beings creating meaningful, transformative experiences for other human beings. Ideally there is some positive social function to this endeavor – the performing arts as a laboratory for lived experience that somehow makes us more expansive and compassionate, more aware and more conscious. It is predicated on the notion that the examined life is valuable. The arts is a means of cultural enrichment, lifting us beyond the mere struggle of existence and into a realm of considered, thoughtful presence in the world: increasing interconnectedness, compassion, awareness and communication.

If we accept that the arts are not mercantile in nature, then we no longer can usefully apply ideas like supply and demand, especially since you can’t regulate supply of the arts. Artists’ creative impulses aren’t going to be stopped by the seeming overabundance of work. And artists are going to continue to make work regardless of whether they get paid or not. That’s the nature of being an artist – you have something to say, you have something you need to communicate about the world and your place in it, and it needs to be articulated. Art is going to continue to be created whether or not it is subsidized. And as much as it would be great if all artists could make a living from their art, history suggests that this is rarely the case.

The question when it comes to funding isn’t about supply and demand, it is about gatekeeping – who gets to decide which work is supported institutionally and through grants and whose work is deemed important enough to warrant resources. This is where the conversation becomes difficult. Because funding structures are complicated, institutional structures are complicated and there is no assurance that those decision-making processes are going to be transparent. And because there are going to be winners and losers.

As far as gatekeepers go – curators and funders are just people. They have likes and dislikes, both aesthetically and interpersonally, and as such are subject to taste, fashion and ideological sway. Funders’ money comes from the corporate world and most large funders operate like large corporations – they emulate the organizational processes of big business. In some ways this is an advantage – they are capable of developing long-term strategies for amassing and distributing capital that allow the artistic infrastructure to survive through good times and bad. In some ways this is bad – large funders are not necessarily nimble enough to respond to changes in the artistic landscape quickly. They are also frequently risk-averse, seeking to fund that which is already known. The artistic gatekeepers are those people on the arts side who are capable of developing trusted relationships with funders, “taste consultants” that insure that resources are going to viable projects that will serve funders’ strategic goals.

To my mind this is where the ideals of the gift economy come into conflict with the reality of logistics and business management. The day to day process of arts administration and funding is so time-consuming and complicated that it is easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. What is the social good we are all working for? What are the ideological underpinnings that determine merit for funding? What are the long-term strategic goals of arts institutions and funders? Who influences the gatekeepers? What conversations are they having that inform their choices of who to fund and why?Why aren’t we discussing the role of the arts in creating a better society, what does that society look like and why should we even bother?

Communication between gatekeepers and artists seems to have broken down. We have lots of discussions about the logistics of how to find funding, how artists can be more entrepreneurial, etc. But funders and curators could do a much better job of articulating their vision for the arts landscape – how they see their role in fostering the entire ecology. Artists often make work according to some inner vision but if funders and curators are the stewards of the entire system, then we need to have a better sense of how that system should be working under optimal circumstances. It is not just about money but about systemic, ecological health. And the stewards of that system should be able to build models of a healthy system that fulfill the positive social value and promise of the arts.

One question we all can and should be asking is WHAT MAKES GOOD WORK GOOD? A healthy arts infrastructure doesn’t meaning supporting ALL artists at ALL levels. It means supporting the petri-dish level in one way and then continuing artist support as they develop along the path – it means identifying and supporting good artists who are making important work. One of the problems is that few of the gatekeepers actually articulate the criteria for what they think is good. From an artist’s perspective it can seem more like a popularity game or an essay-writing game than predicated on actual merit.

So it would be incredibly useful if gatekeepers could actually speak articulately, openly and candidly about why they choose what they choose and how that fits into the larger arts ecology.

But let’s talk about the work for a minute. What distinguishes really good work? First off, I’d posit that it is important to actually have something to say. Not everyone agrees with me on this count, but personally I’m attracted to work that speaks to something outside of itself, that resonates with something in the larger world. I really enjoy work that feels important and vital, where the artist has honed in on a particular viewpoint or idea and is relentless in the pursuit of its articulation. I like work that feels urgent, that speaks to something we all know but maybe didn’t realize we knew. That’s just my taste. Some people like work that is speculative, abstract and unemotional. That’s okay – its just not my taste.

Another aspect of good work is rigor. Regardless of the level of passion in the work, one should expect a level of rigor in the performance and the investigation. I was recently watching a series of work samples from different artists for a panel and it was immediately evident when an artist was rigorous in their practice. It doesn’t necessarily refer to precision, though that can be evidence of rigor. Rather it is the conceptual unification of the piece – an awareness that every word, every gesture, has meaning and the artist has taken the time to insure that the meaning is served in every moment of the piece. Sometimes I will see a piece that doesn’t resonate with me emotionally but I can see the rigor and attention to detail in the work and I can appreciate that intellectually.

Good work also has intentionality. There is a desired effect or message which is being served in every aspect of the piece. There is nothing extraneous or distracting – there is an aesthetic wholeness to the piece that informs the audience, that directs their attention and thought processes.

Good work is not predicated on subject matter. A healthy arts ecology is like a healthy democracy – it should reflect a multiplicity of ideas. Creative freedom is intrinsically linked with personal and political freedom and the more dynamic the arts landscape the healthier we are as a society. We need to support living artists who are creating work NOW, not just repertory companies, ballets and symphonies who offer presentations of work by dead artists.

The system is dysfunctional not because of the lack of funding or the misallocation of resources but because we, as a field, have fundamentally lost sight of why we do what we do in the first place. In a gift economy the entire enterprise rests on social benefit. We have to keep that in mind and make the argument over and over and over again. And we need to believe in it. If we don’t believe that there is some socially redeeming value to the arts then we might as well pack it in. The arts is not a marketplace for entertainment product, we are tasked with something much higher and more important than that. We are engaged in building a better world through the belief in the power of the human imagination. We are responsible for celebrating what is possible when we support the creative visionaries and unique talents among us, when we allow the artists to unleash their imaginations and show us the way.

Popularity: 28% [?]

IMAGE CREDIT: MICHAEL A. GUERRERO

In his review of Ann Liv Young’s Cinderella, Alastair Macaulay recounted three things for which he was unprepared:

“…the startling ineptitude of Ms. Young’s performance; the campy, cliquey way she assumed that everyone present already knew all about this show and her previous ones; and the silly consensus whereby most of her audience, giggling coyly now and then, encouraged her.” [emphasis mine]

I’m not terribly interested in writing a critique of Ann Liv Young and her work. I didn’t see Cinderella but having seen her other pieces I’m familiar enough with the work to extrapolate the experience. What fascinates me is what Macaulay refers to as “the silly consensus.” What is it that people are seeking when they go to a performance that they know will be tedious, repetitive, long, poorly performed and pseudo-confrontational? What is the audience seeking when it goes to experience what Ms. Young is doing? Are they looking to be entertained? Are they looking to be abused? Are they hoping to be shocked? Are they trying to demonstrate something about themselves? What does it say about an audience that celebrates ineptitude? That relishes the mean-spirited and derisive? What does it say about an audience that mindlessly encourages solipsism and the cult of personality?

In a consumer culture where we are identified by the products we buy, the music we listen to and the movies/television shows we watch, the choice of what kind of art we participate in is equally telling. As Macaulay suggests, what Young promises is sensation and provocation. She appears to be offering an experience that is transgressive and challenging and one assumes that the audience, through their support of the work, aspires to be similarly transgressive and challenging. Or perhaps they hope to demonstrate that they are in on the joke, that they, through their presence and encouragement of the artist, are complicit with the artist in flouting convention and social norms. The problem, of course, is that there is nothing actually transgressive or challenging in the work.

Ms. Young has been quoted as saying, “No artist can really judge another; you just make what you need to make and not worry about what anyone says.”  That is so spectacularly solipsistic as to be risible. Ms. Young has, in interviews, suggested that she does not see anyone else’s work, that she is unaware of – and uninterested in – the work of her predecessors (many of whom have done this kind of confrontational work far better than she) and that she is indifferent to criticism. The work that she does reflects this – it exists in a vacuum, pointing to nothing beyond self-aggrandizement, it celebrates nothing so much as an infantile need for attention and a willingness to do anything at all to get it. In this scenario, to use the language of recovery and addiction, the audience becomes “enablers” or “co-dependent enablers” – they allow and even encourage someone with dysfunctional or maladaptive behaviors to continue in their self-destructive pattern.

And the institutions that promote  this kind of self-aggrandizing, infantile behavior have done no-one any favors by legitimizing the charade. Because she has been presented at The Kitchen and MOMA/PS1 and in Europe she must be taken seriously. Unfortunately, Ms. Young is, at best, a hipster creating a caricature of a transgressive, provocative artist. She defends herself from criticism by relying on her audiences to presume however many layers of irony are necessary to make her work meaningful, and whenever she’s criticized, this likewise serves to suggest her critic just isn’t in on the joke. It is an empty posture and it is tiresome, to say the least.

In some ways, then, Ms. Young is the apotheosis of the cult of personality and self-help culture. In a world where people are famous for doing nothing whatsoever of any merit, where they expect to be celebrated just for “being themselves”, why not have a performance artist that embraces those values? The irony of the situation is that, by adopting a transgressive posture, Ms. Young embraces the most conformist and conservative impulses of the culture at large. She buys into the commodification of the self, she buys into the consumerist process by which one converts the Self into a Brand. She embraces a very closed and conservative worldview in which all that matters is that which gratifies and glorifies the ego. It is the ethos underlying advertising, it is the defiance of complexity, it is a refutation of the possibility of meaning beyond selfish experience. And the audiences that support this work are very conservatively conforming to mainstream culture – they are not being challenged in any real way, they are having their worldview confirmed as much as any liberal playgoer seeing a “socially relevant” new drama.

And therein lies the real problem – experience, actual experience, is a process through which we acquire new information, process it, compare it to what we’ve already known and, hopefully, grow to embrace new ways of knowing and being. The experience that art ought to be offering is one of input, not exclusion. The idea that all  meaning begins and ends with the Self is not only limiting but detrimental. If it were just a case of one overhyped performance artist, then this wouldn’t be such a big deal. But the “silly consensus” that celebrates this sort of work speaks to a much larger problem – the perpetuation of a culture of mediocrity and the gradual substitution of sensation for experience. Sensation is fleeting – it doesn’t last long and it rarely leaves a lasting impression. Experience imparts knowledge and, hopefully, deepens our appreciation of the human condition.  If we accept and applaud the merely sensational, ineptitude and bluster posing as artistic inspiration, if we participate in the “silly consensus” then we will have no-one but ourselves to blame when that is all we ever get.

Popularity: 1% [?]

A recent edition of Thomas Cott‘s “You’ve Cott Mail” focused on two different but related articles in The Guardian, one by James Meek on the influence of participatory culture on the theatrical event and one by Andrew Dickson about the Traverse Theatre’s experiment in broadcasting readings into 30 different cinemas around the UK. Both are interesting articles that deal with the challenges facing contemporary theater. The first is about how contemporary theater integrates and relates to a participatory culture that would seem to exist in opposition to the “viewed” culture of theater. The second article is about finding new ways to deliver the theatrical experience outside of physical presence, which seems to be hinged on a marketing effort to bring more people into the actual theater at some point.

But are these the right questions to be asking? Towards the first issue, an argument can be made – and I’ve made it- that theater is already participatory, if not obviously so. The success of the theatrical event demands presence on the part of the audience member, a kind of psychological awareness and emotional attention, a subjective engagement with the performers that allows for the suspension of disbelief and the mutual creation of an alternate reality. It is not as passive as it may seem, and perhaps that is a challenge in and of itself. Television is passive and we may well ask what, specifically, is demanded of the viewer/participant in video games and other forms of participatory culture? Is it deep engagement or something shallower? Theater, admittedly, doesn’t come with a “like” button (ala Facebook) or the opportunity to send a text to determine the outcome, like American Idol. But should it? When one is in a theater as an audience member, one is being asked to pay attention, to take heed, to focus, to empathize. This is not passivity, this is undoubtedly participation.

Immersive and participatory theatrical events have been around for a long time, they’re not really that new. One of my fondest theatrical memories was seeing Els Comediants‘ Dimonis in Edinburgh in 1989. That was both immersive and participatory. But that experience was profoundly different from seeing Kristen Kosmas’ breakthrough solo show blah, blah, fucking blah in a tiny 30-seat theater in Seattle a few years later. One was an ecstatic group experience and one was a deeply moving intimate experience.

The idea that these immersive/participatory theatrical events are new and predicated on a video game culture is not entirely solid. Certainly the influence of video games, television, film and other broadcast media cannot be underestimated, but they are not solely responsible for the trend towards immersive/participatory theater. Their influence is wider, even, than that. Our visual and experiential expectations have been changed and we frequently see non-narrativity and the aesthetics of distractibility brought into the “conventional” theatrical event.

The difference is one of meaning. As the aesthetics of video games converge with film, we enter a realm where these media don’t – at least currently – pretend to point to anything more significant than themselves. They don’t accumulate resonance beyond a certain circularity of self-reference.

Theater, on the other hand, can take these reflections of a fractured reality and make them meaningful by pointing towards something beyond the shards and jetsam. In this post-dramatic landscape we place enormous responsibility on the viewer to make meaning of disconnected events, but we also place responsibility on the artist to be judicious in their choices of what is being presented. This kind of complex theater demands attention, thought, reflection and intimacy. It is deeply participatory and we should honor that.

Towards the second point, while televised/webcast theater may be the wave of the future, is getting bigger/wider the best choice? Is it really a way to attract new audiences to the theater? Does the experience of watching broadcast/webcast theater translate the experience in a successful way or is it just another form of content consumption? Is it capitulation to the idea that all content must be broadcast to the most amount of people possible?

Inasmuch as theater should adapt to the zeitgeist, there is extraordinary power in going the opposite direction, getting smaller and smaller, providing intimate live group experiences that overtly depend on proximity and presence. (I think George Hunka wrote about this recently at Superfluities Redux, but I haven’t been able to find the post). In a society that is increasingly mediated, where layers upon layers of information accumulate between individuals, where experiences are always being mitigated, where everything exists in a weird jumble of meta-ness (OMG! this is just like that scene in that movie/tv show/website) there is transformative power in trying to BE HERE NOW. The ephemerality of theater, the possibility of failure, the presence of living, breathing human beings bringing the imaginary to life, all these things can create a kind of group intimacy that is sorely lacking in the mainstream.

For a certain constituency – the “I saw them before they were famous” constituency – the immediacy and intimacy of live performance is paramount. Whether it is seeing a band play, or a poet read, or a particularly amazing play in an early incarnation, there is something special about being in an immediate setting and having the visceral experience of proximity to a great talent. It is a rush and a thrill to be close to an artist that is burning brightly and it is unlike any mediated entertainment.

There will always be grand spectacle and mass entertainment, I don’t believe that Broadway is imperiled by cultural shifts and expectations. But what is in danger of being lost through all the focus on marketing, and growing audiences, and constantly getting bigger, is the value of the immediate and intimate. If we focus on what we need – as opposed to what is merely possible – I think it is safe to say that connection, meaning and truth rank high on the list. Facebook is great. I love the internet. I love TV and movies, too. And if I were younger and had more agile thumbs I would probably love video games as well. But when I think about the fractured society in which we live, I think that we are less in need of big, heavily-marketed, mass entertainments and spectacles than we are of intimate, visceral, immediate experiences. We need to be brought together, not separated. If broadcasting the intimate experience of readings and performances helps to promote that cause, that’s great. But when we think about what we promote -and why we promote – theater, maybe we should think about what it offers that is different than everything else, not the same.

Popularity: 1% [?]

I was talking to an ambitious young playwright the other day and it started me thinking about what are the hallmarks of a truly exceptional writer? What do I look for when I’m i the audience? What is the experience that I’m hoping that the playwright will provide? I was thinking about some of my favorites – Young Jean Lee, Kristen Kosmas, Richard Maxwell, Jenny Schwartz – and trying to identify what qualities make them distinctive and noteworthy.

First and foremost, I think, is an intense relationship with language; a deep love of language, coupled with what I would call distrust. Distrust because they look at language as something to be tamed, something to be reckoned with and carefully subdued to their ends. They find unique rhythms and unexpected meanings, they see the places where language succeeds and where it fails and somehow craft experiences that bring us into their worlds. Really great writers have a sense of rhythm when it comes to language, a desire to make it work hard, to wring the meaningful out of what can often be just a string of meaningless sounds. We’ve all had the experience of listening to a bunch of words come spewing out of someone’s mouth, sound and fury signifying nothing. Great writers have a way of making each word count, of revealing the unseen in the every day. It seems obvious, I guess, but I see a lot of work where the language is merely serviceable, not transcendent.

Secondly, and this may be more controversial, is what I call a sense of vengeance. Great writers usually have some kind of desire to wreak vengeance on reality, their drama – and the language they use – burns with urgency. Sometimes it is literal vengeance on a specific situation, scenario or person. But more often it is a sense that reality must be bent to one’s will, that our daily, mundane perceptions are somehow lacking and that there is so much MORE there, so much more TRUTH there that it must be wrestled into submission and forced to reveal itself. It is this wrestling, this desire to wring meaning and poignancy out of the everyday that drives great writers.

Third, and related to the second point, is truth. Not THE truth, necessarily, but a truth. Great writers have a singular perspective on what their experience of the true world is, of what truth is, and they are committed to paring away at our fictions – often using fictions and lies – to create a glimmering vision of truth. Or, to create the experience of truth. We live in a culture filled with untruth of all shapes and sizes, from the small deceptions of text messages, (“I’m right around the corner!”) to big lies (“There are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq”) to more big lies (almost all advertising and the deceptive universe of Mass Media) that we become inured to untruth. Great writers find a way to reactivate our desire for truth, for meaning, for insight, vision and perspective.

And while great writers are often great storytellers, great storytellers are not always great writers. I think that’s important to note. There are plenty of adequate playwrights who tell great stories. But what makes a playwright really is not just the ability to tell a good story but to dig even deeper, to almost probe directly into the center of the audience’s being and pull something out, to tap into a yearning we may not have known we had and make it real.

These are just a few random thoughts – would love to know what you think! Comment away.

Popularity: 1% [?]

So I was catching up with Createquity.com and all the big ideas that have been bouncing around over there. I came across a link to a post on Gary Steuer’s blog in which he writes eloquently about “The Greatest Sacrifice Arts Workers Make For The Arts.” He goes on to say, among other things:

I think the more significant – and unique – sacrifice arts workers make is that we lose the capacity for full, innocent and glorious enjoyment of the very art that our passion for drove us to make our life’s work in the first place.  What do I mean by this?  Think about your earliest experiences with the arts, your first encounter with Matisse, or Chuck Close; your first time in the audience for Sondheim, or Verdi; that time you first saw Baryshnikov on stage, or Judith Jamison. Remember that childlike joy – even if you were not a child – that total immersion in the art where the whole world disappeared and you were unaware of time, of the person chewing gum next to you? Now tell, me when was the last time you felt that?  Sure, you are still passionate about the art form or all art forms, you still go to museums, or opera, or theatre, but something has been lost. Admit it.

I was just lamenting this to a friend of mine. I had just seen a show that was disappointing for many, many reasons and I was saying how burnt out I was feeling. As someone who spends a lot of time in his day job helping artists realize their visions, and then in this “off” hours going to see and experience a lot of art, it is easy to become jaded. It can be hard to hold on to the optimism, idealism and excitement that art can bring. I think part of it is true in any profession – if you know about the “man behind the curtain” then some of the mystery evaporates. But as an arts worker, dedicated to the idea that the creative impulse is something unique and worth celebrating, that the experience of aesthetic arrest is a vital part of the human experience, then burn-out feels really devastating, like you’re losing the center around which everything is built.

Of course – eventually that work of art, that show, that experience, will come again. Someone imaginative and creative will transport you to a special, magical place outside of time and make you remember why you do this in the first place. But those long stretches of blah can be hard to get through.

I started Culturebot mostly to talk about the art itself; but also to advocate for the idea that Art is Work – whether you’re a maker or an administrator – and that it should be taken seriously as such. In that sense burnout is as real in this field as in any field. Makers can feel lost and “blocked”, administrators can feel overwhelmed and under-inspired.

Whether you’re a maker or administrator – or both – how do you deal with those moments when you lose that lovin’ feelin’?

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Culturebot launched in December 2003 as a way to help build community and raise awareness of PS122.  Over the years it has grown to encompass a wider perspective – all of NYC and beyond. Still, it is a labor of love (meaning no-one gets paid!) and as much as we want to become a national magazine of the performing arts and culture, we just don’t have enough hours in the day to cover it all. And we can’t clone ourselves to be everywhere at once!

That’s why we’re calling on you, our loyal national Culturebot readership, to step forward and take your place amongst the NYC-based Culturebot contributors.  Are you a culture vulture? Are you passionate about contemporary performing arts and culture? Do you like finding new stuff and sharing it with people? Are you plugged into your region/community? Do you want to help build awareness of your local artists and tie them into the national scene? Then help us grow Culturebot by becoming a regional contributor. Just a few posts a month could make all the difference!

If you think you’ve got what it takes and would like to join Team Culturebot, email founder/editor Andy Horwitz at andyATculturebotDOTorg. Let us know what region you would like to cover, send in some ideas for articles and a few writing samples – or links to your own blog. If it seems like a good fit, we’ll set you up as a contributor to Culturebot and you will be a part of this great adventure!

Thanks for your support!!

-Andy

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