Saturday, January 23, 2010

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.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

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.


Saturday, January 16, 2010

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

Friday, January 15, 2010

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)

Thursday, January 14, 2010

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

Friday, January 1, 2010

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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