Artists always want to explore new forms of art that allow them to put their ideas without any restrictions from tradition or established biases. Nowadays, we are observing more movements to challenge our current forms and ideas and such works include live art, inter-disciplinary artworks, community collaboration, and intercultural art collaboration. Andy Warhol Museum’s performing arts series, especially sound series and off the wall series, are good examples of creating innovative outlets to encourage the emerging trend of setting a new form and engaging a diverse audience.
According to Goldberg, the emerging art forms are performed in places from an art gallery or museum to an ‘alternative space’, it can be a theatre, café, bar or street corner. She also argues in her article that “performance manifestos have been the expression of dissidents who have attempted to find other means to evaluate art experience in everyday life”. In this manner, Andy Warhol Museum provides a great alternative tool to engage performing arts that have closer connection to its current collection and its mission, to extend its works with the help of other medium, and to serve a diverse audience by blurring lines for genre or medium. Andy Warhol Museum’s off the wall series especially offer contemporary performances devoted to challenging conventional perceptions of art so that audiences can have a diverse, thought-provoking live performance experiences in spaces outside of the museum. The subjects or media vary and capture dissident voices through many collaborations with local arts organizations or sometimes inviting international arts organizations.
These new forms don’t have any previous frameworks for planning, managing, or evaluating tools, thus having more importance in defining and managing such procedures. In the planning process, I think building capacity of artists or organizations to capture the opportunities would be critical. Since many parts of such works come from diverse collaborations, building a great relationship with other creative sectors will be also vital. For the managing stage, developing audience through building awareness of emerging art forms should come first. As the form or idea itself can be somewhat unfamiliar or even provocative, having a connection to what the audience already know and what the organization wants to present would be beneficial: Andy Warhol connects these two by using its credibility and by asking challenging questions to the audience – the educational programs. Emerging art sometimes entails great risks and one of the ways to manage such risks is building a program that is relevant to the mission and goals. When evaluating success of emerging or experimental art, it is important to evaluate whether it helps deliver its mission and increase opportunities to reach the audience. I think the reason of Andy Warhol Museum’s success in its performing arts series is due to its holistic education and marketing programs in line with its mission: those emerging art programs are being used to bridge the gaps between its mission and execution at the museum and the museum provides more opportunities for the audience to proactively engage in the emerging art forms by themselves.
I think that the problem that some of these evaluating art forms face is that they go into creating programs with either no specific goals for what they want to accomplish—making it very hard to evaluate success—or they go into it with a goal that they have no idea how to evaluate. Additionally, with the daunting fact that this art form does not have any previous frameworks, I can see how many of these art forms would try to shirk the job of evaluating any programs that they may choose to create. However, I believe that this lack of framework is actually an opportunity for the organization or artist to take their program and plan it so it accomplishes exactly what they want it to. I suggest that when trying to plan, manage, and evaluate success in art forms that don’t have previous frameworks, these art organizations should look to established frameworks for creating programs, such as logic models. While these models are generally not as popular with artists, I believe that they would be incredibly useful for evaluating such an open ended art form. Because these art forms defies precise definition, as Goldberg says, if the artist wants to plan any sort of programming, they need to go into it knowing exactly what they want to accomplish with the definition-less art they are performing. By knowing what they want to accomplish, the artist/organization can then use a previously defined framework to help them not only create programs, but see what steps they will need to take to accomplish their goals within that program.
A phenomenon that becomes evident in reading Roselee Goldberg is that when artists push the boundaries of an art form, they also force shifts in the physical boundaries that house the art. For an art form as amorphous as performance art, which can contain almost any concept (for example, Arthur Cravan, a Dadaist, selling tickets to his own suicide, and then yelling at people for purchasing tickets [not mentioned in the text, but I wanted to give a shout-out here cause I love those crazy Dadaists!]), a dedicated venue is impossible. This doesn’t mean that an institution cannot produce boundary-blurring works, however. But it does stress the importance of how said institution approaches the art in pre and post production. The Warhol does this well in their Off the Wall Series. The title of the series itself alerts the patron that, while the programing is in the spirit of the visual art housed in the Warhol, it has different needs from both the space and the viewer. Of course, the museum outsources space depending on the production, and, from what I’ve experienced in this series, the shows are either presented in a theatre or the lecture room at the Warhol (i.e. venues have a clearly identified stage space and audience seating). While I wouldn’t necessarily label their programming as “safe”, it appears to me that their performance series is only as genre-defying as their space(s) allow. Which is not a bad thing- they’re sticking to their mission and diversifying their offerings and they’re doing this within the constraints of buildings that can comfortably hold audiences. An organization that does a swell job of producing uncategorizable performing/ance art is the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival. The festival grew out of the Philly Fringe, which played a significant role in helping audiences… uh, expect the unexpected? While the Fringe, which anyone can participate in, still exists (it runs concurrently, actually), the Live Arts Festival is a curated selection of high-caliber works that Philadelphians have come to anticipate yearly. It helps that the Festival’s brand is steeped in “this art could be anything!”-ness, as audiences expect art in all corners of the city and know that their experience can range from traditional seated-in-a-theatre-and-watching to a two person performance in which they are participating while taking directions on head phones in a busy coffee shop among crowds of people who will never be aware of the show. Festival management is, I think, inherently chaotic, and it could be more so when venues are so varied and freely defined. Art that fits between disciplines can often require greater elbow grease on the administrator’s side, whether it manifests in getting permits, configuring seating in a nontraditional space, or meeting fire code statutes. When it comes to evaluation, focus should be placed on the art and intention of the artist. Sometimes audiences are culturally positioned to embrace a groundbreaking art form (rock and roll), and other times it is the artists who are forcing their innovations through widely accepted artistic tradition (Stravinsky). So, there cannot be one criterion for audience reception. Rather, evaluation must come from the goals/purpose of the artwork itself. This might mean that an organization will have to develop a method of evaluating one piece of performance in their series that is entirely different from the rest of their evaluation process, but this is the only way the organization can hope to accurately assess the success of the work.
Artists always want to explore new forms of art that allow them to put their ideas without any restrictions from tradition or established biases. Nowadays, we are observing more movements to challenge our current forms and ideas and such works include live art, inter-disciplinary artworks, community collaboration, and intercultural art collaboration. Andy Warhol Museum’s performing arts series, especially sound series and off the wall series, are good examples of creating innovative outlets to encourage the emerging trend of setting a new form and engaging a diverse audience.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Goldberg, the emerging art forms are performed in places from an art gallery or museum to an ‘alternative space’, it can be a theatre, café, bar or street corner. She also argues in her article that “performance manifestos have been the expression of dissidents who have attempted to find other means to evaluate art experience in everyday life”. In this manner, Andy Warhol Museum provides a great alternative tool to engage performing arts that have closer connection to its current collection and its mission, to extend its works with the help of other medium, and to serve a diverse audience by blurring lines for genre or medium. Andy Warhol Museum’s off the wall series especially offer contemporary performances devoted to challenging conventional perceptions of art so that audiences can have a diverse, thought-provoking live performance experiences in spaces outside of the museum. The subjects or media vary and capture dissident voices through many collaborations with local arts organizations or sometimes inviting international arts organizations.
These new forms don’t have any previous frameworks for planning, managing, or evaluating tools, thus having more importance in defining and managing such procedures. In the planning process, I think building capacity of artists or organizations to capture the opportunities would be critical. Since many parts of such works come from diverse collaborations, building a great relationship with other creative sectors will be also vital. For the managing stage, developing audience through building awareness of emerging art forms should come first. As the form or idea itself can be somewhat unfamiliar or even provocative, having a connection to what the audience already know and what the organization wants to present would be beneficial: Andy Warhol connects these two by using its credibility and by asking challenging questions to the audience – the educational programs. Emerging art sometimes entails great risks and one of the ways to manage such risks is building a program that is relevant to the mission and goals. When evaluating success of emerging or experimental art, it is important to evaluate whether it helps deliver its mission and increase opportunities to reach the audience. I think the reason of Andy Warhol Museum’s success in its performing arts series is due to its holistic education and marketing programs in line with its mission: those emerging art programs are being used to bridge the gaps between its mission and execution at the museum and the museum provides more opportunities for the audience to proactively engage in the emerging art forms by themselves.
I think that the problem that some of these evaluating art forms face is that they go into creating programs with either no specific goals for what they want to accomplish—making it very hard to evaluate success—or they go into it with a goal that they have no idea how to evaluate. Additionally, with the daunting fact that this art form does not have any previous frameworks, I can see how many of these art forms would try to shirk the job of evaluating any programs that they may choose to create. However, I believe that this lack of framework is actually an opportunity for the organization or artist to take their program and plan it so it accomplishes exactly what they want it to. I suggest that when trying to plan, manage, and evaluate success in art forms that don’t have previous frameworks, these art organizations should look to established frameworks for creating programs, such as logic models. While these models are generally not as popular with artists, I believe that they would be incredibly useful for evaluating such an open ended art form. Because these art forms defies precise definition, as Goldberg says, if the artist wants to plan any sort of programming, they need to go into it knowing exactly what they want to accomplish with the definition-less art they are performing. By knowing what they want to accomplish, the artist/organization can then use a previously defined framework to help them not only create programs, but see what steps they will need to take to accomplish their goals within that program.
ReplyDeleteA phenomenon that becomes evident in reading Roselee Goldberg is that when artists push the boundaries of an art form, they also force shifts in the physical boundaries that house the art. For an art form as amorphous as performance art, which can contain almost any concept (for example, Arthur Cravan, a Dadaist, selling tickets to his own suicide, and then yelling at people for purchasing tickets [not mentioned in the text, but I wanted to give a shout-out here cause I love those crazy Dadaists!]), a dedicated venue is impossible. This doesn’t mean that an institution cannot produce boundary-blurring works, however. But it does stress the importance of how said institution approaches the art in pre and post production.
ReplyDeleteThe Warhol does this well in their Off the Wall Series. The title of the series itself alerts the patron that, while the programing is in the spirit of the visual art housed in the Warhol, it has different needs from both the space and the viewer. Of course, the museum outsources space depending on the production, and, from what I’ve experienced in this series, the shows are either presented in a theatre or the lecture room at the Warhol (i.e. venues have a clearly identified stage space and audience seating). While I wouldn’t necessarily label their programming as “safe”, it appears to me that their performance series is only as genre-defying as their space(s) allow. Which is not a bad thing- they’re sticking to their mission and diversifying their offerings and they’re doing this within the constraints of buildings that can comfortably hold audiences.
An organization that does a swell job of producing uncategorizable performing/ance art is the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival. The festival grew out of the Philly Fringe, which played a significant role in helping audiences… uh, expect the unexpected? While the Fringe, which anyone can participate in, still exists (it runs concurrently, actually), the Live Arts Festival is a curated selection of high-caliber works that Philadelphians have come to anticipate yearly. It helps that the Festival’s brand is steeped in “this art could be anything!”-ness, as audiences expect art in all corners of the city and know that their experience can range from traditional seated-in-a-theatre-and-watching to a two person performance in which they are participating while taking directions on head phones in a busy coffee shop among crowds of people who will never be aware of the show. Festival management is, I think, inherently chaotic, and it could be more so when venues are so varied and freely defined. Art that fits between disciplines can often require greater elbow grease on the administrator’s side, whether it manifests in getting permits, configuring seating in a nontraditional space, or meeting fire code statutes.
When it comes to evaluation, focus should be placed on the art and intention of the artist. Sometimes audiences are culturally positioned to embrace a groundbreaking art form (rock and roll), and other times it is the artists who are forcing their innovations through widely accepted artistic tradition (Stravinsky). So, there cannot be one criterion for audience reception. Rather, evaluation must come from the goals/purpose of the artwork itself. This might mean that an organization will have to develop a method of evaluating one piece of performance in their series that is entirely different from the rest of their evaluation process, but this is the only way the organization can hope to accurately assess the success of the work.