Reminder: 10000 Invitations
we talk arts institutions and new and social media this Friday
Posted by: Lisa Radon on Oct 27, 2009 at 01:00PM
5 Comments
Just at reminder that this Friday, 4-6 PM at the Gerding Theater at the Armory, I’m hosting a roundtable on the ways Portland arts institutions are using, will be using, and imagine using new and social media to amplify their exhibitions, shows, and programs. There is new energy in this direction in the last year or so on the part of a number of institutions that will be represented at the table.
I wrote about 10,000 Invitations: A Roundtable on Arts Institutions and New/Social Media before, about some of the thinking that went into it. The event is part of The New Communicators unconference starting tomorrow. Other arts-related New Communicators events include “Art is War: Reinventing the Art Sales System with New Media” on Friday 7-9 PM at the Art Institute. All New Communicator events are free. You may but need not RSVP to attend.
Here’s a summary of 10,000 Invitations and a list of the participants:
Good minds from Portland arts institutions share the ways they’re using new and social media to engage audiences.
The Portland Art Museum creates conversational videos about works in the collection, creates a community website for its China Design Now exhibition, and tweets as M.C. Escher. Portland Center Stage creates show preview videos that go viral and uses Twitter in innovative ways. The Museum of Contemporary Craft creates video and podcast and invites audience response. PICA integrates Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube into its TBA Festival blog.
In education, programming, and marketing, we’ll talk about what’s worked and what’s on the horizon as the landscape continues to change with new tools and new challenges all the time.
Participants include:
Christina Olsen, PhD
Director of Education & Public Programs, Portland Art Museum
Beth Heinrich
Director of Marketing & Public Relations, Portland Art Museum
Cynthia Fuhrman
Marketing and Communications Director, Portland Center Stage
Patrick Leonard
Public Relations, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art
Rebecca Burrell, Public Relations and Marketing Specialist, Museum of Contemporary Craft
Namita Gupta-Wiggers, Curator, Museum of Contemporary Craft
Damn I’d love to go to that but I’m overbooked. I think there’s an interesting trend with young alt art spaces like our own. Our academic (college) lives started the precise moment facebook did, and in more than a few senses the platform is a reflection of the liberal arts atmosphere within which it evolved/was unleashed. The delivery of art through it seems a simple question with a simple answer to those of us with digital profiles(PERSONAS!): duh. Social media had been absolutely integral to APPENDIX’S quick development in the past year, both in terms of publicity, artist/critic relations, and instant art delivery. I feel that we’ve been able to tap into a supportive peer base that extends beyond the art-kid base and deliver fast, timely, in process/progress work that seems to pay off in terms of developing a viewer-base that extends into the community. There are a number of social and class barriers that seem to be bridgeable within the online realm that I find encouraging.
Class is a thorny issue. The perception of class is linked to the perception of clothing, speech, intelligence and a whole host of other outward signifiers that have little to do with actual income/background. For example, I would argue that I’m of the working class/poor. I grew up as such, went to school on scholarship and massive loans, and am now hounded by debtors, defer needed medical assistance, and pretty much scrape by each month. This is standard procedure for millions of folks in this country mind you, I’m not playing the pity card. My attendance at an “elite university” provided a brief respite—you’re babied, and the true cost of the things you’re receiving is hard to fathom—but for all intents and purposes I’ve found that through what remains of my computer (I’ll post a picture on facebook for you! The fun of social media! the bff mentality!) I routinely engage “up through the strata” and interact/socialize with the already established, wealthy, patron type, and down back through to poor family members, old high school acquaintances and working class community members. (And to admit a bit of personal insecurity here, talking to critics/artists first through a social filter like facebook was a toe in the water type thing, it’s hard to jump into a world you know little about face-to-face as newcomers to a scene)
Even for those who don’t have a computer, accessing social networking through a friend’s or library computer etc—I did that for a few months this summer when my computer first died— is often considered part of one’s routine. I’m going to give in to your inkling in regards to the older working class, but for the young, computer ownership is not a prerequisite for social media, SOMEONE they know has a computer, and if so they’re probably on it. This is a big opportunity for arts organization, they have direct access to a HUGE and diverse spectrum of young people who routinely look at visual information. The trick I think, in art institutions reaching across class, is to engage across the board with face to face programming
-in different geo-demographic locations-to hook someone or excite them, and then follow up to find out what platform they utilize—and then know enough about the platform to “friend that friend’s friends” and grow from the node. That, or create programing FOR a variety of social platforms to send out to a wide range of demographics to hook someone through purely digital means— Zack and I are currently playing with the latter idea> We’ll be launching a new arts quarterly/hoo ha whose format is different each issue: website, facebook page, myspace profile, paper mailing, youtube video etc. with the goal of maximizing the information and reach of the content (reviews, interviews, polemics, pictures, rogues of the week blah blah) given each platforms strength (sound delivery, video capability, blog/update frequency, interval between viewer reaction/contributions/response etc.) I can’t tell you how many great circles of friends/viewers/artists we’ve found by tracking down that one person we clicked with on myspace or facebook and spreading from that point. (So many viral intonations here, i creep myself out talking about it!)While we agree with a lot of what was said in the above comments about the potential of social networking sites and other new social media for both new and old arts institutions we see the limits of these platforms as well. Maybe this isn’t a completely relevant example but it comes to mind: over the last month, Mack McFarland has been working on a show at PSU’s White Gallery. Ten Foot Pole Drawings is a project in which Mack actualizes the figure of speech: ‘I wouldn’t touch that with a ten foot pole’. He draws unsightly or offensive things such as notorious political or artistic figures, or words like ‘Iraq’ or ‘faggot’ with a pencil attached to the end of a literal ten foot pole. Because the project is durational in nature, (Mack periodically goes to the gallery and works, doing more drawings each week) and he realizes that actually experiencing the entirety of the project can be difficult for a viewer, he has been updating his progress on facebook. His entries chronicle an inspired beginning: ‘Mack McFarland on the streetcar with a 10 ft pole’ and have progressed from there, each week recording a few new drawings. People could keep tabs on the project’s progress and setbacks online.
About week into the show someone from the university decided that the word ‘nigger’ was too offensive and told him to cover it up. He graciously complied, but asked to have a formal request written up and sent to him so that he could document his own censorship. As of yet the university has not complied with this request.
Facebook hosted some dialogue about Mack’s images and censorship, but there has been relatively little conversation about the work on any other blogs, papers, or even on the campus itself. What we are saying is: while online forums breakdown some boundaries and allow for diverse people to come together in discussion, there also is a risk that the conversation stays within the bounds of a site like facebook. Mack proposed to PSU that they have a public forum to talk about the concept of the work and the concept of censorship but it was shut down. It seems like a perfect opportunity for a public discussion about racism, censoring artists, and the value of political correctness. That is exactly what the work asks for, but instead the dialogue never made it past Mack’s facebook wall. Maybe it’s because people are scared of the word nigger, maybe it’s because there wasn’t that much of an opportunity for viewing at a gallery like the White, or maybe there is a chance that the context of facebook and other social networking sites isn’t quite right for the kind of critical artistic/cultural dialogue we want. Sorry if this has become a bit tangential but it seems like Mack did his job as an artist, putting something out that asked for conversation and we feel like we failed to fulfill our responsibility as viewers to stir that conversation. Forgive us Mack we are trying now. It seems like an online component could have been great for this project, but perhaps we have to question the limits of (seemingly free and democratic) forums like facebook, youtube, and twitter to serve our actual artistic needs.
I would say that to question the limits (and identify the potential) of any forum for artistic delivery, gallery included, is a precursor to the conception and implementation of any piece. Social media are more democratic, more so than a gallery for sure. but lest we forget that democracies vote by numbers, and most people don’t like seeing slurs, or understand the need for/intricacies involved in discussions such as you suggested above. Utilizing a forum that is instantly public and provides instant feedback carries an entirely new level of responsiblity/consideration on the part of the artist, and it begs the artist to question how and why their work is being delivered through a social media platform.
While SM sites can effectively communicate a piece of work conceived of without regards to the platform of delivery, as you pointed out they often don’t. More often than not, a successful utilization of social media requires a time-based attention to delivery. An awareness of how your network is linked to others, the evolution of memes, the order you put images in an album, the level of background you give (maybe one should record an interview/disclaimer and post it prior for example) and a grasp of how controversial work will galvanize the online opinion-mill… these are all new factors that artist’s are learning mean a lot. It’s a very different world, a broader, more representative world than the gallery, but with this larger “democracy” (a silly word to glorify I think. popular opinion is, as we’ve witnessed in the last decade, not the best way to come to decisions of the conscience) comes many more opinions, god and bad. The (online) artist is suddenly a screen away from millions. It’s a scary thing, with many limits, but a lot of potential.The difference between me taking all the work I’ve produced and putting it up on facebook, or deciding to use it as a way to update people about a project, and me instead using facebook to do the following: show in-progress work, put selected work up for a few weeks in purposeful conversation, write a wall post about studio progress, let a critic see one picture, and an artist friends see another, is all the difference in the world. The former continues to see the online world as a realm of static, print-based information. The latter sees it as a continuously evolving (TIME BASED!) organism made of text, video and imagery that is impossible to crystallize.
. . If we’re talking about social media as a new mode of art communication—it exists, so it is—we can’t view it as a faster easier version of the gallery/newspaper/magazine/website, SM is a world unto itself. The story above highlights the dangers of instant feedback, but I quibble with the notion that the viewer failed in their responsibility. I’d argue that the artist failed to address/consider the social platform in their work, and ran into a setback because of that lapse. The jump from “posting drawings of the word nigger on facebook” to “someone sends an angry email and stirs things up” is not a hard one to make, and the reaction speaks little to social media in particular and more to the standard artist vs. viewer backlash thatloaded words/images elicit.Josh, I am so grateful to you for your thoughts on this. Re: the post at hand, I like your ideas about ways arts institutions can reach out: "art institutions reaching across class, is to engage across the board with face to face programming
-in different geo-demographic locations-to hook someone or excite them, and then follow up to find out what platform they utilize—and then know enough about the platform to “friend that friend’s friends” and grow from the node." I’m with you on the rhizomatic connectivity SM allows, it’s very exciting to find like minds etc. as friends of friends of friends. ::::::: ACG & RWP, thanks for bringing up Mack’s 10 foot pole drawings. I am not at all surprised that the dialogue Mack may have wanted to provoke should happen in art circles (i.e. FB comments among Portland artists) alone. Actually, I’m sure dialogue was provoked outside of art circles or he would not have been asked to remove/obscure the drawings. BUT it probably went very differently from what happened on Mack’s FB wall. How would an online forum set up to address thoughts feelings about that word work? How might it reach outside a (primarily white) artist audience. (Could ask same questions about a real world forum.) I guess as much as I am interested in work-in-the-world as well as work in the “white cube” of the gallery space (no pun intended), I think artists hopes that work-in-the-world can engage a wider (read non-art-engaged on regular basis) audience in capital D dialogue are often overblown. ::::::::And Josh, I think we should have a different panel talking about artists and internets. Good thoughts. AND I’m looking forward to hearing more about your arts quarterly idea, esp. using the chosen platform to exploit what it does best. — L