Notes From New York

Just posting the note i wrote about blogging, its personal, very general, do post a comment if you disagree with it, its what we handed out to the wokrshop participants as an introduction to the blogosphere, so pitched very much at a beginner.

RLxx

Blogging : An Ideal Recipe by Rachel Lois Clapham

Why blog?

Much of today’s art criticism has devolved away from a removed position of judgement to a more embodied critique. This is (very basically) critical writing where the author (and reader) is necessarily situated in the personal; their body, their opinions/subjectivity and this position is considered relevant and critical. In addition, people nowadays often put as much stock in what their neighbours think of a piece of art as they do in what a professional thinks. Both these factors explain why and how blogging is such a vital, popular and growing phenomenon; its form, design and purpose are all often without spin and are personal i.e. a blogger, whatever they blog about, is telling you what they think.

Your blogging voice

Bloggers need to stay true to the blogger ethos of ‘say it like it is’ and giving their opinion freely whilst maintaining levels of professionalism and being mindful of any important relationships such as funder, artist or friend. The personal touch doesn’t mean a blog is not of professional standards or interest to academics, artists or commissioning organisations. Many individuals and organisations have a vested interest in blogging and many blogs are professional, both in financial terms and content. A growing number of professionals and organisations take blogging very seriously as a genre and pay bloggers to report on much more than just the facts.

Addressing the reader

Due to the blog’s informal origins, blog readers won’t necessarily be expecting large amounts of dense, specifically academic or theoretical language or text in a blog. This kind of content certainly does appear on specialist blogs, and will certainly be beneficial to many visitors to the PERFORMA 07 Live blog, but be mindful that the Performa blog has a potentially wide and varied readership and the content of the work seen may well be unfamiliar, unusual or difficult to many who are not familiar with live forms of art or new media. Any specific content or language will need to be carefully introduced, clearly referenced and explained for the benefit of the reader.

A Good Blog
There is no point writing about a piece of work if you only have bad things to say about the work. Also, you need to bear in mind that Performa is trying to foster a community that will inform artists, future historians but also encourage more people to see and learn about performance art and new media so plainly negative reviews won’t be published. Instead we want critical writing that includes, and works within, the PERFORMA 07 Live blog guidelines whilst maintaining its voice and criticality. A certain level of questioning or negativity is ok as long as you are generous (to the artist, to the work, to your reader), also constructive and balanced in your opinion. A good tip to gage whether or not you think you are being balanced regarding your negative opinion is to ask yourself ‘Would I feel happy as author of this writing if I met the artist or curator for dinner?‘ If the answer is no, it’s perhaps time to re-phrase or put more into the text to explain yourself. Thanks to Joshua Sofaer for that tip, which he told to me and has saved me numerous upset stomachs…

You will distinguish your blog from the majority of vicious, bad or ‘nasty’ blogs (i.e. blogs that are full of typos, unstructured, ill-thought-out or overly negative and viscous) by following the PERFORMA 07 Live blog guidelines, doing thorough copy editing and ensuring the facts (credits, copyright, names, dates, times) are all included and cross referenced. Also make sure you include any relevant links to the artists work.

Happy Blogging!

Rachel Loisxx

mary has been really sick and drinking lots of tea but today seems to be recovered. yesterday we had the workshop 'Writers Hub' so she took lots of drugs and it went well. There were 11 people in total, including us. there are about 5 more people signed on to the writing live programme , but they had work commitments and other things so couldnt make it on tuesday. they will be coming to the peer review sessions though.

the workshoip itself, the handouts and writing exercises were pitched at the right level, thankfully, with many in the group either never having blogged about art, written any art criticism/critical writing, or know much about performance, so feedback and dialogue on the day were good and we have given everyone -whether they be students, performa staff, or professional writers/academics lots of templates and thoughts to go away with to help them blog better about Performa.

There was good discussion on the day too, which i am glad of, sparked by the fact that some of the writers on the programme may have been schooled in what i would call conservative art criticism of the old school, or the Academy. This sort of writing puts itself in service to the work, is well researched and critical, but often doesnt come from the personal, and as such it would never use familiar tones or the highly personal mode of 'I' in its writing. We will see how these voices come through on the blog as opposed to those who are more overtly embodied in their criticism. maybe the two forms of writing will go well together, there is no doubt that there will be readers who appreciate both style of wriitng.

an important part of the day was getting from everyone why they were there at Writers Hub workshop and what they wanted out of the writing programme over the course of Performa biennial. everybody's personal aims make an interesting read and we will be all set to try and support the writers in part way reaching those aims as the weeks progress.

the blog posts are already coming in thick and fast-often too many for rebecca alone to edit as many of the writers are inexperienced and need more condensed editorial advice or changes made to their texts. im sure this editorial challenge will sort itself out as people write more and see others texts and accessible styles of writing for the blog, we also plan to introduce writing surgeries where some writers will be invited (or they can drop in of their own accord) to go over their texts in detail and in person, then we can literally 'incise' the more problemaic bits of any writing whilst guiding them through general points.

the writers raised lots of questions re: what knowledge should you bring to the work, how much research should you do prior to writing? how to write a work that you know nothing about or dont understand. also , there were more prescient or specific points about what a blog was, what kind of blogging we were doing, what voices to use, also what were the challenges ofblogging about performance. i was glad i wrote a note about general points about blogging to give to everyone, but this is just a start and by no means answers the questions that were raised. we will no doubt continue these questions at our next peer review session 9th november. this session is at freemans restaraunt where the writers will be eating 'bring me the head of …' by by Serkan Özkaya which is a Performa Commissioned sculpture and a peice of food!!! yum. Author and Performa Director, Roselee Goldberg, will also be attending the next session, and she can give her feedback on the writing so far, and also give her views on writing about performance in general.

I will extrapolate from my copius notes from the workshop day at a later stage. until then-im off to a halloween parade. ive seen some pretty scary and wild costumes so far-and they were only on people in the lcoal supermarket doing their shopping! in addition, between people dressed as farm hand hicks, fat policemen and homeless people (particularly distasteful i thought) im not atall sure, as a brit, if some people are in costume or not!! better smile anyway, just to be on the safe side

til then

RLxxx

Performa 07 launched last nigth with a one night only performance of Francesco Vezzoli's adaptation of Luigi Pirandello's 1917 play 'Right you are if you think you are' at the solomon guggenheim museum. It was vezzoli's first ever live performance and it launched amid long waits in long queues, restless uber arty new york types, VIP bodyguards and celebrity air kissing. so mary and I were truly dunked head first into Performance art-AMERICAN STYLE-which involves queue anxiety, and lots of loud and oblivious queue pushing-in: shameless!. (…well, it would be rude not to join in wouldnt it? after all, if mary and i hadnt boldly pushed right to the front we would have never actually caught the performance because it began as a huge part of the audience were still standing outside in the rain!. I rationalise this new found streak of anti social behaviour by saying that we are writers; it is our duty to be at the front and get good seats to record the performance. We are merely serving generations of performance art lovers and future historians who could not be there themselves).

In typically holllywood fashion the bill of actors for this one night performance included a starr studded line up :cate blanchett, abigail breslin, ellen burstyn, anita ekberg, marcus carl franklin, natalie portman, peter sarsgaard, david strathairn, elaine stritch and dianne wiest. All these A-listers had turned out (with body guards) to do justice to Vezzoli's vision of Pirandello's play, whicxh was originally conceived as a tale of the impossibility of objective truth centred around the central (mostly absent) character of 'Signora Ponzo', which Vezzoli has turned into a parable of the modern day cult of celebrity, together with one off galliano and prada designed outfits and Cate Blanchett playing Signora Ponzo,

Having faught off the olsen twins, marina abramovic and various other recognisably famous people in the audience to get to the front of the queue, mary, rebecca and i get past the gallery door-police and are seated in a small ampitheatre full of video screens. And we are totally miffed: the video screens are a live feed into the 'real' action in the performance space located at the other side of the guggenheim. We, the three 'Writing Live Fellows' are relegated to second place, we have cheap seats! You understand, readers, we are not ego maniacs, but still; the cheek of it! We sit down and plot our venemous blogging revenge amid thoughts of abandoning the whole thing and retiring to a bar (apart from mary -it must be said-who was very gracious about the situation, if not a little stunned with jet lag). rebecca then took the guggenheim bull by the horns and asked staff what was going on. she came back with the low down on what was to happen in the performance; it seems cate blanchett , no less, would be joining us on stage during the screening! The space Cate, and we her audience, share turns out to be central to the performance itself, ie live. We are not in the cheap seats, second class lounge, or third hand video space -removed from the action-afterall! (joy). something 'is' going to happen in our space, something live, something expensive, something famous…We are important to the peice, moreover, we are going to be in the presence of a real life celebrity!.

It is an entirely fitting tribute to Vezzoli's rumination on celebrities and celebrity culture, and i think perhaps (cynically on my part-perhaps on Vezzol'is too) the overall point of the peice, that our being in cate's presence and therefore witness to a 'live' (celebrity) performance changed mary, rebecca and i's mind about staying for the duration of the peice… youll need to read my reveiw to find out more about the work itself, but needless to say, performance art in Performa has kicked off with a bang in true american blockbuster, expensive looking, coture gowned, celebrity dripped style!!

RLxx

here is the blurb for our critical writing workshop, Writers Hub:

……………………………………………………………………………..

WRITING LIVE: WRITERS HUB FEATURED AS PART OF
PERFORMA 07, THE SECOND EDITION OF THE BIENNIAL
OF NEW VISUAL ART PERFORMANCE
TO BE HELD IN NEW YORK CITY
OCTOBER 27 – NOVEMBER 20, 2007

Building on the success of NOT FOR SALE, the dynamic education series initiated in 2004 in anticipation of the first PERFORMA biennial in 2005, PERFORMA is pleased to announce WRITING LIVE.

This peer review forum has been specially designed in support
of a new generation of artists, authors, and critics engaged in discussions around prescient issues in performance and new media, and the related task of writing about art and artists
whose work encompasses several disciplines at once.

WRITING LIVE will involve an international group of curators, critics and emerging writers,bringing together a unique mix of different voices in a network of critical writing and debate around PERFORMA 07.

Throughout the biennial writers will participate in WRITING LIVE: WRITERS HUB a rolling program of practical writing workshops
kicked off with keynote remarks by RoseLee Goldberg and David Levi Strauss (Tues 30, Oct, 11am – 3pm). Writers Hub will also comprise collective peer review platforms (Tues 13 Nov, 12 – 2pm & Tues 20 Nov, 12 – 2pm) designed with a longer-term aim of sustaining conversations around art writing on contemporary performance. A special session will take place at Freemans Restaurant (Nov 9, 1 – 3pm) to coincide with Bring Me The Head
of… a sculpture by Serkan Özkaya co-presented by PERFORMA and Freemans. In addition, writers will contribute to PERFORMA07 Writing Live blog by posting entries of reviews, daily round-ups, behind the scenes previews, opinion and interviews with
biennial artists and curators.

See the Writing Live blog at: http://07.performaarts.org/performa_live.php

……………………………………………………….

the workshop programme sounds very official and great (as well as slightly terrifying) no?. Roselee and david levis strauss very repected professionals in their field, i only hope our nerves dont get the better of us when mary, rebecca and i are leading the workshop on the day. we are also dscussing pulling something 'spontaneous' out of the hat, ie not in the programme, to see how all the writers react in terms of their responses. should be a good day. im also looking forward to' eating the head' at Freemands restaraunt at the second peer review session. its a proper restaraunt with a peice of performance art on the menu-delicious!

also-just to say-AN kindly (thanks gillian) gave us money to promote Interface activity whilst in NY, so in our handouts for the workshop people will get all kinds of papers and buisiness cards. we hope the writers both young and old (not in age terms-but experience!) will be keen to know about interface, after all. as a writer its everything you can do to get your stuff read and disseminated out to the maximum amount of people. And to have it on an official looking site-as opposed to myspace-with a high number of readers is ideal.

bye for now.

ill update you on the mad day i had in NY in a later blog. needless to say i have at least one new freind (subway station guy-hello gerry!) and one new enemy-crazy guy on the subway- he should have known better than to mess with an english woman!

RLxx

RLxx

yes. NY appartment was real afterall, thankgod. and mary and rebecca have met up to go over the workshop materials. the writers workshop is now called 'Writers Hub' as part of the writing live, performa programme. here is the press release blurb for writing live:

PERFORMA 07 Writing Live

PERFORMA 07, the second edition of the biennial of new visual art performance to be held in New York City from October 27 – November 20, 2007, will feature approximately eighty artists, and is presented in collaboration with a consortium of thirty cultural organizations throughout the city.

Visit http://07.performa-arts.org/performa_live.php to read reviews, daily round-ups, behind the scenes previews, opinion and interviews with biennial artists and curators. Log on and follow the debate with the group of international, young writers.

For a full schedule of events, lists of participating artists and venues, as well as the most up to date information see www.performa-arts.org.

Writing Live is directed by RoseLee Goldberg and Defne Ayas, and coordinated by PERFORMA07 Writing Live Fellows Rachel Lois Clapham, Rebecca May Marston and Mary Paterson. Writing Live has been planned in collaboration with the SVA Graduate Art Criticism and Writing Programme with in-part sponsorship by Arts Council England.

rLxxx