What are the boundaries in artist/audience relationships these days? Do you have a problem with inclusiveness if you can’t define what it is? Do we lose an essential part of the audience experience when movies go in-home? And what is to be learned about what audiences want from the big new insta-culture districts?
- Today’s Audiences Expect To Interact With Artists In New Ways. Indeed, artists are encouraging closer, more intimate contact. But what happens when expectations exceed what an artist is willing – or able – to give? Fan have always tried to get close to their heroes. But in the age of digital media, with artists sharing more of their intimate moments, fans can feel like the have more of a relationship – and entitlement to a relationship than they do. “We as fans have to learn how to rein in our “love” for these artists and realize they are human – extraordinary humans – but still humans. They get tired. They get sick. They get exhausted. And that $175 you pay for your ticket (you better not be showing out like this behind a rush ticket!) is not worth the risk of them doing permanent damage to their instrument (voice/body).” …read more
- Inclusiveness. Equity. Diversity. Discussion about the makeup of arts companies and their audiences has been going on a long time. But in the past year those discussions have grown more acute, to the point that the words are becoming diluted. Arts centers across America are looking at their audiences and wondering who’s missing, who feels left out, and what to do about it. Last week the Kennedy Center convened a panel to talk about what inclusiveness means there. But, as Anne Midgette reports, the entire session went by without a real definition of what diversity actually means there. The Kennedy Center is mightily trying to remove its blinkers and open itself up to wider cultural influences — with, for instance, its new hip-hop arm. But it still defaults to a concept of “art” and “culture” that may not denote inclusivity to a lot of people. … read more
- Streaming Is Going To Kill The Cinema, For Real: Yes, yes, you’ve heard it many times before. There are versions of the technology-is-going-to-kill-X almost every day. But this article argues that the “publicness,” the mass scale audience of movies is essential to the art form, and with technology making living rooms a more comfortable place to see them, something that has been essential to the art form will be lost. “What happens to that art when we begin to remove, well, people from part of the equation? What happens to its democratic promise, which may be a fantasy at best, a lie at worst, but remains nonetheless?” … read more
- What We Can Learn About Audiences From Mega-Insta-Cultural Projects: Places like China and Abu Dhabi have been building cultural mega-projects, creating instant cultural districts that more often than not fall short of their extravagant promises. But there’s much we can learn about how audiences want to use space and culture, writes Adrian Ellis. “We are experiencing a generational shift in the experience and location of cultural vitality. Traditional audiences accessing traditional forms of culture in traditional ways are under threat throughout Europe and North America. Increasingly, people are enthused by experiencing the arts in new spaces and contexts, particularly ones where they can socialise, hang out and come and go according to their own timetable. Museums have an advantage here vis-à-visthe performing arts – you can arrive and leave when you want and pay as little or as much attention to the art as you like and, if you do focus on the art, then you can ‘curate your own experience’ through supportive media. Indeed, museum directors are increasingly criticised for being more preoccupied with the quality of the social experience than the art, which is reduced to a backdrop for social interaction.” … read more
News Flash! Audiences don’t just appear by some sort of mass appeal, they are consciously created by the music industry. The true nature of capitalism isn’t to fulfill demand, but to create it, and often quite artificially. Without this basic premise, approaches to understanding the pop-music-industrial-complex and our general concepts of “audience” are clueless. (To discuss “audience” it would be helpful to begin with at least a rudimentary understanding of the work of Edward Bernays.)
Speaking of which, I wonder why contemporary classical music is so susceptible to trends and ideologies about music and its reception. When people repeatedly espouse the well-worn postmodern idea that Prince and Beyoncé are to be placed alongside Mahler or Bartok, they are being just as ridiculously doctrinaire as those orthodox modernists of the 50s and 60s who shouted down Copland and Barber. In the classical music world, it seems that doctrine and orthodoxy trump genuine intelligence every time. Same story in Europe.
I suspect the superficiality of journalists and journalism have played a significant role in creating these mindless orthodoxies, though as always, one has to look to the conformist world of academia to find the real bastion of these proselytizing true believers.
For the most part, journalists, afraid to stand apart, just trot along. I long for the days when journalism represented true public intellectuals willing to challenge the status quo like Edmund Wilson, Paul Goodman, Harold Rosenberg, Lionel Trilling and Mary McCarthy. Perhaps Susan Sontag was the last of them before the mindset of corporate journalism became the norm. As is only natural, corporate journalism elevates the pop-music-music-industrial-complex and the market to the status of high art. How American. But where are the dissenters? That isn’t so American. Or so we used to believe.
I should add that my provocative comment here isn’t so much directed at Douglas as at the AJ readership. I like the idea that there might be a forum for discussion of the week’s stories. This could be a valuable added feature of AJ.
I think so too, though I must say, you sound very hostile to the idea of even thinking about “audience” and the idea that audience behavior might be changing as the rest of the world is changing because of technology. To me it makes sense that if we’re communicating differently because of technology (through this website, for example) and meeting different people than most of us would have been able to meet before and having access to things and information and ideas that we didn’t have before, that this would change our expectations about art in some significant ways. I think it’s fascinating to try to understand how.
William: Not sure where you rant about pop music and manufacturing audiences came from since there’s nothing about pop music in this post. As for journalists: no secret that a lot of pop journalism is generic and not very interesting. But I think that’s always been true more or less. But there are some pretty inciteful writers out there today – probably more of them than there have ever been. And good thoughtful dissenters too. Just finished reading a Guardian piece by Evgeny Morozov who is a reliable and skeptical critic of the digital world – not arts per se, but nonetheless. And the list of good music and theatre and literary and visual and movie critics, while not long, includes some astute thinkers. Depends where you’re looking. And maybe you need to widen your net.
I commented about pop music because the article you link to by Anne Midgette asks what we mean by culture and diversity and suggests that we might include Prince and Beyonce in our canon. She naturally shares the view of her husband, Greg Sandow, who is one of the principle spokespersons for a rather doctrinaire, postmodern aesthetic leveling.
I’m not hostile to the idea of focusing on audience. I like the idea, but the topic is so broad that it can include countless philosophies with often radically different views. I like some, and oppose others. By listing an article by Midgette the topic is strongly slanted in a postmodern direction. I’m not inclined toward the Sandow/Midgette viewpoint.
I love what technology is doing to our concepts of audience. As a total outsider, it has allowed me to present my work on the web to a worldwide audience. Among other things, the result has been two Doctoral dissertations about my work by people I had never met, and who only learned about my work through the web. One is by Jessica Butler who received her DMA from the University of Iowa, and the other by Jesus Lloret Gonzales who received his Doctorate from the University of Malaga in Spain. The web has served me very well.
I’m very interested in your comment that there is currently a lot of good writing by music journalists. I’m wondering if you might have time to quickly mention of few of these journalists and some recent examples of their work – especially those providing some dissent toward postmodern philosophies, and those who question the push toward more market oriented concepts of arts support. These are very popular concepts in classical music, and I seem to have missed the dissenting articles. I would be especially interest in American journalists. I’m not as concerned by European writers, where the political spectrum is wider and cultural debate seemingly more active.
Anyway, I not a very stimulating commenter. I hope that eventually others will join in the discussions of the weekly summation of articles.