Prelude Blog, Moved!

Hello Everyone!

You can now follow the Prelude Festival blog here. Come on over!

WELCOME TO PRELUDE ’09!

Until Google’s Wave comes out…(see the demo at wave.google.com)…I thought we could do the blog entries as a make shift wave, instead of call and response conversation.  So I just inserted my part of the conversation as a purple layer in Geoffrey’s original text (in black italic)!  – Morgan (patiently waiting for google wave to rock her world.)

While I was attending a conference on innovation in the performing arts, I heard Richard Evans of EmcArts use the phrase “zeitgeist of hybridization” which I thought was apt. All of the tools that exist at the moment will change, all of the gizmos and catch phrases and killer apps will change and grow outmoded and be replaced. What won’t change is the certainty of ongoing change in our relationships to time, space and experience. We are experience a renegotiation of the experience of velocity and, quite possibly, a profound shift in our fundamental modes of cognition. As we look at the work of the artists that surround us, the question I come back to is, “how do they reflect or predict the new world into which we are hurtling at breakneck speed?” Insofar as we offer a wide swath of experiences and chances to interact, I hope you will look with one eye towards the imagined future and one on the rapidly receding past. And more importantly – how do YOU anticipate participating in this festival? We are attempting to make it more porous and participatory, more transparent and more engaging – we will continue to both see and interact with the artists at work – but we want to go further. So please track us down and tell us what you think and what we can do. How can we work together to not just discuss and display these ideas but develop a plan of action, how can we leave PRELUDE .09 with the means and vision for transforming the live art landscape? How can we use this festival to embrace change and sow the seeds of transformation both practically and ideologically? Welcome and thank you! -Andy

 

Hey All-

 

I’m back from a much needed vay-k and thinking much about our last dance with the Prelude Festival.   We’ve covered tons of ground over the last several months and are moving quickly toward our big push for September.

Thinking of Prelude .09, the convos we’ve been having, books and articles we have been sharing, as well as the convos we’ve had with artists and others,  it feels like the we’re headed for a “2.0 focus”.  Bear with me over the next lines as I flesh out/ work to synthesize some of the thoughts that have come up for me over these last few months and that emerged again over margaritas on the beach in South Carolina.

If we are interested in moving in a 2.0 direction – and what i mean by that is the interest we each have expressed, although at times in different ways, of a festival which incorporates ideas of transparency and engagement between artists and artists and artists and audience – then it seems we should be looking to program work that can fall into this space as well as use website, blog, fbook and twitter to let folks in on the process, complement the programming,  and ultimately to extend the conversation.

As suggested by some of our Advisors, I’d add streaming the symposia & artist conversations, producing archival pod-casts both in their entirety and  one or two edited high-lights versions, and putting together a journal article co-written by a handful of attendees.  We could use the media to expand the space/time of the 4 day festival.  There as something about everyone arriving at the festival already discussing, already deep in debate, already prepared to dive in to the particular conversations either about aesthetic or practical issues that we want to have happen there.   And then continuing those conversations after the live event.

A quick glance through the list of artist we are considering gives me comfort that this year Prelude .09 is full of possibilities

• Perhaps somewhere a conversation about translation/adaptation/ copyright/appropriation could surface. 
•  A link to storytelling traditions of more low tech but no less participatory/audience engaging varieties.
• The micro-financing stuff

I have been having some conversations about the new L3C and how it might play into a larger overhaul of the entire arts systems across the board from grant-makers, to parental investors and individual donors, to presenters/commissioners, to the artists, which might also be interesting to add into this mix.

• the curatorial models and the green initiatives

(and this too!  RECYCLING, RE-USING: An economy of dumpster divers?  How are artists harvesting “pre-owned” materials to create their work?)

• that we’ve talked much about all seem to fit nicely into this exploration of the current moment as well. 

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  • I’d add this to the list – as something that came up in our advisory breakfast, but also keeps coming up again and again in the field – Are other cultural stakeholders adapting to the fact that many venues and artists no longer recognize the ridiculous strange line between theater & performance & dance… its a false line.  These lines still exist for press & funders, but not for many of the artists & presenters of contemporary performance.  The aesthetic hybridity seems to be in some ways a response to the ecology, to contemporary life in NY, to culture, to our day-to-day realities.  But the adherence to old discipline lines keeps artists from being able to access funding and audiences who might actually be interested in the hybrid work.

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  • And how are artists disseminating their work? Is the current easy access to media through things like Quicktime, Youtube, but also Videoboo or Audioboo (new players on the scene), affecting how live artists are disseminating and documenting their work?  Are they becoming media/live artists?  Or are they just making commercials for their live-art?

As we move forward, might it make sense to take a more focused look at the artist list with music, theatre, dance, etc in mind? 

And performance art – I went to the MOMA performance workshop the other night and just kept thinking to myself – I don’t understand why the artists we curate in contemporary performance venues and site specific locations are not in this conversation as well – the work is so similar.  Its important as we tried to discuss in PRELDUE 08 to get into conversation with the Performance Art universe as well, not as their “poor sister”, but because the aesthetic overlaps and debates are in so many ways the SAME.  And the technocrats – too!  I keep going to things like Dorkbot or Lemur or Eyebeam events and wondering to myself what if “theater” people collaborated more with these artists, what would the shows look like? 

 

with 2.0 notions of transparency, participation, and customization in mind?  with an eye toward what conversations – both symposia and artist dialogues might be emerge?

Also, how might we use twitter and fbook to extend these ideas to the shape of Prelude as an event?

Blah blah blah blah blah…

geoffrey

Stay tuned for more information!