Blog – Page 94 – Bourgeon

Creating ‘The Mountain’ by Jason Garcia Ignacio

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February 2, 2010

Creating ‘The Mountain’ by Jason Garcia Ignacio

Doors have been opening for me since I won The Kennedy Center’s 2009 Local Dance Commissioning Project. With that commission, I created a twenty-five minute dance entitled “The Mountain.” When I applied for the Commission it was just supposed to be a story about a volcano eruption that caused a cataclysm, but I wanted something that would make a difference, so I asked myself, “How can I make this ballet even more compelling? More connected?” As I started preparing I would write down every concept or idea I thought might work, and the idea came to connect the volcanic eruption to the burning mountain of trash that I had also experienced as a child.

Most of the ideas and metaphors for the piece came from growing up in the Philippines. I accessed folklore, folk dances, my experience with the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991, as well as the image of the late Smokey Mountain (a mountain of trash that served as Manila’s waste disposal for decades.)

Experimentation was the common thread throughout the construction of this piece – in concepts, in the studio, and in performance. It can be very difficult to just let things happen by accident, but I have come to believe that those unplanned moments are the key to innovation. I had decided that we would have a set – not just a blank stage – and as we progressed in the studio, we experimented with creating different types of physical environments. This involved trying out different groups of materials to create the look and feel of a landfill. In the end, we found that covering the space with newspapers gave the desired effect. Though the cataclysmic volcanic eruption and the landfill in Manila were the starting points for the project, the process of experimentation helped me reveal how these two mountain events are related.

For the music, I collaborated with Domenico Vicinanza, a scientists and composer, who works for Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe (DANTE). At DANTE, they developed a computer program that turns seismic vibrations from volcanoes into a piano score. This seemed like a good thematic match for my piece, because I felt that nature itself composed the music for my dance. Because of the limited funding, the costume design and costume construction also fell to me. I had to design and sew all the costumes on my own, which included the back and forth to the fabric stores. It was tough.

After the premiere last summer, Dance Place expressed interest in presenting “The Mountain”. This became an opportunity for me to produce an entire evening of my choreography – “The Mountain” together with all of the other choreography I’ve created to this point. This show will happen February 20-21 at Dance Place: my first evening completely dedicated to my choreography. I titled it “Jason and Friends” mainly because all of the dedicated dancers are my friends from CityDance. In addition to the Dance Place show, I will also be performing at the National Theater in their Gallery, in the Dance Bethesda Dance Concert, and at the new Intersections Festival at the ATLAS Performing Arts Center. Intensely, all of these performances will happen in February of 2010!

As all of these amazing performance opportunities came my way, I realized that choreography is only one part of the puzzle. The production side of dance has its own challenge. I have a newfound appreciation for Paul Gordon Emerson, my director in CityDance Ensemble. Now I know what he gets to deal with everyday. On top of performing with CityDance Ensemble, I have to juggle meetings, collaboration, marketing, budgeting, creation and rehearsal.

While preparing for a very busy February, I am excited that the processes of choreography and production continue to shape me. Every time I create, I learn things about myself. Choreographing dances gives me a deeper understanding of who I am as an artist, as well as a person. My perspective as a choreographer is very different from my point of view as a dancer.

It’s very hard to judge a dance when you’re in it – like with “The Mountain.” After a year of incubation, I feel like my patience has paid off, and I’ve managed to understand the relationship of the two different mountains. It became apparent to me that somehow these two mountains are the embodiment of what has been happening in our world. Global warming is like a volcano slowly erupting, our negligence to the environment is the heat source that is pushing the magma out that is causing this nation to reshape. I hope that our performances offer some insight, and that you will come see “The Mountain”, and my other work, at Dance Place on February 21st and 22nd.

Jason Garcia Ignacio was born and raised in Manila, Philippines. At age 12 he began training with the Gigi Felix Velarde Ballet Dance Workshop and continued dance with Ballet Philippines, Philippine Ballet Theater, and Steps Dance Studio. In 1997 he was sent by the International Theater Institute of the Philippines to study traditional Korean ritual dance at the University of the Theatre of Nations in Seoul, Korea. As a member of the Earth Savers Dreams Ensemble, Jason traveled across Asia, the United Arab Emirates, Europe, and the United States. In 2001 he moved to New York City to further his studies and expand his experience. He received a scholarship from Ballet Hispanico of NY, a fellowship from the Ailey School, and apprenticed for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. In 2004 he toured nationally with the Martha Graham Ensemble and performed principal roles, including the Penitent in El Penitente and the yellow couple in Diversion of Angels. In 2008 Washingtonian magazine named Jason Garcia Ignacio one of Washington, D.C.’s Top 20 Showstoppers and in 2009 Jason won the Mayor’s Arts Award for Outstanding Emerging Artist, and the 2009 MetroDC Dance Award for “Outstanding Individual Performance.” Also in 2009, Jason also received the “PEARL Cultural Heritage Award” from the Embassy of the Philippines for his outstanding and meritorious contribution to raising awareness of and deepening appreciation for the Philippines and its rich and diverse culture and heritage through excellence in the field of performing arts. He is a member of the critically-acclaimed CityDance Ensemble, a contemporary dance company based in Washington D.C. (www.jasonignacio.com) and teaches at the CityDance Center at Strathmore.

Images from The Mountain by Paul Gordon Emerson.

Creating The Fugitives for La Rinascita

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January 26, 2010

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I remember the exact moment I first wanted to be an actor, but I can’t recall the day or even nail down a month or season in which I realized that wasn’t enough. My partner David and I formed La Rinascita (ree-NAH-shee-ta) to explore a collaborative model of theatrical development and production. We consider ourselves theatre artists first and our defined roles (director and actor, respectively) second. We craft each piece from top to bottom, not relying on a dictated script. While we know we’re not the first people to work this way, it feels a lot of the time like we are. We make everything up as we go; we are learning our art by doing it. The beauty and the terror of theatre is that you can’t just sit in your basement experimenting, you have to get up and share it with people. Theater isn’t theatre until you have an audience.

The first 5 months of work on our upcoming show, The Fugitives, were spent entirely at the drafting board. A deconstruction of Aeschylus’ Oresteia, our piece follows Orestes and Electra (the siblings who killed mom after she killed dad) 6000 years (give or take a millennium) after the major events of their lives. We planned everything out. It was beautiful. And it got shot to shit as soon as we hit the rehearsal room. Seeing theatre breathe can suddenly make something that was powerful on paper utterly insignificant; a wonderfully conceptualized journey into a dream world involving a glass of milk refused to look anything but silly when people actually did it.

The Québécious artist Robert Lepage, one of our major inspirations, said “Theatre takes shape in flight, when its meaning and direction escape us, when it becomes a rebellious beast that we’re unable to cage.” I engage in theatre because of this, it’s quality of self-generation. Just three days into rehearsal, almost everything about the piece had changed. Something small in rehearsal – the request for a table – lead to imaginative journeys (a running motif of consumption becomes central and the entire structure of the piece happens around eating a banquet).

As often as not, a single image (a girl with ear pressed to a man’s chest, setting a clock to his heartbeat) or sound (the wisp of wings and cries of crows gathering) will inspire an event in the piece. Theatre is about storytelling–and I do believe that is it’s core essence–but it is also about creating visual poetry. This doesn’t imply lyricism, but refers to the poetic notion that is part of the theatrical experience: a group of people pretending together, experiencing a fleeting piece of art which will vanish when complete. I want to create theatre that lives up to that level of poetry. Which means that the language of our work–whether that be literal, spoken language or sound cues or props or gestures–is just as important to the piece as “what it’s about.”

The danger of working this way is finding yourself with a series of fascinating and beautiful moments and a piece that is less than the sum of its parts. We’re looking right now at two issues in rehearsal. We crafted Orestes and Electra fully in our heads – have we given the audience the opportunity to know these people as well as we do? Have we allowed anyone to care about them? Also, is the piece progressing directly to its inevitable conclusion? Since this is a deconstruction of a classical Greek text, we end up cutting some evocative elements we loved (Orestes obsessively writing in white chalk all over the floor of the black box we perform in) because they are no longer serving the piece as a whole. While I find editing myself incredibly challenging (you want me to throw away what????), it rewards in the end. Releasing an idea into the wild forces you to put faith that more will come along, and, happily enough, they usually do.

I’m incredibly excited for the opening run of The Fugitives February 10-13 and 17-20 at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop (547 7th St. SE, Washington, D.C.) Tickets are $10. For more information and reservations email admin@LaRinascitaTheatre.com Hope to see you there!

Anne Veal is a theatre artist currently based in Washington, DC. In addition to building The Fugitives, she is working acting in her second project with Tony-Award-winning Signature Theatre. Previously she has worked with the Actors Theatre of Louisville (33rd Humana Festival of New American Plays), The Kennedy Center, Project 1367, Charter Theatre, Capitol Fringe Festival, among others. This summer she, David and The Fugitives will travel to the Prague Fringe Festival. To learn more about La Rinascita Theater visit: www.LaRinascitaTheatre.com.

Rehearsal photo by Ariana Hodes
Fugitives poster design by Kyle Read

Archiving Dance: The Necessity of Collaboration by Heather Desaulniers

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January 23, 2010

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Archiving Dance: The Necessity of Collaboration by Heather Desaulniers

The re-staging of work establishes a genealogy in dance. Many companies reproduce historical compositions, and as new pieces are created these works enter into the collective ouevre of the field. Technology, notation and personal recollection can all help in re-staging dances, but no one means of archiving can capture the totality of a choreography. Past analysis has tended to evaluate the use of archival methods separately. Only a collaborative archival network combining technology, notation and personal knowledge can ensure the future of repertory.

Technology has provided indispensable archival opportunities in the field of dance. In particular, video has transformed the creative, marketing, and archival process. Live performance is fleeting and impermanent by nature, and the power to film these transient moments creates an un-paralleled resource. With good reason, video is usually the first step in re-creating an earlier work, but it is imperative to acknowledge its limitations. First, traditional video obtains only a two-dimensional image. This provides a good first glimpse of the movement, but not enough detail to re-stage with any precision or rigor. It is impossible to remain true to the nuances and intricacies of complex movement styles – such as the choreography of Twyla Tharp, Bill T. Jones or Trisha Brown – with a two-dimensional view. Second, when looking at video, there is a limited perspective. You are at the mercy of who took the video and who was dancing the work when it was taped. Even professional videographers can miss things, and what if they miss something that is a crucial part of the piece? Dance is changeable. No one piece is ever performed the same way twice. There are always slight, or sometimes not so slight, adjustments for different spaces and different dancers. The expectation is that video captures the most accurate depiction of the work, but this is more a hope than a certainty.

Three dimensional image capture is an exciting technological alternative to conventional video because it can convey a more complete representation of movement. This relatively new technology requires multiple cameras positioned at different angles and heights so as to record a three dimensional figure. The archival applications for this technology are incredibly exciting, but sadly, untapped. This type of filming can be very expensive and thus, not an option for many dance companies. In point of fact, a minority of companies dedicate resources toward preparation of archival material. In addition, 3-D technology has become stalled and somewhat stuck in the performance arena. Choreographers today seem to have an obsession with how ‘mixed media’ and ‘corporeal presence’ (the new go-to buzz phrases in dance) can transform a work within active performance. For all of these reasons, 3-D imagery has not penetrated into the field of archiving.

The most under utilized archival method is dance notation. Labanotation and Benesh Movement Notation are the two primary systems that can provide a written record of choreography. Both employ a specific system of markings that indicate which body part is moving, the impetus for the motion, the direction, speed and duration of the choreography. Both Laban and Benesh are like hieroglyphics: they are an entire language, very detailed, extensive, and providing a directional map to unlock the minutiae of movement. In theory, dance notation is a great idea, but because the number of people fluent in dance notation is small, and the time/expense of notating a dance significant, written notation exists for a fraction of the important ouvre of modern dance work, and is accessible to an even smaller number of practitioners.

The importance of personal coaching and personal experience cannot be overlooked when staging previous works. Having individuals with experience of the staged work (whether the choreographer, one of the original dancers, or a dance historian) present during re-creation significantly informs the reconstruction process. These individuals may not be able to ensure an exact replication of the steps, but many essences and ‘isms’ are beyond the capabilities of technology and notation. Admittedly, as with technology and notation, individual memory/personal coaching does have its limitations. One challenge is that this type of knowledge cannot be institutionalized, and so is uncertain from generation to generation.

Every archival process can make a positive contribution, yet on their own, each system is insufficient. To preserve our important cultural heritage, what is needed is the application of a thoughtful, reliable, and collaborative archival practice integrating technology, notation and personal resources to the fullest extent possible. Dance companies generally lack the funds to utilize all available archival systems when re-staging choreography. And, the limited funds that exist to create or stage work tend not to include the funds necessary for integration of archival concerns (money to access the newest technology, arrange for a notation, etc.) Archival policies for the field need to be developed, both to ensure preservation and performance of important works, and to encourage the funding mechanisms necessary to institutionalize appropriate archival/reconstruction policies.

Heather Desaulniers is a freelance dance writer and critic, based in Washington, D.C. She contributes regularly to criticaldance.com, and is currently pursuing historical research on choreographers Sophie Maslow and Pola Nirenska. She is also an associate editor of Bourgeon.

George Jackson: What is Dance?

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January 14, 2010

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“Mother, please don’t make a scene!” The young dancer’s dominant parent didn’t respond to her offspring’s plea. Throwing a quick glance at the recessive parent who, standing to the side somewhat stiffly, was clearly uncomfortable backstage (he wasn’t always at ease out front, in the theater’s public areas, either), the woman wouldn’t let the ballet school’s director go. “Why didn’t you give my child anything to dance?” she hissed and without waiting for an answer continued her attack. “That character stands, walks and emotes, but we’ve been paying good money (another glance at the recessive parent) for dance classes, dance shoes, costumes, more classes and there was not one dance step in that role!”

Others were beginning to gather backstage and the director decided on a minimal response. “Madame, the part is key to the ballet, why the choreographer made it for his own child! No one but a trained dancer could take those poses, proceed with the requisite bearing, or gesture with the crucial clarity.” The mother hadn’t expected so authoritative an answer delivered in a voice as chill as the London fog, and so she just stood glaring, giving the director the opportunity to walk away. Quickly the young dancer and the recessive parent steered the woman to the exit door.

On the drive home, the woman remained silent, but once there she reiterated her complaint on the telephone to her older offspring who was away at college. “Can you imagine, she wailed “I’m supposed to be satisfied with pumped-up posing and looking commanding as being dance? You’re majoring in arts, please tell me what your experts there at your fancy university say dance is!”. The college student was used to the mother’s rants, but this time her topic was intriguing. What would Plato say, what Aristotle, or Richard McKeon? Beauty and truth, likely, would figure in Plato’s response, beautiful movement that truly showed the nature of the soul. But what is beauty, what is truth in movement, let alone is there a soul? Plato’s way might illuminate an ideal, but getting a practical answer along that path would take forever. Nor would that pupil of Socrates answer the question of what dance is, all dance, just plain dance. He’d be hot about good dance, skilled dance, but not about the sort of dance a child might do if asked to dance.

The college student was aware of the pitfalls of empiricism. It wouldn’t suffice to ask one child to dance, or even several. A statistically significant number of the world’s children would have to be asked to dance infront of trained observers who then would have to determined what all the exertions had in common. Where, oh where, would the funding for this undertaking come from? In the absence of an angel or a grant, the college student decided to improvise and self-observe.

The first attempt was done to music. This dance had rhythm, the body cupping into itself and opening up, taking on line and yielding it again, repeating phrases of movement but building them too, letting them grow and develop. It took effort, though, not to become enslaved to the music and simply mirror its patterns and form. So the college student tried a second dance, one without music. That was difficult, though, for the movements linked themselves to another sound, that of the student’s own breathing. Exhaling and inhaling established a rhythm as dominant as music’s meter and perhaps even more so. With willpower the student was able to proceed against breath, counter to its pattern, but were the resulting movements still dance or just wayward motion? By accident the student stumbled on something other than a beat that could give the exertions a sense of order. Place and volume became the matrices and made motion seem a dance. If the student’s body took on a squatting, pulled-down stance, one that looked voluminous, every time it came close to one of the room’s corners that generated a pattern and transformed motion into dance. Was it possible, though, to dispense with both time (rhythm, beat, pulse) and space (location, position) and still dance? Could there be a fifth and sixth dimension, such as memory and sensuality, that might be used? And why, anyway, does the mind need a set of coordinates to see dancing?

The student decided to give Aristotle’s definition of dance a chance. That tutor to the young Alexander wrote (or, perhaps we have just lecture notes full of mistakes that one of his students jotted down) about the arts as modes of imitation and that bodily “rhythm alone, without harmony, is the means of the dancer’s imitations”. By the rhythms of the dancer’s attitudes, humans (and animals?) are represented and also shown is what they do and suffer. “The objects represented are actions” for both the actor and the dancer, but a difference between dance and drama is the “manner in which” the object is represented. Dance imitates actions by means of movements that give pleasure to the eyes. Ah, once again, the Greek weakness of insisting on good dance! And, apparently, Aristotle never saw a dancer who substituted space, memory or sensuality for rhythm. So the student decided to use Aristotle’s dialectic on a wider range of experience. Had the great analyst sat in more recent theaters, he might have written that dance is bodily movement “done for its own sake” that engenders a recognizable pattern. The pattern can be in any dimension, not just time (rhythm), but it must be recognizable and the movement must be done for movement’s sake, not for producing consumer goods or waging war or giving artificial respiration. Not ruled out is that dance movement can produce pleasure in the dancer and, when it is well done, also in the observer. The latter has a better chance of experiencing pleasure when watching professional dancers whose bodies, molded by training, diverge from the norm and whose patterns, enhanced by technique, are compelling. As an activity done for its own sake, must dance exclude making Plato’s truth and beauty manifest? Or, Vestris’s virtue? Didn’t that French superstar of a few centuries ago say that to be a great dancer one must be a good person because on stage one can not get away with lies? Ah, idealism! Yes, dance may do that too but at minimum the movement, done for movement’s sake, must generate just a pattern, a recognizable pattern!

The college student, although exhausted from dancing and thinking, phoned home. It was late at night now and at the other end of the line the dominant parent, woken from sleep, said hello with a worried tone. “Oh, its you! And you want to know whether your sibling stood like a dancer and walked like a dancer, whether I saw a pattern in all that business! I don’t care, I wanted to see that kid dance like a dancer!” And she slammed the receiver down.

FINIS (or continue ad absurdum)

George Jackson is.

Panel Discussion on Visual Arts Criticism

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January 6, 2010

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Panel Discussion on Visual Arts Criticism

[On Monday, January 4th, 2009 I attended an event, hosted by the Washington Project for the Arts, about arts coverage. The event was stimulated by Jessica Dawson’s recent article in the Washington Post, and pursuant responses, including by me. I brought my computer, and sat in the back of the room recording as much as I could of the conversation. The following is not a real transcription. But with the corrections and additions I received I’m encouraged to see that much of the event is captured in the words below. Any mistakes or mis-attributions are mine. As Kriston Capps wrote in a blog post some time ago: “I should emphasize that unless you see two of these— ” —you’re ultimately reading what I got out of it. So let’s nobody mistake my observations for proof of whatever your beef is.” – R. Bettmann]

Running for cover(age): A panel discussion on arts criticism in the DC area

Moderator: Kriston Capps
Panelists: Jeffry Cudlin, Isabel Manalo, Danielle O’Steen
When: Monday, January 4, 2010 from 6:30-8:00pm
Where: Capitol Skyline Hotel (lounge), 10 I Street SW, Washington, DC, 20024
(Free and open to the public)

Lisa Gold: This event was stimulated by an article in the Washington Post about Mera Rubell’s visit to a group of artist studios. The coverage reported some statements by Mera about the isolation of Washington’s artists. There have been a lot of responses to the piece in various online forums and social media sites, including about arts coverage in general, problems with it, critical discourse, and what we should do about it. We welcome all of you here tonight, and are grateful that so many of you showed up to discuss these issues. Just briefly, I’ll introduce the panelists, and moderator.

The moderator is Kriston Capps, a blogger and journalist who writes about art, music, and politics.

Jeffry Cudlin – artist, curator, critic, writes for citypaper and blogs at hatchets and skewers.

Isabel Manalo – au professor, represented by addison ripley, creator of thestudiovisit; her discussion on facebook (on the studiovisit.com page) really sparked this event

Danielle O’Steen – capitol file, art + auction, wash post express., also student in art history @GW specializing in modern art

K: I’m a little under the weather, which is too bad…. Even before this was announced I got an email from someone telling me that they were glad to hear I was moderating this panel, but that they had attended the same panel five years ago and nothing had changed so they wouldn’t be attending… (laugh) I know this kind of conversation has happened before. Washington has grown since I arrived here in 2002. The Do-It-Yourself art events and small spaces have grown and changed. As an aging critic those things are hard to keep up with… With Mera’s visit it was hard to say which Washington she was trying to keep up with: the Dupont circle and Bethesda galleries, or the broader scene. Which brings us to the question: how does journalism reflect this community today? Does it reflect it? I’ll start by saying that the Washington area sees coverage in the post, the citypaper, dcist, express, allournoise, byt, and many blogs – too numerous to mentions. My question is: where is there a lack? Where are things falling through the cracks?

J: As an occasional writer, artists, and curator: from all those standpoints I have different perspectives, or opinions. I am a jack of all trades… I’m an artist myself, an arts writer, and a curator. Basically I want people to write about art for two reasons: criticality and promotion. To move beyond self-satisfaction and move the discourse forward you need criticism. To get butts through the door you just want the coverage, too. There’s not a lot of real analysis happening right now, and there’s no one I would want to single out to do that. In terms of the actual coverage: I write occasionally for the city paper and I’ve seen the coverage shift to 250 word – or shorter – blurbs.

There’s tons of blogs all getting the same press releases and republishing them, but that isn’t the same as more in depth criticism. Frankly its sort of like: “did the Washington Post reviewer show?” And if they didn’t, then the event didn’t really happen. At the same time, lots of the Post pieces are presenting the public with a jazzy punchline to pull in readership highlighting something pretty simple. It really sort of is like, “Did Michael O’Sullivan or Jessica come in?”

There’s the real question of, can you be a professional critic anymore? Self satisfying and self-sustaining? It’s not like there’s a wall there, but as a journalist it’s hard to get pieces, and hard to get visibility and analysis. Both journalists and artists want the coverage. As a critic and an artist it’s a resume line to be published.

K – for Isabel: Do you think anything is being lost in the coverage?

I: There is a diverse range of what’s being written and how it’s being written about. Can there be something that could be addressed there? I think about the hierarchy that exists within the criticism for this city… I think we need more critical venues – beyond the blogs – to dilute the power the Washington Post has. I have more questions than answers. The reason why I started studiovisit.com was to open the door to consider the process, which can then inform my opinion of the artistic object.

K: For critics we want to go in and see objects but we’re supposed to be hands off of personal coverage…

I: For me perhaps its about connection toward understanding, rather than coverage. I’m not a critic but when I do critique what’s helped me to understand the work is getting to know the process behind the art object towards analysing the content and it’s context. The studio visit is not a critical forum, yet. Perhaps having that kind of connection might/would inform how they review work.

K: Someone might take away the sense from the conversation on your site that artists feel isolated. Do you feel that?

I: There is a huge difference between isolated and isolation. Isolation is a self-imposed being alone. Isolated implies a greater external factor forcing an individual or group outside the mainstream. It’s the feeling of being marginalized. I feel both. Rubell’s insights didn’t surprise me about sensing isolation from District artists. We are living in very different spaces and it’s essential if not inherent to being a good artist that we feel “isolation and loneliness”, as Mera states. However I do NOT feel isolated in my community. I feel the opposite.

K – to Jeffry: Do you feel isolated?

J: As an artist I don’t feel isolated, any more than geographically. It’s hard to find studio space… spaces tend to be pretty tucked away. The work is isolating in the sense that we work in these little places and need time to do that. Depending on what position one occupies we have a different answer… you can say there’s 100 galleries in dc or you can say they’re 12 and we’re both right. Lots of us are very invested. I only write about museums 4 times a year cause I’m also involved in trying to get people into shows. One of the questions I have – regarding the coverage, is about whether or not there a way to develop more rich, meaningful, content. So much of the coverage is amature, or extended event listing.

I: This discussion tonight really began on a social media site. How has social media changed criticism. We live in a culture of the ‘like’ button, but no ‘dislike’ button. On Facebook the space between artist and critic has shrunk. I wonder if there is an obligation to perpetuate the virtual “friending in the physical” which may lead to a lot of false positivity toward each other. How does this affect writing critically?

K: Is there any way to help one another? Is there something to criticism feeding community? As a writer we’re all kind of lonely hunters, finding and pitching, and writing our pieces.

J: We see each other at night at opening after opening. Who is our audience? Are we writing for each other, or for the gallery owner, or for the audience we don’t know? We do feel like we have to be self-sustaining and self-promoting. As a writer you want to interest people and engage not just people who would be reading anyway. You don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.

K: A lot of people write critical/investigative features… which you have to keep at arm’s length.

M: I think it’s ok to get upset, and also to start discussions…

K: Do you think the arm’s length is more of a problem here in dc?

M: No, I just think it’s more apparent.

K: In comparing New York and D.C., Mera gave me a strong sense of a huge bell curve gap between the artists she’s met and the artists at the National Gallery. It’s pretty profound how large that divide is, and how much of a looming presence she saw that to be.

D: I don’t think there is an impenetrable force here. There are so many artists struggling to get through in New York, too.

K: … and we’ve seen shows at Gagosian that are similar to museum.

D: I don’t think DC has to become New York. It’s a different animal. A different machine.

J: The DC Art Scene is like a ladder with all the middle rungs missing. Someone told me that. I think it’s a ladder with two sets of rungs missing. There seems to be no clear path from a to b to c. From getting into a larger institution that supports artists, to finding gallery representation, to “I want to be written about by someone who actually sees.” And Arlington Arts Center is trying to do that. There are a number of local institutions trying to do that.

Galleries and non-profits exist for different reasons. I think about “why does that show exist”. You can do things at non-profits that don’t have to sell. Shows should exist for different reasons. If I want to convince a gallerist to want something, how do I do that if I’m not making traditional object/drawing things?

K: Because of the way our municipal and cultural centers are created there’s an interesting parsing out of Silver Spring/Arlington/Reston/Rockville… of different communities. Do DC’s geography and disparate community organizations affect our overall community?

I: I don’t think New York is any different. There is Chelsea as the center of the art market, but in terms of the local arts community in New York most of it is not in Chelsea. There really are lots of different places. I find it exciting that we have the diversity here and not just giant warehouses all over the place.

K: I think it takes one small pot and puts it into many smaller pools…

J: it makes it a little tricky when you’re coveting people who are doing things somewhere else. I strive to program a particular kind of contemporary art. I think it makes it difficult when you have a lot people who see you a certain way and you may not think of them in that same way. I think there’s a fear of programming an artist at more than one place locally in one year… I think you can get a kind of critical mass… and if there’s different things you’re attempting… if there’s clearly definable reasons some gallerists are able to accept artists being in multiple places at the same time.

K: So you think the area is big enough to support an Arlington arts community, and a Bethesda arts community….

I: I think the federal institutions can play a role galvanizing things together. For instance the Corcoran show a little while ago that featured local contemporary artists. Should the Smithsonian institutions have an obligation to connect to the local community? There’s the artists’ residency at the Hirshorn… is it enough to only have one artist a year?

D: If everything is separated you’re gonna lose something in the mix. I don’t want necessarily a Chelsea, but something that shows DC’s strength. I think certain elements are missing. An auction. An art fair. Not that we need that. I actually missed the DC Art Fair, it happened before I arrived. Not that we need to mimic Miami etc. but you need something to attract collectors. To bring the market for a global/national art scene.

An audience member: There’s a difference between where people make art, but Mera’s reaction was partly to the geographic isolation of the studios which is in fact not uncommon to many communities. In terms of a center of gravity to where studios are located or where galleries are showing…

K: We talked a little about what artists do, and need to do. What about what writers do and need to do? Do New York publications shut the door on non-New York coverage?

D: I have to admit that when I was editing in New York I didn’t want to cover dc… I think it’s a matter of pushing as a freelance writer. You’re also following/fighting with your colleagues for a story. I think for New York magazines a lot of them are really suffering. And there are alternatives for coverage, but I’m personally very attached to magazines and hand-able publications, and I think I’m not alone.

K: At the guardian there was an absolute blood-letting at the end of this past year. I still have connection there, but it’s not what it was. They’re simply not listening as closely to what’s happening over here. Is it important to have coverage in the big glossies?

D: As a writer, I was always nervous about writing or introducing a new artist to the public…. You want to write something meaningful….

K: Does it mean the same if something is reviewed in the Post or on the web?

I: There’s a history with the printed paper… you can talk about the Post and everything else. When I was preparing for a class I went and looked back through old papers. There is something about local magazines — Chicago has a great local culture, and magazines which feed into the national scene. There’s a bit of a micro economy with that.

J: There’s something about print that you can hold onto. To be published like that… it makes artists feel better about the themselves. Similar to us creating our little objects and hoping someone will buy them… Is it meaningful outside of gallery culture?

K: Our editors are trying to push to the web to capture new audience.

D: Magazines and online versions are not the same. Not the same attention to detail or value to each word. Most of times when I write something for online publication it’s not touched. Being edited is encouraging. When you’re not touched, especially for online publications, there’s a sense that maybe even the editor isn’t reading it.

V: I’m a little frustrated I feel like we’re dancing around an issue. Was this inappropriate coverage? Should studio visits for an auction be covered? It was great publicity move by WPA but the writing was mean-spirited and sycophantic. We’re kind of dancing around: was this even news?

K: I felt this was news-worthy. I found out about it, pitched it to my editor. I needed an angle. I got one, they took the piece, and that was that. With any story there can always be questions about editorializing… People may ask about whether the coverage, or the opinion, is warranted or not.

M: The Rubell’s really do have this power when they walk through a space, in Miami, New York, or DC. The phenomena of her coming is just a huge deal. It is news-worthy. The question is in how the story was framed.

I: There’s a larger thing about the dialogue we want to be involved in – in terms of arts dialogue. It’s not that way with the Times in New York. We worry locally because we want people to have read about the show. But in terms of what happens in Art Forum… what we want is to get more involved in these broader conversations.

D: I write for the metro express. There’s a hope of getting out to the larger world, not just the art world.

K: How do you access the art community? I read what I read. And I read Art magazines cover to cover when they arrive and I care about what I read deeply. But I’ve never met another subscriber to Art Papers (big laugh). But in this room there are lots of Post subscribers, or at least readers.

Jayme Mclellan: I think we are moving away from a place where the Post is the only venue. But right now they do have a huge amount of power and influence. It’s dumb-founding. The problem I keep having… A friend of mine said that the Post in the arts section keeps telling you how the game of baseball is played, over and over. We want people to understand, but they dumb it down more and more. There’s not any meat. And that’s what the dc arts community is getting served by. I hope for reviews, and I want that critical dialogue in the paper. But there’s no way to control it.

J: I think the Washington Post is written for readers at a 6th grade level… The City Paper is more for someone who’s had a year of college and is now drunk somewhere… more elevated dialogue and a few jokes thrown in. But even if something is killed in the Post it’s noteworthy.. it helps get people in the door.

Another audience member : With the decline of coverage in the country it’s encouraging to have any coverage. There are dumb and great pieces. And it’s great to have this community brought together in that way.

K: Journalism lost 45k jobs last year. That’s some steel mill kind of stuff right there.

I: Media has to exist but the question is how can the artist benefit from that kind of writing? I sympathize with the Post in that they have to ultimately sell the paper, but there must be a way to write their reviews that connect to the artist community in a constructive way.

D: It’s general interest… What is our reason for writing, and what is your reason for making things? Are stories always covering the negative aspect of things? Why do we write? Why do we create? Do they need to be together? Is the purpose to uplift? To bring down? To sell stories? To sell art?

K: As journalist its not my job to create community. I have to sell papers…. Part of what made the story is that Mera is a great white shark.

I: We had a real opportunity to hear a collector’s voice and we may not like what we heard, but we did hear something.

D: Is the article interpretation? Or was it the story? But was it accurate? Was it her opinion? Every paper wants an angle. Something edgier, tougher to read, cause that’s what people want to read. I try not to get too invested in what I write because every editor has a completely different style. I have to internalize what that is and send my work to the one editor that it’s right for.

J: Editor’s can help you shape that.

K: You need to be your own editor because once you send it out you can’t control what happens to it.

Holly Bass: Editors tend to slant toward the snarky and the negative. It’s hard not to toe that line. I’m aware of that bias and it helps me nagivate a little better. Mera was only supposed to pick twelve artists, and she picked sixteen. Which is great. And that wasn’t talked about a lot. I’d compare DC to Brooklyn over Chelsea. For my friends in Brooklyn it sucks and is incredibly difficult — rent is high, there arent’ many show opportunities…

K: Which brings up the question – we do we think we should we appear at the National Gallery, or the Philips collection?

Ryan Hill: We need to create a mythology around where we live. There are grad students here and, after school, they leave. They go to New York because they think it’s better. But it’s not.

Audience Member: I am on the board of an arts center in Rockville: Metropolitan Center for Visual Arts. We can’t get anyone there to review our shows, and we can’t get anyone there to see the shows. The bottom line is, if we don’t get people out there, we don’t get artists noticed…

K: There are some tips to getting coverage… As journalists we do pay attention to each other. We’re each other’s audience (as far as we know.) For organizers it can be a frustration but the question is who should I get attention from and start there.

Audience member: It would be nice to go a little deeper, not just try for superficial coverage though… The analogy of the ladder.

— At this point I stopped taking notes —