Great article, Joana. I must admit that I'm very much an outsider to the contemporary art world/industry on the whole. (I'm learning!) My father, long retired, worked in graphic design and continues to paint, but otherwise I'm no different from any other visitor to the museum as far as the visual arts.
I studied music compositiion myself and there are some parallels perhaps shared by contemporary art and modern art music (as it has been called in the broadest sense). I guess my thoughts on this are similar to what I experienced as a student some twenty years ago, that the music I was studying was almost entirely sequestered and seperated from the world/community around it. As far as the community was concerned, it really served no purpose and, worse, did not try to; I never was sure if it was born of academic elitism or, just as likely, insecurity at opening up to wider public scrutiny. This resulted perhaps over time to one aspect in which the kind of music I was being exposed to seemed to continuously fail to consider, that our music should strive to say something about life, or how some purpose directed towards not just a particular (often highly-educated or wealthier) audience but to human beings as a whole. Or it could just be purposefully absurdist and silly (if that's not an oxymoron) for the sake of no meaning at all! (That has it's place, too.)
I joined a university trip to Ghana to study music, particularly of the Ewe, and one of the realizations in communities like that, where poverty was the unfortunate norm, is that music and art are essential aspects of life and perhaps even survival. It didn't have to explain itself, really, it was simply part of the fabric of daily life. In the West, where art and music have been so thoroughly commercialized as to have been rendered either innaccessible or meaningless, these artforms too rarely serve the purpose of pushing us forward or towards a more meaningful relationship with the world and the people around us. (Or are not given the opportunity to do so.)
I think my words are failing me, ha!, so forgive what may be rambling. While it helps to explain a work of art sometimes, other times it's best to bask in the mystery of it. Perhaps the curation and propogation of art is itself an artform--what needs to be said, what doesn't need to be said. As it is, I've already said waaaay too much. Thank you for you work!
Such serendipity with your comment. I just finished a performance program that included contemporary music and voce work which people play call “noise” if not open to it and both artists are connected either to the punk movement (in their youth) or to ritualistic processes of healing, manifesting etc. I love this kind of cathartic / channeling of the body’s natural and palpable energies / emotions but most of my team was puzzled. It’s such a difficult thing to navigate the market (this was in the art fair of which I’m an artistic director), the survival of artists and their freedom and audience expectations. However, if you think of rappers the kids listen to, some of them are more spoken word poetry than music in the strictest sense and it’s quite dense. It all depends where the culture is, and I worry when mainstream culture becomes too indulgent (which I think is the case now) and doesn’t connect with more experimental work. I agree with you that in some sense, “elitism” can hide insecurity and the fear of not being understood. On another note, I like stories and if they’re good, they’ll never hurt direct access to the work I think. On the contrary, they carry it and enhance it. And sometimes we don’t need them. I usually don’t read the exhibition text before experiencing the exhibition for instance. I like to immerse myself and then to enhance or re-direct my experience.
Oh yeah, and overindulgence is an important consideration, too: Can art break through if it’s too challenging? Even if that’s what we really need as a culture or, dare I say, as a species!
I’ve often thought that visual artists (and I guess that applies to musicians) are too removed from feedback. If you publish a short story in the New Yorker, it goes through such scrutiny and fact checking that it drives writers crazy. No one would think of doing anything similar to visual artists. I think audience feedback is at times too much (clickbait is the result), but perhaps some scrutiny is necessary or can help shape the week into a communicative form. However, I also sometimes wonder if this huge freedom isn’t in itself freeing? After all a narrative text is not an image. I go back and forth but sometimes I get a bit annoyed at the fact that you can watch an artist grow but writers need to be fully formed or almost in order to be published.
Oh yeah, I can relate to that. It seemed that back in the 60s--at least in the UK but globally to varying degrees--there was a real openness to pushing the boundaries of popular music. Within that, it seemed that a lot of bands were given something like three or four albums to develop before a label would finally drop them. Sometimes, of course, they were given bad deals or really screwed over by unscrupulous management or record execs but there was generally more space and opportunity for artists to develop. It seems more frequent these days for an artist or group to release a big debut album and then just sort of fade away. Not a lot musicians can get enough ground under their feet these days to keep up a sustainable momentum. There are people with a lot more knowledge about this than me though. Mary Spender does YT vids about working in the industry and it's pretty dire. TicketMaster/LiveNation/Clear Channel are also a big problem for artist development.
Perhaps the bigger issue for all of the arts these days is just being able to have the time to take any kind of art in at a pace that serves more than just the surface level. The information superhighway has become a flood of content; it's hard to take much in for the average person beyond the superficial and immediate. What percentage of audience feedback on sm platforms is of any real value then?
Oh, these are hard conversations, Joana, but hopefully some good will come of it in time. Keep up the good fight!
I agree that stories can be important to how well an audience can relate to a work. I suppose it’s a question of how much or little to tell sometimes. Either that or it’s what kind of indication is given as to what an audience may expect from a performance.
I’ve experienced a number of performances though fewer in recent years where there really seemed to be no substance to what was going on—just chaos. Noise performances can often feel like this—if it isn’t clear that the audience for example is being given the opportunity for catharsis, for example, or if the catharsis is just for the performers, is it serving a purpose?
In some of the more experimental work, I ask: Is there a thread or thru-line that gives it some kind of cohesion even if there really isn’t any clear story, theme or purpose? (I think of some of the best Monty Python episodes as an example—actually really hard to pull off!)
Sometimes a mood or particular kind of experience is enough to hold something together. With a simple idea, maybe nothing needs to be stated at all. Anyway, I could go on, suffice to say, I believe that the artist or performer should have some clear sense of why they are doing whatever it is they are doing, and then decide how much the why needs or doesn’t need to be communicated to the audience.
I look forward to reading more about your experiences in this regard, Joana. Cheers!
Thanks for putting that out there. Couldn’t agree more.
Oh! I'm interested. What resonates with you? Would love to know more.
It’s refreshing to read about how we mediate contemporary art and I like your idea of telling a story and getting rid of platitudes.
Great article, Joana. I must admit that I'm very much an outsider to the contemporary art world/industry on the whole. (I'm learning!) My father, long retired, worked in graphic design and continues to paint, but otherwise I'm no different from any other visitor to the museum as far as the visual arts.
I studied music compositiion myself and there are some parallels perhaps shared by contemporary art and modern art music (as it has been called in the broadest sense). I guess my thoughts on this are similar to what I experienced as a student some twenty years ago, that the music I was studying was almost entirely sequestered and seperated from the world/community around it. As far as the community was concerned, it really served no purpose and, worse, did not try to; I never was sure if it was born of academic elitism or, just as likely, insecurity at opening up to wider public scrutiny. This resulted perhaps over time to one aspect in which the kind of music I was being exposed to seemed to continuously fail to consider, that our music should strive to say something about life, or how some purpose directed towards not just a particular (often highly-educated or wealthier) audience but to human beings as a whole. Or it could just be purposefully absurdist and silly (if that's not an oxymoron) for the sake of no meaning at all! (That has it's place, too.)
I joined a university trip to Ghana to study music, particularly of the Ewe, and one of the realizations in communities like that, where poverty was the unfortunate norm, is that music and art are essential aspects of life and perhaps even survival. It didn't have to explain itself, really, it was simply part of the fabric of daily life. In the West, where art and music have been so thoroughly commercialized as to have been rendered either innaccessible or meaningless, these artforms too rarely serve the purpose of pushing us forward or towards a more meaningful relationship with the world and the people around us. (Or are not given the opportunity to do so.)
I think my words are failing me, ha!, so forgive what may be rambling. While it helps to explain a work of art sometimes, other times it's best to bask in the mystery of it. Perhaps the curation and propogation of art is itself an artform--what needs to be said, what doesn't need to be said. As it is, I've already said waaaay too much. Thank you for you work!
Such serendipity with your comment. I just finished a performance program that included contemporary music and voce work which people play call “noise” if not open to it and both artists are connected either to the punk movement (in their youth) or to ritualistic processes of healing, manifesting etc. I love this kind of cathartic / channeling of the body’s natural and palpable energies / emotions but most of my team was puzzled. It’s such a difficult thing to navigate the market (this was in the art fair of which I’m an artistic director), the survival of artists and their freedom and audience expectations. However, if you think of rappers the kids listen to, some of them are more spoken word poetry than music in the strictest sense and it’s quite dense. It all depends where the culture is, and I worry when mainstream culture becomes too indulgent (which I think is the case now) and doesn’t connect with more experimental work. I agree with you that in some sense, “elitism” can hide insecurity and the fear of not being understood. On another note, I like stories and if they’re good, they’ll never hurt direct access to the work I think. On the contrary, they carry it and enhance it. And sometimes we don’t need them. I usually don’t read the exhibition text before experiencing the exhibition for instance. I like to immerse myself and then to enhance or re-direct my experience.
Oh yeah, and overindulgence is an important consideration, too: Can art break through if it’s too challenging? Even if that’s what we really need as a culture or, dare I say, as a species!
I’ve often thought that visual artists (and I guess that applies to musicians) are too removed from feedback. If you publish a short story in the New Yorker, it goes through such scrutiny and fact checking that it drives writers crazy. No one would think of doing anything similar to visual artists. I think audience feedback is at times too much (clickbait is the result), but perhaps some scrutiny is necessary or can help shape the week into a communicative form. However, I also sometimes wonder if this huge freedom isn’t in itself freeing? After all a narrative text is not an image. I go back and forth but sometimes I get a bit annoyed at the fact that you can watch an artist grow but writers need to be fully formed or almost in order to be published.
Oh yeah, I can relate to that. It seemed that back in the 60s--at least in the UK but globally to varying degrees--there was a real openness to pushing the boundaries of popular music. Within that, it seemed that a lot of bands were given something like three or four albums to develop before a label would finally drop them. Sometimes, of course, they were given bad deals or really screwed over by unscrupulous management or record execs but there was generally more space and opportunity for artists to develop. It seems more frequent these days for an artist or group to release a big debut album and then just sort of fade away. Not a lot musicians can get enough ground under their feet these days to keep up a sustainable momentum. There are people with a lot more knowledge about this than me though. Mary Spender does YT vids about working in the industry and it's pretty dire. TicketMaster/LiveNation/Clear Channel are also a big problem for artist development.
Perhaps the bigger issue for all of the arts these days is just being able to have the time to take any kind of art in at a pace that serves more than just the surface level. The information superhighway has become a flood of content; it's hard to take much in for the average person beyond the superficial and immediate. What percentage of audience feedback on sm platforms is of any real value then?
Oh, these are hard conversations, Joana, but hopefully some good will come of it in time. Keep up the good fight!
I agree that stories can be important to how well an audience can relate to a work. I suppose it’s a question of how much or little to tell sometimes. Either that or it’s what kind of indication is given as to what an audience may expect from a performance.
I’ve experienced a number of performances though fewer in recent years where there really seemed to be no substance to what was going on—just chaos. Noise performances can often feel like this—if it isn’t clear that the audience for example is being given the opportunity for catharsis, for example, or if the catharsis is just for the performers, is it serving a purpose?
In some of the more experimental work, I ask: Is there a thread or thru-line that gives it some kind of cohesion even if there really isn’t any clear story, theme or purpose? (I think of some of the best Monty Python episodes as an example—actually really hard to pull off!)
Sometimes a mood or particular kind of experience is enough to hold something together. With a simple idea, maybe nothing needs to be stated at all. Anyway, I could go on, suffice to say, I believe that the artist or performer should have some clear sense of why they are doing whatever it is they are doing, and then decide how much the why needs or doesn’t need to be communicated to the audience.
I look forward to reading more about your experiences in this regard, Joana. Cheers!