{"id":114,"date":"2011-10-25T09:44:55","date_gmt":"2011-10-25T16:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/?p=114"},"modified":"2011-10-25T09:48:40","modified_gmt":"2011-10-25T16:48:40","slug":"directing-the-impact-echo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/2011\/10\/directing-the-impact-echo.html","title":{"rendered":"Directing the Impact Echo"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\""CCC"<\/a><\/dt>\n
“CCC” by Dylan Boroczi from Flickr, used under Creative Commons license.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

Yesterday, I attended the all-day Beyond Dynamic Adaptability<\/a> conference put on by the Wallace Foundation as the culminating event of their involvement in the Bay Area.\u00a0 There were lots of presenters, but across all of them there seemed to be this theme that we as arts professionals needed to be focusing not only on the work created, but on what researchers Alan Brown and Rebecca Ratzkin of WolfBrown<\/a> called the \u201cimpact echo,\u201d and what I have previously called<\/a> the \u201cmaking of meaning.\u201d\u00a0 This is the concept that art is more valuable, more transformative, more of whatever you wanted that art to be, if it indelibly sticks in the mind of the person who sees it\u2014and that as if making<\/em> the art wasn\u2019t enough, we now (all of us, whether artists or administrative support) need to be focusing as strongly and energetically on a more holistic interpretation of the event, at which the art may (or, it seems, may not) be the center point.<\/p>\n

In the afternoon, I was lucky enough to attend a \u201cfishbowl\u201d panel discussion led by arts thinker and social activist Arlene Goldbard<\/a>.\u00a0 Goldbard, much of whose work revolves around a belief that we have chronically mis-framed our language about and in support of the arts in way that has been detrimental to art\u2019s perception by society, framed the session around \u201ccivic engagement,\u201d and the panelists were all artists who, in various ways, were very overtly trying to civically engage others through art.<\/p>\n

I find this concept interesting, and such a high bar\u2014talk about an impact echo.\u00a0 You\u2019re actually trying, through a piece of art, to instigate what Michael Rohd of Sojourn Theatre<\/a> (one of the panelists) described as a moment that \u201cinspires the audience to take action.\u201d\u00a0 In our work with WolfBrown on intrinsic impact, we have a question about this phenomenon, which asks, \u201cTo what extent did the performance spur you to take some action or make a change?\u201d\u00a0 Most companies chose not to use this question, either because they felt their work wasn\u2019t really meant as this type of civic engagement or, I think in some cases, because they were not sure it would reflect positively.\u00a0 Because when you get down to it, actually inspiring someone to change something in their lives (which WolfBrown calls in the notes on this questions \u201ca high test of impact\u201d) means truly, deeply instigating transformation.<\/p>\n

Hearing the panelists in this group was inspiring and also a little off-putting.\u00a0 Michael Gene Sullivan, a company member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe<\/a> and a dyed-in-the-wool Communist, strongly argued that the only two purposes of art were to uphold the status quo or tear it down, and that if you weren\u2019t doing one of them, you were doing the other.\u00a0 He also argued that the only true purpose of art was, in fact, this type of civic engagement, the instigation of change.\u00a0 Both of these arguments seem unnuanced to me, particularly because I think that while a lot of work is about instigating change or transformation in people, the best work isn\u2019t, as is implied by Sullivan\u2019s characterization, instantaneous and radical, but is instead slow, steady, insidious, a word or image sitting in the back of your mind for hours or days or years that you come back and ponder when your mind slows down from your day.\u00a0 I think, in fact, that the best art isn\u2019t blunt art, but is art that comes at you sideways\u2014it\u2019s the art that a person, immediately after a performance, might not say was going to \u201cspur them to take some action or make a change,\u201d but which might in fact power that change more subtly over time\u2014the Energizer bunny of civic engagement.<\/p>\n

At one point in the panel, Sarah Crowell, who uses dance and movement to teach teenagers about violence prevention with a company called Destiny Arts<\/a>, was asked how, if the inertia to simply stay the course is so high in humanity, do we as artists instigate change.<\/p>\n

\u201cI work with young people,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I collaborate with them\u2014but all of the stories come from their experiences.\u00a0 So I don\u2019t know that it\u2019s about changing the world as much as it is about accepting it deeply\u2014what I call \u2018fierce self-acceptance\u2019 and \u2018fierce acceptance\u2019 of the people I work with\u2014and then helping to craft work with them around it.\u00a0 The more deeply I accept what is there, the more interesting and authentic and transformative the stories are.”<\/p>\n

This is civic engagement by stealth, in a way.\u00a0 It\u2019s the opposite, I think, of what the Mime Troupe does, and it resonates more fully with me perhaps because, as a good WASP, I\u2019m generally against confrontation when a sidestep will do.\u00a0 But more than that, it\u2019s attempting transformation on the terms of the audience, and allowing the level and specificity of that transformation to occur on someone else\u2019s terms\u2014giving over control from the artist, in a way, to the viewer, and recognizing what was another theme of the conference: the audience is a collaborator in your work if only because they interpret what they see in ways you can\u2019t control, and take from what you give them in ways you can\u2019t predict.\u00a0 What you can<\/em> do, as Sarah is doing, is to play with the form, adjust the circumstances, the expectations, and see if something new can emerge.<\/p>\n

Michael Rohd of Sojourn Theatre has been playing around with form for quite a while.\u00a0 Sojourn, a company with no real home base (Rohd himself lives in Portland, runs a program on civically-engaged art at Northwestern, and is currently working with his company at a residency at Duke University\u2014all while having a new baby at home), and it creates new and specific works for new and specific communities each time it reconvenes.\u00a0\u00a0 One of their pieces involved two groups of actors (and two audiences) starting out in two towns 50 miles apart and then bussing them together on the roads of the Northwest to a local, organic meal set up outside to finish\u2014all with the goal of exploding the form, getting strangers to interact, and making the brain work in new ways.<\/p>\n

George C. Wolfe, former artistic director of the Public Theater, said that “theatre is people sitting in the dark watching people in the light talking about what it means to be human… [It brings] something into their lives that they cannot create on their own by virtue of what they have shut off… [I]t gives us a feeling of being alive.”<\/p>\n

\u201cI used to agree with that,\u201d Michael Rohd said. \u201cThat when we gathered together in the dark and watched, we all breathed together and united. \u00a0I don\u2019t believe that anymore.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think there\u2019s anything inherently communal about sitting in a group in the dark and viewing something that someone else has prepared for you.\u00a0 I think there are a lot of situations where people sit alone and experience other people\u2019s narratives, but that isn\u2019t building community, and I\u2019m not interested in that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which gets me back to impact echo.\u00a0 What makes the echo?\u00a0 How do you define the impact?\u00a0 Is it a bullhorn or a whisper?\u00a0 Is it participation or projection?\u00a0 Is it seeing yourself reflected, or seeing the other?\u00a0 If we\u2019re talking about an artform that inspires civic engagement, what is the directive, and how do you pass it down the line?<\/p>\n

At one point, Michael Gene Sullivan was talking about his philosophy of work, and he said it was simple.\u00a0 He strives to create only pieces of work that, if everyone on the planet were magically able to see them, would change the world.\u00a0 And so should we all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“CCC” by Dylan Boroczi from Flickr, used under Creative Commons license. Yesterday, I attended the all-day Beyond Dynamic Adaptability conference put on by the Wallace Foundation as the culminating event of their involvement in the Bay Area.\u00a0 There were lots of presenters, but across all of them there seemed to be this theme that we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8,4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-114","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-advocacy","8":"category-audience-development","9":"category-main","10":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}