FINAL study group notes.

Thinking Out Loud
Tuesday May 11th, 2010

Butler
- If we begin to think about the material of the body as being informed or constructed by regulatory norms then what is ‘at stake’:
o Power can affect the matter of bodies (i.e. dance teacher pressing on your back when you’re bent over affects your flexibility)
o Performance acts out those things that norms already
o Sex is not the object on which performance is placed, but is in fact at the mercy of norms itself
o Process is not something that happens to me, it is something that I am part of (I assume it, I don’t undergo it) and I am not me until that process has happened
o Assuming a sex is a process influenced by discourse, and discourse of the heterosexual imperative favours certain possibilities (straight male and female) and which excludes a bunch of other possibilities

Other things that came out:
- Next year: similar syllabus but find better articles and a better approach
- May also be a secondary study group that covers one text over the course of the year
- “I gotta use words when I talk to you” – there is a problem in speaking in that you are going to end up saying something (when we speak out against or mock stereotypes, we in some way give them credence simply by speaking them)
- How subtle a regulatory norm can have an affect on a baby? If boy and girl babies were left alone in a room to develop, does the material of their anatomy affect the way they learn to move (would they develop the same way or differently)?
- We can’t know … there’s no possible human without the social – there is no blank slate, there is only social construct
- Evolutionary biologists and constructionists (like her) don’t seem to see eye-to-eye
- If we can learn new languages when we are adults (construct a new language as opposed to the one we learn first as mother tongue), what about learning a new gender?
- Perhaps the complexity of the idea of assuming a new gender late in life (in late adulthood, for example) speaks to the extent to which these gender
- Football player who changes gender can’t walk in high heels and muscles must change in order to allow him to do it (material of the body can and does actually change)
- Idea that we need to exclude and create other/abnormal/abject so that it can circumscribe what is normal; and idea that otherness is always within me because I need it to help me define how I am different from you
Thinking about next year’s study group…
- Might be nice to do more reading aloud next year? Helps you to hear it. Nice equalizer. Even if we all have different subjective experiences, at least we have this paper in common!
- Is there a benefit to having some kind of a guiding question that we examine in conjuction with the articles (for example, along with just working to uncover Butler’s ideas, we also having a leading question like “what is my opinion about the way that dance reinforces the gendering of bodies”
- Better: One article per topic. Spreading articles out over two sessions. Primary articles.
- Weren’t successful at introducing a practitioner or an art piece or an art process
- Context for the articles ahead of time would be helpful to situate reading
- Favourites? What is the contemporary? (Agamben) and Emancipated Spectator (Ranciere) were Jacob and Leora’s favourites.
- High hopes for the Dave Hickey article but we strayed too far into just talking about our thoughts about the topic that the author is writing on. Close readings are nice because they always literally bring us back to the actual text. Only so far off we can go before we can be gently nudged back to the page.

Notes on Butler from April 13th.

Judith Butler (Introduction to Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”)

Definitions of Sex, Gender, and Material

- Materiality of the body – the physical substance of my body

- “Sex” as something different than both material and gender – so where does it fit in?

- “Sex is between the legs, gender is between the ears” (she is saying it is more complicated than this because material is between the legs, gender is between the ears, sex is somewhere in between)

- Perhaps also, that this sex is what I choose to present but society won’t let me perform that gender

- Runner in South Africa who’s gender is materially questionable (if she isn’t performing it, and we still can’t locate her

FINAL study group for the year: May 11th!

Spring has sprung and we are nearing the end of the 2009-2010 season here at Dancemakers. The time has come for our last Thinking Out Loud study group for the year.

For the first half of study group we will be revisiting the dense but exciting world of Judith Butler by discussing the introduction in her book Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex which you can get by clicking here. Just read the introduction (up to page 12 in the "book", which is really page 12-23 of the word document). We're then going to back to the very first article we looked at, Paulo Freire's Act of Study which you can get here. Aaaarg has changed their website around a bit, so if you get confused with the downloading process, and would rather just have a hard copy, we have them available here at the Dancemakers office.

The idea is that - by returning to Freire - we will have a chance to revisit the impetus for the study group, evaluate our inaugural year, and think about how we might want to shape next year's study group to keep us all interested and excited.

Study group meets at 6:30 at Dancemakers. We’ll be in the office - for a cozy, intimate last night together for the season. Snacks and beer/wine as per usual. Maybe more beer/wine since it will be a so long of sorts, and a celebration of a year of being together while we think about challenging ideas and talk on the fly.

Join us! And please RSVP if you can.

March 30th POSTPONED!

Hi all,

Unfortunately, for a whole slew of reasons (ranging from new babies to Passover to room booking problems) we have to postpone the next Thinking Out Loud session. So instead of meeting this Tuesday, we will meet on Tuesday April 13th at 6:30pm at Dancemakers. We will be in the Baker studio just down the hall from where normally are - but don't worry, there will be signs up.

The topics/readings will stay the same as what we had planned, which means we'll all just get some more time to read and reread and analyze.

Sorry for the last minute change, everyone!

Time to Prep for March 30 Study Group!

For the first half of study group, we'll return to An anthropological introduction to YouTube and Margaux Williamson's video Dance Dance Revolutions Co. / Tomboyfriend's End of Poverty and continue our discussion of amateurism and aesthetics.

After the break, we’re moving on to discuss gender. We’re going to try and do a close reading of the introduction to Judith Butler’s book Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex which you can get by clicking here. Read just until halfway through page 12. Alternatively, hard copies of the article are available in the Dancemakers office.

If you’re interested, I also came across this article entitled Techno Bodies: Muscling with Gender in Contemporary Dance from a book called Choreographing Difference. It might inform your thinking and reflecting.

Study group meets at 6:30 at Dancemakers. We’ll be in the studio. Snacks and beer/wine will be a feature as always.

March 2nd: YouTube and Ideas of Amateurism

Excuse the fact that my computer ran out of batteries and thus, the notes get sparse and are mostly quotes or concepts that made a strong impression. Maybe this is what notes should always be done? ...

80% of youtube videos have under 100 views
(interesting because ones we tend to know about are the more popular ones)

(Sidenote: can you sort by viewcount? Least relevant?)

We also don’t know how the ones that are there on the opening page, how they come to be there.

Rules of youtube?
Interest when amateur performance line is blurred with professional performance.
Idea of context collapse (when you remove home video status there becomes moral question – like cute kids in rural towns driving becomes front page stories)

What were the rules that emerged when watching videos of teenagers dancing in their basements?
- they all have to be crappy quality (she missed it when an editor brightened it up)
- they last as long as the song

She was excited by the new palate in the world (naturalistic)
Took videos of teenagers dancing off youtube, made something else with it, set it to new song, etc.
On the day she displayed it at Harbourfront, she posted it on Youtube and contacted all the participants.

Interesting intersection with Rogoff article – by pulling them together, it becomes about “collectivity”
Loves idea that all over the world teenagers were dancing in their basement in a similar way (not about monoculture … but what is that similarity about?)
Some people seem to think it’s a bad thing. Some don't.

Are you hopeful that there is some kind of universality? Is that what part of your joy in people doing things in the similar ways?

Yes. Growing up, moving around, Margeaux always thought “wow, we could do things in so many ways, why do we all build houses in the same way, all over the world. Oh, wait, it’s because we all innately start to do things the same way.” Relief in the idea that we all bring a certain internal order to the way we organize things.

Steven Pinker.

Even when kids are being made fun of, it is not one kid. It is in groups.

What does this kind of amateur culture and dance in public space, do to the “legitimate” field?

Used to be “filter then publish” … now it’s “publish then filter”

“I make art that is accessible in medium, not necessarily in message”.

Is the body as a medium inaccessible? (compared to internet)

March 2nd: Revisiting the idea of "WE" (Rogoff)

I was drawn to this article because my assumption that “collectivity is positive in art practice” was sort of rattled by the Ranciere article (Emancipated Spectator).

Is everything just a failure to be a collective?
(this article does seem to argue that collectivity is an ideal)

To argue against any kind of isolation seems a bit unnecessary now that art has become so participatory.

In the making of the thing, you have to deal with other people (and the audience) – even if you are a director with a whip, a dictator, not interested in creating collectively.

Isn’t there always a tension between individual and collective (monkeys – if they have strong physical relationship with the mother, they go exploring. If not, they are less adventurous.) Important to have people with different amounts of interest in collective.

‘Seems to be quite a move towards individualization right now.’
‘Really? I thought we were coming out of it.’

People are fearful of “being the director” and of being authoritative. But it is useful to have someone who is in charge, is an expert.

Power of participation and mutuality (mob mentality of post-gold medal game).
Yes, we have history to prove that collectivity can produce scary things, but there is also the flipside:
Emergent care in group situations (power of collectivity) … also at Olympics.

Usefulness of rules. Structure enables creativity. Rules breed freedom.

‘There are always rules, so if you don’t say what they are, people are left out’

Does an orchestra need an conductor?

Creating a valuable feedback loop – the usefulness of the outside eye, just because they are outside me. Importance of sharing as part of process.

Dynamic system that is always at play. Rehearsal as way of being where contribution is from many directions. Giving authority to participants (giving permission to people that don’t necessarily have expertise).

Difference between collectivity (in performance setting) and collaboration (in rehearsal setting).

Collaboration allows you to learn to communicate more, allows other people to help you define yourself in a way.

‘Seems like I can forget that working in isolation is also important‘

Difference between working collaboratively (having someone to push against) and working in isolation ... and constraints/rules as an artist individually versus an artist working within a group

Developing understanding of my rules with different people.

Fatigue of collaboration?

Edward de Bono: more Noble Prize winners per capita in Britain because they work alone (can sit with ideas and not have to translate them into some kind of vague/common language).

Isolation as a way to concentrate and distill your thoughts/style/artistic choices without coming into contact with limiting thoughts/assumptions/etc of others.

When you do have essential moment of contact after this isolated bout, it is very important that it is something helpful.

Improvisation as common tool in dance.

Mathematicians: when you solve a problem, ‘what do I do now’?

Is improvisation a means or an end?

Misha’s birthday party? What is difference between process and performance if collectivity is just coming together for arbitrary event?

Movement towards art as event (where there are two groups with different characteristics)?

Word arbitrary is difficult! Does I just like rules, but what the rules actually are is irrelevant?
(I just like temporary arbitrary rules like “no talking” for no reason)

Jacob: arbitrary = “without instruction”

Arendt quote:
"What keeps people together after the fleeting moment of actions has passed (what we today call 'organisation'), and what at the same time they keep alive through remaining together, is power".

What is my presence/practice as a spectator, as an artist?

Question: when there is no one to tell you what to see, how do you know what to go to?
(is it generational? Older people were used to having some kind of sense from somewhere of what there was to see, and what to see … )

DO we experience collectivity (like we do with the Olympics) at the theatre?

“To speak of collectivities is to de-nativise community, to argue it away from the numerous essential roots of place and race and kinship structures that have for so long been the glue that has held it together.”

So collectivity is not about a native community (my essentiality/origin/expertise is not what bring me into contact/conversation with other people) … but about my choice to arbitrarily come to this artistic event.

What’s wrong with fatigue?
It sometimes starts to feel like it would just be easier to go with someone’s rules, or to do it yourself … not to have to negotiate shared rules.

Without collaboration, I won’t get out of bed. I’m too lazy all by myself.

Is a committee a collaboration?

Everything is power (even your ability to speak in public)

Everything should be done at the appropriate level (if they can be done on a certain rung of the ladder, it shouldn’t be made/done higher up on the food chain).

People tend to delegate upwards (here are the problems, let someone above me fix it).

‘Resources and people become the laws’.

Things can fall apart when people don’t know the rules (people don’t know in what capacity they are being invited to participate if it’s not communicated) – citing “relational aesthetic piece gone wrong” at the power plant.

Artist in Vienna who ended up killing himself after trying to do collaborative work with a bunch of prostitutes (no one talks about the ethics)!

Rogoff meet Hickey ... on Wordle

Check it out here....

February 2nd Recap - Part Two: Rogoff.

Part 2 - WE: Communities, Mutualities, Participations (Irit Rogoff)

Reviewing my notes from our discussion around this article, I am struck by how scattered they feel to me. I wonder whether it is because I found the article rather impenetrable or because my brain was fatigued and having trouble both thinking its own thoughts and capturing others’ at the same time.

Random flashes.
- Idea that meaning is present in the interconnectedness
- Idea of “mediality” (as opposed to reality)
- Hopeful movement from critique→criticism→criticality (proposal to define criticality as something that is moving and changing is maybe a better way to approach it than “critical standpoint” from which there are values …. because in some areas of life, lack of criticality is paralyzing and in others, certain kind of criticality has paralyzed it)
- If I try to tell a story about what I just experienced, I will miss some details; idea that audience won’t get anything unless everything is explained
- Both writers (Hickey and Rogoff) discuss their topics (beauty and community) as action and relationship, think of them as an ongoing process
- People have a fear of things being arbitrary when you talk about relativism (it doesn’t matter what I say, it’s all relative); but what we do have to land us is the social.
- Idea that we look at things differently but that the differences are not arbitrary.


Transforming the world via community cliff-jumping.
- Flash: “one does not learn something new unless one unlearns something old. Otherwise one is simply adding information and not rethinking a structure.”
- This requires a lot of risk, scary that we have to give something up and sit in limbo in order to create the kind of collective space that can actually be critical
- We have emotional attachements to the things we think are true; art as site for us to uncover and restructure our entire way of thinking (similar to psychoanalysis)
- Maybe this article is calling for psychoanalysis on a community level (re-envisioning)?
- “This is us, we who are supposed to say we as if we know what we are saying and who we are talking about”
- “The reason I would wish to think of 'art' in relation to such a 'space of appearance' is recognition that when something called 'art' becomes an open interconnective field, then the potential to engage with it as a form of cultural participation RATHER than as a form of either reification, of representation or of contemplative edification, comes into being.”
- Rather is the problematic word there (we did a lot of work with “Emancipated Spectator” to unpack the polarity between spectatorship as bad and participation as good, and here it seems we’ve moved back to “spectatorship is bad”)
- We all seem to like these ideas in theory. Does the fear enter the picture because we know we will need put these things into practice? Real-world practicalities make this desire to investigate and reimagine everything seem daunting … “I’d never get through my day, if I was always trying to reimagine how to do things.”


Call for “working with no models”.
- Is working without models about time? Political act happens in the present, no planning of space and time for it; no directionality in preparation for it.
- Constant desire for potentiality – is it born out of the fact that people are trying to protect themselves from the disappointment of whatever results when something is actually chosen or realized?
- Is the desire to keep potential open an easy way to not have to be rigorous in one’s artistic practice; a way to make excuses for not committing to anything?
- We seem to have this idea of wanting things to be organized in a rhizome-like way (decentralized), as compared to model of world as a tree (which has a base/centre). But is decentralizing control in this way related to too much potentiality?
- Maybe too much potentiality slows the process of growing one singular thing (editor’s note: to me, this is related to our discussion around relational aesthetics and the question of “what is the artist’s responsibility?”)

February 2nd Recap: Hickey.

Thinking Out Loud – February 2nd, 2010

If there’s one thing influencing my note-taking, note-revising, and note-posting these days, it’s the idea that everything is process and in process. I can’t seem to make my way out of this never-ending action - interpretation and re-interpretation, structuring and restructuring - and just settle on the thing. Every time I reopen my notes thinking they are “finished enough” I discover that today I want to make different connections, choose different quotes, use a different structure. It harkens back to Agamben’s “What is the Contemporary” article and my question: how do we deal with the fact that every work is situated in a particular time and place, and yet by the time the works is ready or complete, the time and place has already changed? well, without further ado, here are my notes from the last Thinking Out Loud session, in one particular incarnation, at this particular junction of time and space.

Part 1 – Dave Hickey (Vernacular of Beauty)

Intention.
- Important distinction between “what it looks like” and “what it means”
- Where does intention fit in? Can beauty reside within intention?
- What is the difference between having an intention and successfully realizing one’s intention? If we are going to evaluate based on the intention, does it matter whether or not the intention was achieved?
- Is it even possible to perceive intention in a work?
- When an artist makes a work, can they discover intention after (“I want the work itself to tell me what it’s about”)?
- Some artists claim art-making “is not about intention” as an excuse for not being rigorous with their practice.

For the last time, what is beauty? Maybe our “definition” is somewhere in this brainstorm.
- Is beauty a judgement or an experience?
- Beauty as something communal, something that involves influence from others, related to received knowledge and brainwashing, etc.
- Black and white wall experiment as proof of the role of influence or suggestion on our experiences
- How does relativism come into play (we talk about beauty as this hierarchical thing)?
- Personal engagement or relationship to something as where we locate meaning; is this the closest we can get to idea of “universal beauty”?
- “Beauty is what the object and I agree on”
- Manmade beauty – and where is that in relation to what is beautiful in nature?
- How we experience or understand beauty as something that shifts with time?
- Beauty as a safe place? Beauty as power to be dangerous.
- Space between beauty and pleasure.
- Struggle or resolution of struggle as what makes something beautiful?
- Beauty about when one is authentic with one’s search. Through struggle, there is some kind of engagement with it on part of artist, which becomes beautiful to audience.
- Beauty as reception of something in a certain way. Then there is this question of is that beauty important?
- Why do we need to come to a consensus? To figure out how to use it? Do we need a consensus? What happens if we say “There is no consensus about what beauty is, but I’m still going to set out to create something beautiful”

Which leads us to …. the use of beauty.

Beauty as Functional.
- Foucault has this idea that we don’t even see the world as it is, we see it as others want us to for their purposes (for example, in the current economic climate in North America, we are encouraged to value profit over caring for ones’ neighbour)
- This raises an important for artists: “Do I know or understand enough about the world enough to even say anything? “
- “A good friend is someone who unsettles you”
- Is our job as artists still to shatter beauty with ugliness to offset all those “others” that are trying to manipulate us with beauty?
- Can we use beauty to unsettle?
- It seems unfortunate for artists to sacrifice our access to beauty (artists shouldn’t give that power up)
- Questions: “how do you let beauty back in?” “Can we ever get beauty back?”
- How might an advertiser’s intention manifest differently than an artist’s?
- Problem as an artist who needs to sell work of how we brand ourselves.
- Is what is a comfort and what is unsettling also depend on context? (i.e. are magazines and tv a comfort because they invisibly reinforce your world and what is familiar to you … and it is only when they become foreign and thus visible to you that they are unsettling?)
- When the argument becomes visible, you cannot be seduced by it as much. Intention is revealed. As we become aware of platform from which we are experiencing things, we move towards new level of criticism.
- Boiling pot of water and the frog metaphor. If boiling water is contemporary dance, how do you throw people in that pot, and get them to stay? Make it beautiful? Then beauty becomes a functional tool.
- Do we need a Vanna White (a beautiful thing directing people’s gaze to the object)? If work itself is not beautiful, isn’t that enough?
- Importance of welcoming people to engage with things they don’t have ‘expertise’ around and giving permission to people to just have experience

Criticism.
- Relational aesthetics: there is only a relationship, there is not an object around which we meet… so what do we evaluate or critique? It becomes about ethics: we evaluate based on how artist treats the people involved (not about how aesthetically pleasing it is)
- When ethics become more important than product, isn’t it better to not have people wondering about your soul, but just worrying about your appearance?
- Challenging question: maybe being under authorial rule of king is more useful than being under constant self-censorship (maybe it makes resistance more possible)
- Do I want to be judged on both my appearance and my soul?

Study Group March 2

We'll return to WE: Collectivities, Mutualities, and Participations by Irit Rogoff for the first half.

After the break, we'll take a pause in our readings to spend some time with Youtube and questions of "amateur" production and aesthetics.

We'll reference An anthropological introduction to YouTube and Margaux Williamson's video Dance Dance Revolutions Co. / Tomboyfriend's End of Poverty, made mostly from clips of teenagers dancing in their basements. Feel free to add links of "amauteur" performance in the comments.


Study group meets at 6:30 at Dancemakers. In March we'll be in the office.


(it's true that conversations are better if you've read the readings or watched the videos, just gives us something solid to talk about...)

Part 4. Dave Hickey and Beauty.

Background
- Text from the article comes from a book “Invisible Dragon” published around 1993, which he pulled off the market when people got so angry about it.
- When he heard it was selling on ebay for about $500, Hickey thought it was ridiculous so he allowed it to be published
- Writings are largely centered around Robert Mapplethorpe, National Endowment Fund issue (series of photographs created a huge controversy)

What is beauty?
- “Beauty is not a doing thing. The Beautiful is a thing. To images, beauty is the agency that causes visual pleasure in the beholder” (David Hickey)
- What do we think this means/how do we feel about it?
- Maybe it means beauty is about our relationship to the thing: so that it’s a process or an agency – not inherent in the object, but not post-reflection – somewhere in between (“comes before our analytical reflective engagement thing”)
- Object is thus not arbitrary, and our initial response to things as beautiful doesn’t necessarily change
- It seems to come down to the degree of pleasure that one has in engaging with something

Online conversations. Who knew?

On the eve of the next Thinking Out Loud (info here)
I wanted to draw attention to a great discussion in the comments around Ranciere. Two people I don't know having a great conversation about the reading - very nice and exactly what we hoped for. Perhaps we need to Skype in from Argentina.

Speaking of spectatorship... WHITE CABIN @ the Theatre Centre

Considering all the talk about spectatorship around Thinking Out Loud (what with the Emancipated Spectator article and all), I think it's pretty exciting that the celebrated Russian theatre company AKHE is bringing their piece of highly physical theatre White Cabin to the Theatre Centre next week.

This is what their say about their show:
"Can a spectator influence what is happening on stage simply by his or her presence? Can the action onstage influence the very will of the spectator and the desire for self enrichment? Is it possible to project the action onstage directly into the mind and soul of the spectator? The female protagonist of this multimedia piece faces all of these questions and many more. Her co-performers provoke her, creating magical situations where the simplest reactions are projected into a metaphorical, decidedly absurd realm.

Check out the Theatre Centre site to get tickets.

February 2nd Readings

Our January 2010 Thinking Out Loud launched us with avengence into a new year of thinking and creating. It was a delightfully large group on a very snowy day and the discussion was certainly stimulating.

So, onto our next one! Here's the info.

Date: Tuesday February 2nd - 6:30pm
Place: Dancemakers and the Centre for Creation
Articles: Enter the Dragon: On the Vernacular of Beauty - Dave Hickey (before the break)
AND
WE: Collectivities, Mutualities, and Participations - Irit Rogoff (after the break)

Both are available on aaaarg by following the links, or at the Dancemakers office.

Part 3. So what is Ranciere proposing?

- What does an “active” spectator look like?
- What does work look like when it’s made with the intention of emancipating spectators, or for emancipated spectators? (and are they emancipated when they arrive, or only after the work)?

[Problem that everything can become a question of how emancipated am I in every moment (ticket sales, marketing, etc)?]

- When we are creating for emancipated spectators, or in order to encourage emancipated spectatorship, what is an artist’s responsibility?

- No practice in the article, only philosophy
- No implied style (rather, are you creating an ethos for something?)

- Perhaps artist provides:
1. a work and
2. a time and space for audience to freely experience, engage with this work

- Ranciere doesn’t define object in the middle where we meet (the work is the third term) but suggests that if we put the work at the centre, it frees us to not have a dichotomous relationship
- Community or active learning experience for the audience

- Suggestion that when Ranciere says “looking is not acting” it is not a statement of truth … he seems to be saying:

watching (and analysis) can be participation

Part 2. Spectacle and Emancipation.

Spectacle.
- What is a spectacle?
- Is there a way for the subject/performance to not be spectacle?
- There is this concern:

“If I’m not part of the subject, maybe it is a spectacle”

- If this is true, is it a bad thing?

How do you choose artistic content?

- Is content just a meeting place for an exchange, or does the content matter in and of itself?

- How much can you engage with 3rd item (subject) … as opposed to just engaging with each other as performer/audience?

Where is meaning?

- If everyone in the room (artists and audience) is engaging with a work and trying to understand what it is?

- Someone suggested that perhaps performers contribute their particular competencies and a desire to investigate what subject means with a new audience, audience contributes their intelligence and desire to investigate new subject?

"Just because you get everyone to walk around the space, doesn’t mean you’re part of it"

- Spectacle of advertising and mass media as being in opposition to individual experience, wants to impose experience in order to persuade you of something
- Hickey seems to be trying to emancipate the word “spectacle” as well – he challenges our understanding/definition of it as negative, suggests that looking and acting have never been separate – we just think about them that way.


Emancipation.
- Who is the more “emancipated spectator”? The dancer who goes in to watch contemporary dance with an understanding of what the art/culture is or the person who goes in with no familiarity with the art/culture?
- What expectations does an audience come in with?
- One person argued you just engage and unconsciously analyze (in other words, maybe there is no way to detect emancipation, we are just articulating something that already happens)

“maybe the emancipation doesn’t have to be self-conscious”

- Do audiences resist being emancipated? Maybe there is fear in the freedom to enter a performance as an emancipated spectator

(“there is comfort in knowing what the rules are, and knowing what my role is as an audience member is - if you change that rule and give me authority, I don’t know what to do anymore and feel uncomfortable”)

- What is the community construct around staying in your seat? Why don’t we leave? Respect for performers? Is it reputation? Pressure?

- If you don’t know you’re emancipated, are you? If I don’t know I’m free to leave at any time, am I emancipated?

- Is the safety of rules for the purpose of commodification?

- We’ve been discussing the “we as performers are imparting our expertise to you lesser audience people” inequality but there is also the reverse inequality we need to consider: “emancipated” audiences who have power to value or devalue artistic product (kick over set, throw tomatoes, etc) – if we give audience power, they use it to purchase art of their choosing.

Is this also a problem?

- Discussion of Jacob Wren show at Harbourfront

(demanded emancipated audience – i.e. demanded participation from very beginning and had loose boundaries ... but one audience member became very destructive)

- Potential of the internet to emancipate spectators?

(story of child looking for mouse attached to the television as indicator of people’s basic assumption these days that they can participate in entertainment)

Part I. Of several. Flashes from TOL January 5th.

I'm rolling out these notes in stages because there's a lot here to digest. We returned to Ranciere's mama article "The Emancipated Spectator" and revisited what flashed for people off the bat.

In general, I'd say it can be focused into themes:
1) Encouraging pedagogical models
2) Reclaiming words like ignorant and spectacle
3) Assumptions - deconstructing and reevaluating them
4) Are we ready to do virtuosic things for audiences again?

Click below to see what - in relation to these themes - jumped out at people upon their first reading.

More...

- “He reinforced my concerns about teaching as a hierarchical relationship which is present in so many artistic training programs”
- How do you put subject-focused non-hierarchical approach to learning in an artistic setting?
- Interesting that he used the word “ignorant” in a good way, when it normally has an immediately negative connotation. Proposal that he is using word to make a point (and to reclaim it)?
- We all learned to speak language as children (and not through a hierarchical approach), so perhaps if we bring this kind of inherent intelligence we all have to artistic processes and performances, we can engage with a certain amount of equality? I.e. Through engagement rather than through enforced learning (the way we learn language)
- Ranciere works through of a set of assumptions (like spectatorship is bad) which he then goes on to debunk (reference to all the dichotomies that he deconstructs)
- Pulling apart of idea that community is good in order to complexify it (instead of just assuming there is some inherent good in community)
- Challenging the role of the spectator has been making the rounds in dance in Europe – relational aesthetics practices have become common, a way to rebel against the hierarchical
- Maybe this was a necessary response to the unconscious pacifiying of the audience that happened before, and next, we can say “okay, we understand this differently” and now we can go back to making plays and have audiences observe again
- Is there room for virtuosity again? Return (not full swing) back to observership

January 5 Readings

The study group continues to be fun and useful. So great to have a space to talk about art and art making in a way we don't often get to. If you haven't been before, please know you're always welcome. And you have been before, welcome back.


Date: January 5th - 6:30pm
Place: Dancemakers and the Centre for Creation
Articles: The Emancipated Spectator - Jacques Ranciere            
Enter the Dragon: On the Vernacular of Beauty - Dave Hickey 


Both are available on aaaarg by following the links, or at the Dancemakers office (We're closed after the 22nd and reopen the 4th.) Some background on the Mapplethorpe controversy is here, and the Introduction to the Hickey book is here. Neither are necessary, but if you find them useful, it's nice to have them.

New format (thanks to Leora for the suggestion)
In an effort to keep discussions going and to allow for some more thinking time, we're changing up the structure a bit.We'll split the session up so the first half is about last months reading and the second half is about a new reading, which in turn will be discussed at the beginning of the following month.
For example:


On January 5th we will spend the first half talking about the December articles, with special attention to The Emancipated Spectator, because we didn't spend much time on it. Rough notes on the session are on the Thinking Out Loud blog.Then we'll start discussing Dave Hickey's Enter the Dragon: On the Vernacular of Beauty
Then in February, we'll come back to Hickey and then start the new one.


We hope this format will allow for added reflection and a deeper conversation into each reading. We're also going to experiment with only one article per session to keep the discussion focused and the reading load lighter.
Also, anyone is able to join the conversation who haven't been before - while we will build on the conversation for the previous time, we'll make sure to include newcomers. 


And this format makes the blog more useful we hope. The notes from last time are up  - please comment, question or add tangents in comments section. We want the blog to be a space for conversations to continue and happen between sessions.

ok, I think that's all.
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