[-empyre-] art and cultural policy

"Lachlan Brown" <lachlan@london.com> · Sat Jul 20 06:56:01 2002

Yes, I am a Voyageur into the question of Internet in Culture,
and of course I am Canadian by sentiment if not in fact. 
This is a question I have been occupied with for some
time during the past year with our, I mean your, Government.
They appear to be against the idea. I cite Innis, they are
not impressed.

My criticism is not addressed particularly to Canadian policies.
You are very fortunate in having a progressive, and assertive,
cultural policy to support the Canadian difference in spite of
the cultural imperialism of the US, that declining world power.
I wish I could bemoan the fact that the Canadian government 
supports me as that would make my life a great deal simpler. 
So, I suppose engaged in an independent practise I feel at liberty
to be fairly catholic in my assertions and criticisms. 

Your comments, Valerie, on audiences, politics and funding are 
really important ones. Yes, there are very large audiences for art 
online. I'll try and find some figures, but in the meantime I
have to go and kayak in Georgian Bay. You know how it is. 

Lachlan

Lachlan -

Thanks for you thoughts on theatre / audience / grants.

Here are some of my own:

I gather you too live in Canada where we like to bemoan the fact that 
the government supports us - or rather our peers support us through 
selection committees - where in the US (for example) they complain 
about the opposite. Well, there are systems everywhere - if it's not 
governmental it's commercial, political, academic, elitist, a cool 
clique. Name it what you will - we are socialized creatures and in a 
system must we interact. I have no complaints w/ the grant procedures 
in Canada - from what I have witnesses they are egalitarian, 
flexible, and fueled by input from the community.

Now, as for the audience issue. I agree that the "potential" audience 
on-line far outnumbers those that gather in museums (or do they?) You 
see - I'll take myself as an example. I am committed to the Internet 
as a viable venue for art. I spend most of my day on the computer 
doing research and working. And yet - I almost always invariably feel 
as if there is so much out there that I am missing. And when someone 
comes along - and puts something together for me to peruse, engage 
in, discover, read about such as: an exhibition, an archive, an 
article (magazine) etc. I'm happy - AND thankful. Without those 
individuals / collectives / galleries / museums - well, there is a 
lot I would miss. In spite of it being "out there" already.

And I will argue that is is the same for video - albeit a different 
medium of dissemination. You still need people behind machines...

Best - Valerie

>There's mass performance online. Mass audiences. Theatre
>has an obligation to occur among these audiences
>and articulate their worlds.
>
>The problem is that art has become bureacratised. The
>grant writing precedes the writing of the work, networking
>with the middle managers of meaning (educators and art
>managers) precedent over consideration of the audience to
>be formed around the work. Hence curators make art:
>Lucy Kimbell in the UK (I am responsible for putting her online
>in 1996-mistake!) and Sarah Diamond in Canada are great examples,
>the logical outcome of the bureaucratisation
>of art: The grant proposal is the work of art!
>
>Mass drama happens on Internet, mass performativity. The
>opportunities for mass audience for drama and theatre
>have scarcely been touched upon. Of course, your local
>theatre company won't like online theatre because they
>have been used to a few hundred theatre goers and heavily
>subsidised production. Its a perennial in artistic or critical
>work online that the university, gallery, or theatre doesn't
>like that sort of thing. It doesn't make administrative sense,
>it tramples all over carefully won and protected institutional
>territory and excites remarkable piratical response by
>colleagues and institution, as well as colleagues who overidentify
>with their institution or fetishize their identity with it.
>
>There's nothing to be done about it, really, other than
>to suggest that if you really want to make art, and I assume
>that artists can't help but make art, in what is the
>greatest potential forum for aesthetic adventure then
>you should go ahead and make it. If art is one way our
>societies and cultures articulate those things for which
>there is no ready-made expression, ie to make a language
>and to make a discourse to articulate the world and our
>places in it. For some this is a bureacratic affair,
>an administrative matter, for others it is a need to
>make known ones relationship to others.
>
>I was interested in Valerie's assumption that the contexts
>of presentation of internet based art are similar to the
>contexts of reception of video. This is not so, though
>obviously there had to be some place to discuss the issues
>Internet raised, and obviously 'technology' or representation
>has a history in film and video studies.
>
>The distribution, numbers, diversity of the 'audience' for
>online art (txt, image, moving image, and performance) are
>very much greater than audiences in gallery contexts.
>There may have been a time, up to c. 1998 when the audience
>for online work was greater in its gallery context, but surely
>not since then. We still seem to have very great difficulty with
>the idea that there are a couple of hundred million people
>online whose composition is changing daily to become the
>most culturally diverse 'audience' one can imagine, while
>the discourses that govern their online world are still
>narrow minded and North American.
>
>There's nothing to say that internetworked art doesn't involve
>bodies together in place.
>
>Looking forward to your Hamlet.
>
>
>Lachlan
>
>
>>there isn't a lot of performance being done online. & as a theatre
>practitioner, i have found a certain amount of resistance to the idea
>of performance on the internet amongst my theatre colleagues. when i
>gave a cyberformance presentation at the odin teatret in january last
>year, it inspired defensive cries of "you can't call that theatre!
>there's no Body & no Emotion!" ... from this experience i developed
>the[abc]experiment, http://www.abcexperiment.org & now i'm performing
>with Avatar Body <italic>Collision</italic>,
>http://www.avatarbodycollision.org.
>
>
>my original entry into online performance was through adriene jenik &
>lisa brenneis of desktop theater, http://www.desktoptheater.org. there
>are various others doing performance related things, i think there are
>quite a few people in australia (haven't got any urls off the top of
>my
>head) & people doing dance-related stuff.
>
>
>h : )
>
>
>>
>
>>I am curious as to what kinds of online performances are bring done
>
>>presently. This is the other half of my persona - performance. I have
>
>
>>a Website which I've been playing around w/ online personae called
>
>>The Advice Bunny (http:/www.mobilegaze.com/advicebunny) An scoop on
>
>>how performance is being presented online? Is anyone involved in
>
>>this? I am not seeing much performance on the Web although
>
>>performance seems to be exploding (at least in Canada) as THE artform
>
>
>>of the early 21st century. Which seems curious - because performance
>
>>can be so essentialist. I'd appreciate any thoughts on the subject,
>
>>if I can make this short detour in the conversation.
>
>>
>
>>Valerie
>
>>--
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Lachlan Brown" <lachlan@london.com>
>Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 21:18:41 +0000
>To: lachlan@london.com
>Subject: theatre
>
>
>>
>>
>
>>
>>
>>  Lachlan Brown
>
>
>Lachlan Brown
>T(416) 826 6937
>VM (416) 822 1123

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