I can think of two cases where there are competing models of top down vs. participatory, for the relationship between the artist and the public. The two settings come to mind: performance art and anthologies. Going to thrash around in the notion of assumptions of power dynamics and latitudes of freedoms assumed in each case.
An Xiao pointed to Marc Horowitz who as performance art is crowdsourcing his life in November to The Advice of Strangers thru polls. What shirt should he wear? Which activity should he do that morning? What should the sound track be? Anywhere from a few dozen to a thousand add their opinion.
An asks if this sort of thing could mark a pivot. After an emphasis on art as proprietary-protected, ground-breaking, creative individual product, “could it be that the next step in art is to be open to influence? To shape the work at its outset but allow not just artists but anyone watching to influence its ultimate outcome?”
If the public shapes the work as if blowing watercolor paint with straws, what role is then left for the artist to claim as still the artist’s? A puppet with muscles to sometimes tug back? Or an ideas person and detail person with the middle part of direction left to volunteers who are interested? It’s a cooperative model. Buskers who freeze unless you throw money in the hat to buy their animation are playing the same game.
What about this project is distinct? The platform of equal handedness thru internet strangers is different. Is the new part the label or the publicness of being told what to do? Unlike Improv Anywhere where strangers convene to obey same gag, strangers make up the game. Or do they? There are set confines. Set options.
Is it a more engaged version of a make-your-own mystery novel? Is it really participation or just interaction so people have invested a personal stake of making a decision in the outcomes like adopting a whale?
People are participating and it isn’t a case of an artist presenting a polished finished to consume but invite people to play in the creation. This is a flatter model. Is it collaboration? Without participants there is no project. If you lay a hierarchical grid over that, is the artist controlling the range of options, or the indulgence of interest of the public the deal-breaker? In performance art, the art is the doing rather than the having a final thing. You get a transitory experience.
Is this significantly different than a printed text where the take-away of what it means relies on the interest of the reader? Once the text disappears there is only the transitory experience of how it made you feel, what ideas it pushed forward in you. Does this make a canon of texts a collaborative thing if we opt into it as we by agreeing or refusing play a role in the creation of its social weight.
The model of top-down rule is something of a temporary holding pattern. There’s a social contract that says so long as the ones who are figureheads don’t mess up they can stay in their roles facilitating the big picture so we can get on with our small pictures uninterrupted. Individually we can’t micromanage everything so leave some things to be done for us. Decorative arts, furniture design, food growing, storytelling, observing and thinking for us about global things or local things, our tool-building. So long as we trust our sources that we outsourced to, it all runs ticketty-boo.
We can’t afford to use the participatory model for everything or there is no time left. It is efficient to have people specialize. We get an appreciation for the skill of specialists by dabbling and investing some attention. How large can the gap between generalist and specialist be?
We get the advantage of a competitive marketplace and oversupply of immaterial ideas-goods and physical goods. We can then become armchair specialists except we don’t necessarily appreciate what quality is, not understanding as an expert what is difficult. We may be swayed by simple or doodads or some one aspect that is not key. Are we informed consumers of ideas and things? If from the group of less-informed, one becomes the gatekeeper, and we lose some wheat with the chaff, do we know any better? If the gatekeeper is excellent, do we know how lucky we are? Unless you are consuming many collections, you don’t know how one collection compares to another.
The process of voting for best use of a performance artist day or open poll voting for a poem, is different in that anyone untrained in the concepts of art can be involved. Does this make the people who click in the role of a studio of assistants?
The press has been that art, performance art or writing descend from the individual (an essentialism descending from the notion of there being a true monolithic one constant self to be found like a sculpture waiting inside a stone).
The story went that in the tight box of self, invention and innovation assigned a higher prestige than imitation. But is that expanding out to include a new era?
Our culture has been moving for decades from the sense of monoculture, dominant culture to fracture from sub-cultures and multicultural to something that is more than a stew or melting pot but some new hybrid of blends of diversity. Nationally we are somewhat contained but with the lingua franca of text we can smooth out the differences between Indian English and British English and the English of outports and metropolises. With a population with a certain percentage being on the move internationally and another portion interacting internationally, the old purist model of one common point of reference is under a lot of strain. We have no one authority. We have to work out among outselves local pecking orders which encourages use of the more kludgy and time-consuming participatory model of people who care getting a say in what gets spread.
We are in transition. We’ve always been in transition but for years there’s been talk of the shift from a consumption culture to a re-mix culture to a culture of ideas, mashups and cooperation. Mirko Zardini, Director of the CCA spoke of his view — how critical discourse is entering the age when it is conversation among peers not a hierarchical authority disseminating information. We are post-futurists.
How does this flattening of access and speed of broad access, if its happening impact the idea of a canon as authority? What does it do to the sense of role of artist who organize clusters of art, curating art shows, reporting on theatre, making collections and selections to teach to others? Each act of reading or passing over on reading something is something of a personal curating.
When we think of an anthology, there’s a debate of whether the curator should be included among the curated. There’s the quality of the pieces but there’s also the underlying assumptions of what the act of gathering things together is.
What is appropriate depends on the unspoken assumed model of people’s relationships to each other. Are we each artists vying to be top dog, unique and branded for individual unit sales, or are we each co-explorers?
If we are to be hierarchical powers where one artist by whatever means self-elects to lead because of qualifications, or is nominated to lead, there are two classes of people in a project. If we assume a hierarchical model, the person who curates is criticized if they include their own work with that which is curated because the leader should be a higher vantage point and not be down with equals.
If we are a community with a project of shared interest, the importance of who leads doesn’t matter. Everyone does something and who does what is not loaded the same. It is understood that we all collaborate, crowdsource in a sense, to push forward some aesthetic.
If we assume a participatory model where there is a gathering of like-minded equals to explore together, why wouldn’t a person who also curates cooperate, rather than stand back. If the curator started the idea of project or was brought in by someone else, they are a part of the process not a person apart from the process. If one is keen enough to take on a project, one would think one would want to be part of the conversation itself, beyond selecting.