There’s a fascinating article in today’s NY Times about an artists’ class action lawsuit filed against Sotheby’s, Christie’s and E-Bay in order to get compensation for the resale of their work.

Laura Miller, courtesy of the artist and Pace Wildenstein

In a way it ties into our discussion of the Beyonce/de Keersmaeker controversy–when an artist makes work, who owns it? How long do they own it? How much control do they have over its use and/or appropriation, when should they be compensated and how much?

Obviously the visual art system, in which an object is created and offered for sale, increasing or decreasing in value over time, is different than the ephemeral field of live art. But it does raise similar issues. If an artist makes a painting that first sells for $900 and later sells for $85,000 (as happened to Rauschenberg in 1973), does the artist deserve a cut? Or do they relinquish any control over the future use or ownership of the object? Should they receive a fee by a museum that shows their work?

It seems like a Catch-22. If the artist wants to raise the value of their work, they really need to be presented not only by a prestigious gallery but by a museum–after all, that value is predicated on the approbation by elite tastemakers. So they will gladly show their work for free at a museum. Early career artists will gladly sell their pieces to collectors for nominal sums because (a) they need to eat and (b) sales could lead to more sales, could build their reputation or build buzz. So an artist spend their own resources to make a work which they willingly sell at a “reasonable” cost on the off chance it will lead to a museum or high end gallery show, which will raise the value of the work they’ve already sold and don’t make any more money off of! Yes, maybe their future work will sell for more money–but a gallery will take a piece of that, etc. etc. etc. It seems like a raw deal to me.

Here’s a quote from the article:

For many visual artists, the issue is clear. “We need legislation to enact the right to royalties,” said Frank Stella, the president of the International Council of Creators of Graphic, Plastic and Photographic Arts, “and we need to align it with what goes on in Britain and the E.U.” Literature, music, film, computer programming and patents all have better intellectual-property protection than American visual art, Mr. Stella added. The Visual Artists and Galleries Association, a nonprofit group that seeks to protect the intellectual-property rights of artists, also supports a national law.

So let’s see–literature, music, film, computer programming, and patents are all protected, but visual art is barely considered worth it and performance/live art not at all. I guess that means that anything you make onstage that can’t be written as a script and sold as a “play” isn’t a real idea or isn’t actually creative or original and doesn’t merit the protection of copyright or as intellectual property. Nice.

There’s way too much to go into here, so read the article at the Times and comment in the comments!

Popularity: 2% [?]

Thus far Culturebot has mostly avoided writing about OWS. Not for lack of interest, but because there didn’t seem to be much to add to the dialogue. However, since we pass OWS on our way to work every day, we’ve been thinking a lot about the economy, funding and the arts. We are currently working on a few articles that will illuminate the interconnectedness of artists, funders and Wall Street. In the meantime – and as a way to start things off – we thought we’d bring attention to this very interesting post from the Tides Foundation blog in which they explain, “Why We Support Occupy Wall Street“.

This is interesting for many reasons, not least of which is that Tides facilitates effective grantmaking programs for individual donors and institutions, having granted more than one billion dollars to nonprofits working for positive social change across the globe. And they support the 99%.

Popularity: 11% [?]

This story has yet to gain much traction in the English language press, aside from a write up in the Guardian (see here for an English language report from French national radio), but right now Paris is playing host to ongoing tête-à-tête between far-right religious fundamentalists and legendary Italian theater director Romeo Castellucci. Since October 20, Paris’s Théâtre de la Ville has presented Castellucci’s latest work, Sul concetto di volto nel figlio di Dio (On the Concept of the Face of God). The show has been touring for a while now, and has already played both Avignon and the Barbican in London this year. The work focuses on a man caring for his dying father, and most commentators have obsessed on the father’s incontinence, which permeates the work (quite literally, the show smells like shit), leaving the son to clean up a shit-smeared floor in front of a projection of a painting of Christ with a inscrutable look on his face.

This use of Christian imagery has enraged far-right religious groups, including members of L’Action Francaise and French Renewal, who, having failed to halt the production via legal injunction on anti-religious discrimination grounds on October 18, proceeded to disrupt the opening night performance. As le Monde‘s theater blog noted in a post from October 21 (translation mine with some help from Google):

A group of young Christian fundamentalists hostile to the show launched stink bombs [in the lobby] and tried to block the entrance to the theater with shouting and smoke. The police were at the entrance, filtering each person who entered the theater, and the curtain was delayed by 45 minutes.

At 9:15, the strangely moving scene between father and son finally began, and the smell of excrement came to cover the stink bombs. But after fifteen minutes, a half-dozen young activists broke off the stands, rushing on stage to interrupt the show. “Enough Christianophobia!” proclaimed their banner.

But what began as a protest has since turned into a full on struggle for artistic expression, as the groups have sought, night after night, to prevent audiences entering the theater and to disrupt the performances. The beleaguered theater is planning legal action against the groups to seek damages, and, in classic French fashion, has published an open letter defending freedom of expression signed by numerous intellectuals (see below for the English version, here for the French and list of signatories), which states, in part:

That these violent individuals and organized groups claim themselves from the Christian faith is their business, that they obey to religious and political movements requires investigation. For us, in any case, these behaviours are clear manifestations of fanaticism, that enemy of enlightenment and freedom against which, in glorious times, France has so successfully fought. Theatre has also very often had a decisive part in these struggles.

But the last performances (the run ends on October 30) promise to be similarly acrimonious. Castellucci himself, in an ironic twist, has issued a statement that, referencing Christ’s own words, reads in part: “I forgive them for they know not what they do … I forgive them because they are ignorant and their ignorance is much more arrogant and damaging because it involves faith.” (see here for the French; translation via the Guardian.)

Members of the same or associated groups gained some notoriety earlier this year when they assailed for the upteenth million time Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ, a copy of which was destroyed by four men following mass protests initiated by Civitas, a conservative Catholic organization, and supported by members of the main French neo-fascist party the National Front.

The irony in both cases is that the art under assault, while not traditionally religious by any means, is not expressly anti-religious, and in fact has spiritual and religious dimensions. As Lane Czaplinski, the artistic director of Seattle’s On the Boards, who has previously presented Castellucci’s work, noted via email: “Not that the protesters in France have any real clue–they’re clearly morons–but Romeo is one of the few artists I know of whose work could be seen to have implications on the divine. Whereas many live performances have seemingly little to do with life as we know it, Romeo’s spectacles cut to the bone and address subjects and states of being with a profundity that could be compared to how religion deals with a similar scope. In a way, the protests only attest to his rare ability.”

Update: According to an article on the website of RFI, French national radio, 20 of the protesters were arrested at the theater last night.

Update 2: Le Monde, the French equivalent of the Times or the Guardian, has an article on the group behind the attacks, “Renouveau français” (RF), or “French Renewal,” roughly, in English. The group behind the assault on Serrano’s work in April, the RF also has a history of anti-gay activism, with actions “against homosexual manifestations, ‘kiss-in’ (kissing in public) and Gay Pride, which they call an ‘anthropological aberration.’ Some of its activists have also been implicated in a racist attack in the 2nd Arrondissement of Paris, in early 2011.” The RF has received vocal support from the likes of Bruno Gollnisch, a National Front politician and convicted Holocaust denier.

Likewise, the group has been supported by and associated with a schismatic ultra-conservative priest, Xavier Beauvais, of Paris’s Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet. “Father Beauvais is not a moderate,” according to le Monde. “It was reported that in May 2009, during a memorial service in his church of St. Nicolas du Chardonnet, that he appealed to the figure of the leader of the Belgian far-right, Leon Degrelle, who sided with the Nazis during World War II. In this sermon, addressed to an audience of right-wing radical militants, against the backdrop of stylized Celtic cross above the altar, Father Beauvais did not hesitate to call [Degrelle] a ‘martyr.’”

Further:

Xavier Beauvais is a figure of the Civitas Institute, which brings together Catholic traditionalists and fundamentalists close to the extreme right, and who presents itself as “a movement whose goal is the restoration of the social kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The RF willingly plays the role of “shock group” for the Civitas Institute, which it joined in the demonstrations, taking on the most extreme actions and not disdaining violence. The Civitas Institute has called for a national demonstration in Paris, Saturday, Oct. 29, against the “Christianophobia”.

This event should bring the whole Nationalist Catholic family. RF of course will be present, along with the rest of the French anti-Semitic and Pétainist groups. After the play of Romeo Castellucci, the movement has another show in in its sights in Paris: Golgota Picnic by Rodrigo Garcia, on view from December 8 at the Theatre du Rond-Point.

Update 3 (Sat., Oct. 29): The protests against Castellucci’s play have reached an apex (hopefully) today. Following a rally of approximately 2,000 far-right activists in Paris today, some 300 people march on the Théâtre de la Ville, among them the schismatic priest Xavier Beauvais of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, a church that has literally been occupied illegally by ultra-conservatives for three decades, and Alexandre Gabriac, a former organizer for the neo-fascist National Front (FN) party who was booted after photos of him emerged making Nazi salutes. Representatives of a conservative Islamist group, Forsane Alizza, who lent there support. (Via le Monde)
Open letter from the Théâtre de la Ville:

Since 20 October, date of the Paris opening of “On the concept of the face of the son of God”, by Romeo Castellucci, the performances have been critically affected.

An organized group of individuals characterized as Christian fundamentalists, partly claiming to be members of Action Française, have attempted to prevent access to Théâtre de la Ville by blocking the doors, assaulting and threatening the audience, by pouring motor oil, using tear gas and stink balls, while their accomplices having bought tickets, interrupted the performance by occupying the stage and by deploying a streamer bearing the words: “No more Christianophobia”.

They had previously sought by way of justice the banning of the show, a request which was denied on October 18, 2011.

The police must therefore intervene each day at the entrance of the theatre, and we have been compelled on two occasions to summon them indoors to clear those who occupied the stage, the whole thing being handled smoothly, our main concern being to avoid clashes between the invaders and the audience outraged by such actions.

The theatre staff has been deeply committed and effective in these difficult circumstances, and despite the many incidents and interruptions resulting in delays, the performances, so far, have occurred.

That these violent individuals and organized groups claim themselves from the Christian faith is their business, that they obey to religious and political movements requires investigation. For us, in any case, these behaviours are clear manifestations of fanaticism, that enemy of enlightenment and freedom against which, in glorious times, France has so successfully fought. Theatre has also very often had a decisive part in these struggles.

Things cannot remain as they are. Such acts are very serious, and are taking a new, clearly fascistic turn. These groups of individuals also rush to automatically call blasphemous, works which are not directed against believers, or against Christianity. Romeo Castellucci’s intentions as an artist are clearly stated in the house program handed out to the audience.

We do not therefore intend to give in to these heinous threats, and this show will be performed until the end of its season on October 30. We invite the audience to attend, hopefully unhindered.

It is interesting to remark that the work has been presented without any problem in Germany, in Belgium, in Norway, the Netherlands, in Greece, in Switzerland, in Poland and in Italy, and that it is in France that manifestations of intolerance take place.

We are therefore creating a Support Committee open to all people of good will – and this expression is here welcome – to defend – even beyond the work of Romeo Castellucci in Théâtre de la Ville – freedom of expression, freedom of the artists and freedom of thought, against this revival of fanaticism….

Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota and Théâtre de la Ville
October 24, 2011

Popularity: 35% [?]

Last week, I wrote a sort of “review of the reviews” about Mike Daisey’s The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs at the Public Theater, and offered some thoughts of my own about Daisey’s work. However, I hadn’t actually seen the show, and in the interests of fairness, I went this Sunday to catch the matinee performance. Here are some further thoughts.

First, I have to make clear: most of the reviews tended to split the difference between Daisey’s performance (which they found amazing) and the content of the piece (which they found problematic). I seconded that based on my prior experience of his work, but honestly, I didn’t go far enough. Daisey is a remarkably charismatic performer. Whatever else, there are worse ways to spend two hours and $85 a ticket than in his company. He’s energetic, perceptive, and carefully wanders through multiple layers of performance, deftly handling subtle shifts between narrating in a sort of heightened, literary voicing, to impersonations and imitations, to his no-nonsense, telling-it-like-it-is persona. Funny, compassionate, heartfelt, and moving, there’s a reason he’s won so many plaudits.

Second, there’s an interesting problem any critic faces with Daisey: his monologues are based not on a set text but rather notes and a general outline, with him sort of improvising what’s actually said show to show. Which makes reviewing him a matter of shooting at a moving target, because he can, night to night, internalize and respond to his critiques. In Seattle, a critic accused him of grossly exaggerating the lack of media coverage of worker abuses in Shenzhen, China; at the Public, he acknowledges prior coverage but offers a more detailed critique of the news cycle and the Chinese government’s ability to turn off the tap of information, affecting the entire global system of dissemination. Critics who’ve suggested that his show minimizes what audiences could actually know about such abuses going in have prompted him (I suppose; this is the first time I’ve seen it) to attempt to deal with this fact. He says towards the end, of the worker abuses that produce our gadgets, that “We all know this already,” and talking about our general ability to nevertheless ignore it.

Mind you, I hardly think this ever-evolving approach to his show is a weakness or a dodge. Rather, it’s a strength: here’s an artist who can change and evolve and respond to the larger discourse about his work and furthermore, the things he’s talking about in the work. That’s a great thing for an artist to be able to do, because the work itself becomes a part of–rather than the subject of–a larger conversation.

Still, I left the theater largely feeling my initial point was right. To recap the show, within the performance, Daisey counterpoints two narratives: one is the story of Steve Jobs and Apple, which should be familiar to most people in the wake of his recent death and numerous obituaries. The other is the story of Daisey’s own love of and engagement with Apple’s products, his infatuation and ultimate disappointment in Steve Jobs, and Daisey’s own semi-journalistic inquiries into the manufacture of Apple products, which–along with most (just over 50 percent) other American consumer electronics–are produced in large factories in Shenzhen, China with a long history of severe worker abuses, which he went to investigate first-hand.

The story is much more tech geek than most theater critics seem to have noted. The main transformation Daisey tracks over Jobs’s career is from the initial open-source hacker ethos (he and Steve Wozniak began in 70s by building boxes to hack the long distance phone system) to the “closed” environment of contemporary Apple products. As such, he situates the narrative within the larger intellectual debate about technology, over open platforms and closed ones, and views Jobs’s reversal over the course of his career as a capitulation of his values, which dovetails with his willingness to exploit workers in abusive conditions.

I could point out that there’s a very tenuous relationship between these sorts of values, though. At no point does Daisey actually suggest that young Steve Jobs cared about workers rights or larger issues of social justice. The young techno-utopian turned ruthless closed-system businessman is one story; the abuse of human beings for profitable convenience is another, and despite strenuous efforts, they remain separate except for the broader personal disappointment Daisey expresses in Jobs. Which is unfair. Jobs may be guilty of many faults, but surely we can’t blame him for not living up to Daisey’s (or anyone else’s) false image of him.

But my bigger issue with the piece actually is also reflected in this story of techno-utopianism. Recounting his own embrace of technology (which he claims is his only hobby, in fact), Daisey tells the story of how in college in the Eighties, he did campus security on the night shift as work study, so he could play on the computer. It was during this time he first used the nascent Internet, where he would communicate via bulletin boards with like-minded people around the world, with whom he’d discuss the coming web revolution and the power of disintermediated, free-flowing information to transform the world.

He wryly jokes, “Yeah, we were very young.”

But the big, unanswered question in the piece is, how is the mission of The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs any different? Or at least, why would it work this time?

Again, Daisey acknowledges that his audiences probably do–or should, and definitely could–know about the abuses at places like Shenzhen before coming to the theater. But he proposes that his truth-telling piece will become like a “mind-virus,” infecting us with a desire to change this system. But why is his piece supposed to work, to change hearts and minds, if others forms of news and communication haven’t? Isn’t he guilty of the same naïveté now as then?

In the end, I think people involved in the theater fall into two categories over this issue. There are those who, like me, essentially see this as “preaching to the choir,” or even offering audiences a false sense of accomplishment, by virtue of giving them an emotional investment in thinking about something that they likely will not do anything (or very little) about. Others heartily disagree. Rob Weinert-Kendt over at the Wicked Stage offered the following thoughts:

There’s an assumption on the part of Barker and Brown that the transaction involved in seeing a piece of politically engaged theater is something like: Liberal audience feels good about itself for seeing a show about its own complicity in the misery of the world’s less fortunate, then immediately walks out of the theater, calls cabs, and checks their iPhones. It’s a variation of the piety-ends-at-the-church-door critique, which, being a churchgoer myself, I’m familiar with from both sides. I would question this assumption on two interrelated levels: 1. That theater does nothing to change attitudes or behavior outside its walls, that it’s all literally nothing more than after-dinner entertainment for rich people, and 2. That the activity of watching a politically engaged piece of theater has zero ameliorative value in itself.

I appreciate the point, but I think Rob’s going too far in his interpretation of what I’m saying. I’m not against politically engaged theater. Not at all. But going in, I always want to ask, “Why? Why make this piece? What is it supposed to accomplish?” In Daisey’s case, I think there really is a desire to reconnect us to our means of production, to use an old Marxist configuration. He outright says he wants us to see the blood seeping out of the keyboard of our MacBook when next we boot it up. Okay. Fine. But what is his piece supposed to do about that, besides make us feel bad about it?

His hope, I’d guess, is that this will compel us to do something. Talk about it with others, write letters to Apple (he provides contact info), or even agitate for political change. But I’m skeptical that consumer action against a company can really change things. Call me an unrepentant liberal, but when I look at the world, I generally assume there’s a reason it is the way it is, and if we don’t want it to be that way, we should actually expect things like laws to be in place to prevent the things we don’t like, feel are excessive, damaging, or wrong. You don’t write letters of complaint to meatpackers to make their conditions better. It didn’t work in Upton Sinclair’s day and it doesn’t work today.

It’s easy for me to deride work that produces this emotional response function as a theater of good intentions (as Mac Wellman once called it), choir-preaching, or offering a false emotional catharsis (false because you get the emotional payoff when nothing has changed). But I don’t want to go that far because Rob and others are right that there is a value in emotional engagement–rather than purely intellectual engagement–with the world, and for the theater to be a vehicle for asking people to examine their greater emotional, social, and political realities.

Still, there’s a reason Brecht was skeptical of emotional theater, of sentiment as a means to social change. That skepticism informed his entire notion of theater and performance, which sought to deny its audiences a sense of closure or catharsis in order to expose the issues with which he was concerned for what they were: open, bleeding wounds in humanity which demand action to heal. Emotion subsides, sentiment demands closure. The very idea of catharsis seems to run counter to the idea of leaving the theater demanding change. This isn’t new stuff, it’s very, very old. I’m not denying this work a place and application (as many people seem to assume I am), I’m just saying that depending on the story, the goal, the artistic enterprise, it’s worth considering whether simply making people feel guilty enough to write a letter is a particularly meaningful thing.

Popularity: 3% [?]

I know we’re a little behind the curve on this one (there’s a post on p-club about the situation, and it was even written up on pitchfork.) but we were talking about this whole Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker vs. Beyonce scandal over the weekend and trying to figure out what the ramifications are.

If you don’t know the situation – the basics are that Beyonce made a video for the song “Countdown” in which she very liberally “borrowed” choreography from de Keersmaeker’s Rosas Danst Rosas. Here’s a short side-by-side video comparison on YouTube:

I’m still researching, but from what I understand the choreographer of the Beyonce video has acknowledged that she was influenced by de Keersmaeker’s work. Anne Teresa herself has chimed in – you can read her statement on her website here, and was remarkably generous in her comments, preferring to take the high road, more or less, saying:

People asked me if I’m angry or honored. Neither. On the one hand, I am glad that Rosas danst Rosas can perhaps reach a mass audience which such a dance performance could never achieve, despite its popurality in the dance world since 1980s. And, Beyoncé is not the worst copycat, she sings and dances very well, and she has a good taste! On the other hand, there are protocols and consequences to such actions, and I can’t imagine she and her team are not aware of it.

To conclude, this event didn’t make me angry, on the contrary, it made me think a few things. Like, why does it take popular culture thirty years to recognize an experimental work of dance? A few months ago, I saw on Youtube a clip where schoolgirls in Flanders are dancing Rosas danst Rosas to the music of Like a Virgin by Madonna. And that was touching to see. But with global pop culture it is different, does this mean that thirty years is the time that it takes to recycle non-mainstream experimental performance? And, what does it say about the work of Rosas danst Rosas? In the 1980s, this was seen as a statement of girl power, based on assuming a feminine stance on sexual expression. I was often asked then if it was feminist. Now that I see Beyoncé dancing it, I find it pleasant but I don’t see any edge to it. It’s seductive in an entertaining consumerist way.

de Keersmaeker makes some important points about the gap between experimental work and pop culture, but personally I think she should take legal action. This is an egregious example of the devaluing and exploitation of contemporary performance by mainstream, commercial culture. Not unlike the AT&T ad that ripped off Christo, it is another case where corporate-funded entertainment and advertising entities create content with no fear about reprisals for the theft of intellectual property from artists. And it is theft.

There are several things at play here–first off there’s the difficult nature of copyrighting and protecting the work of time-based, body-based artists from appropriation. Music and text can be turned into recognizable commodities and object-based forms, they are easier to quantify and copyright. Time-based and body-based performances are, by their nature, ephemeral. But in this age of increased documentation through video, dance notation, etc. it should be easier to copyright performances, their design, execution and aesthetic sensibilities. As far as I know there are very few people working on issues of copyright protection and “fair use” when it comes to dance and performance. But this should be a growing field of exploration and concern. Artists – especially experimental artists – tend to position themselves in the context of larger philosophical, aesthetic and sociological conversations. In some ways performance is a time-based “site” or nexus for the intersection and juxtaposition of different ideas. It is an experiential mode of philosophical investigation, complete with dramaturgy, research and collateral conversations. To suggest that the work of choreographers and other time-based performance artists is not intellectual property as distinct as a book, article, recording or painting is simply wrong.

The Dance Heritage Foundation published an article on fair use of dance-related materials, you can download it here. There’s also an article on fair use at Dance/USA’s “From The Green Room” – you can read that here. And Michelle N. Burkhart wrote an article on the same site – Copyright Basics for Dance Works. She also wrote an article entitled “In a Post Graham World: Choreographing Dance Rights in the World of Media, Technology and Social Networking” which you can download here.

This situation also speaks to the general devaluation of the performing arts in our culture. The general public–and certainly most corporate advertising and entertainment content creators–look down on the arts. They don’t think it is difficult to make, they don’t consider it on par with movies or television, I imagine they think it is largely irrelevant and if someone is foolish enough to spend their time making high-concept art that only a few people go see, then it is not a big deal to steal it. Who will know anyway except for a few artsy-fartsy types?

Of course, I disagree–I think contemporary performance is exciting, dynamic and adventurous, it offers an alternative to the mindless, numbing, simplistic, commodified pablum that so frequently issues forth from the gaping maw of mass media. Don’t get me wrong – I watch TV and films and buy CDs and everything else. And a lot of the things I watch and listen to are well done, thoughtful and entertaining. But I appreciate that I can see live performance as a counterbalance to all the mediated and prepackaged narratives that proliferate in our society. And I appreciate that live performance–especially contemporary/experimental work–can engage with issues and ideas long before they percolate into the mainstream.

It is interesting that these days there are many creators of contemporary performance who readily and wholeheartedly embrace mass culture. Whether it is Neal Medlyn’s post-gender critique of Hannah Montana or Faye Driscoll riffing on talk shows in her recent work at DTW/NYLA or what have you, there is definitely a one-way dialogue here.  We, obviously, live in a mass media world and the ubiquity of stars, entertainment product, personalities and fashion trends makes it inevitable that artists working outside of the mainstream will reference those cultural touchstones. But what are we saying when we do that? Are we merely preaching to the converted when we critique it? Do we, in some way, de-legitimize ourselves by acknowledging how much more impact they have aesthetically and philosophically on the world at large than we do?

Some big questions that come to mind for me are:

• How do we raise the value of live art in the cultural hierarchy?
• How do we situate live art as intellectual property that can be owned, protected and licensed?
• How do we engender a more meaningful two-way dialogue between mass and art culture?

Obviously this is just the beginning of a much longer conversation. Please share your thoughts in the comments!

Oh and here’s a longer video comparing the two works:

Popularity: 14% [?]

Applications are now available for the 2012-13 ICPP Certificate Program. Updated application information, now live on the ICPP website. On-campus residency dates for 2012-2013 are: July 6–22, 2012; November 15–18, 2012; and March 8–11, 2013. Applications are due February 1, 2012 for the ICPP Professional Certificate Program. Visit the ICPP website for an application and more information.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Having Steve Jobs die right before the opening of Mike Daisey’s The Ecstasy and Agony of Steve Jobs at the Public is surely both a blessing and a curse. Blessing because, well, it makes for great PR (provided you abide by the old axiom that all press is good press). Curse because the outpouring of hagiographical love for Apple’s remarkable co-founder threatens to swamp Daisey’s message–about the dark side of manufacturing our technological goodies–with rosy-eyed remembrances of a guy who ultimately achieved the sort of personality cult he famously mocked.

But even beyond the issue of Jobs’ death right before the show opened, this piece has been notably controversial in Daisey’s oeuvre as it’s played around the country, and that controversy has only been exacerbated by the attention the show is getting. Now, full disclosure: I haven’t seen it and probably won’t get a chance to (I’ve avoided it a couple times elsewhere around the country at this point), so this isn’t a review but rather an overview of the show’s press. (I have seen others of Daisey’s monologues, though.) Also, just for the record, it’s probably worth recalling that Daisey was actually a Culturebot contributor back in our early days.

First of all, I’m have to say that in my experience, Daisey is a much better performer than he is a thinker. Or perhaps it’s just that the intellectual component of his monologue-stories is always hijacked by his political bent. Daisey may bill himself as a story-teller, but the truth is his monologues are more like activist opinion pieces. Anyway, this dichotomy–between the performer and his content–is present is almost every review of the piece in New York, which fall decidedly in the “rave” category even as they pick apart what he actually says.

In the Journal, Terry Teachout, after calling Daisey “an awesomely gifted stage performer,” goes on to note:

Mr. Daisey, though his political perspective is well to the left of center, is no kind of ideological wind-up toy. Indeed, it’s downright startling to hear him call China “a fascist country run by thugs,” or speak of the “useful idiots” of the tech press who look the other way at the horrors of life in Shenzhen, which Mr. Daisey pungently describes as “a Stalinist wet dream.” You can’t get much more politically incorrect than that, at least not Off Broadway.

The trouble with “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” as with all theatrical journalism, is that Mr. Daisey is in essence asking us to take his word for it. He hasn’t brought back pictures or named names, and the artful anger with which he tells his tale inevitably makes it still more suspect. You don’t have to be a puritan to prefer that facts be served straight up. Still, Mr. Daisey deserves much credit for telling his audience things it almost certainly doesn’t want to hear, and for doing it with such attention-commanding flair.

Rob Weinert-Kendt at the Wicked Stage takes Teachout to task for it:

Really? To put it mildly, I think Terry has a rather caricatured, Cold War-era view of those to his left (which includes most of his critical peers, from whom we will await in vain, I think, howls of Sinophilic umbrage). Not to mention that while Teachout is content to relish Daisey’s opinionating about China, he’s less inclined to accept the playwright’s firsthand reports of conditions in Shenzhen…

Still, Teachout isn’t the only critic to take issue with Daisey’s activist journalism, nor is it limited to conservatives. When the show played Seattle, The Stranger‘s Brendan Kiley–a decidedly liberal-left writer–outright accused Daisey of lying vis-a-vis his exaggerated claims of a lack of media coverage of working conditions in China:

Except that he’s not telling us the truth. After getting home from the show, opening up my MacBook, and wiping the blood off the keyboard, I did a little Googling. In under a minute, I learned some things: The New York Times that Daisey derides as being nothing more than a mouthpiece for Shenzhen corporate interests? It’s been writing about labor abuses in the city—child labor, days-long shifts, etc.—for at least five years. The BBC has written several stories about Shenzhen, including the suicides that Daisey talks about. Looks like there’s journalism about Shenzhen after all.

About the only New York critic to take Daisey at face value is the Times‘ Charles Isherwood, who penned a frankly embarrassingly gushing (and naive) review. Speaking of his iPhone the morning after the show:

…As I look at mine this morning, I can’t help feeling a bit guilty, and a bit betrayed. I fear some of the magic has gone out of our relationship.

This seismic shift in my consciousness came about thanks to Mike Daisey, whose latest theatrical monologue, “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” is a mind-clouding, eye-opening exploration of the moral choices we unknowingly or unthinkingly make when we purchase nifty little gadgets like the iPhone and the iPad and the PowerBook.

For my money, though, the most thoughtful review comes from New York magazine’s Scott Brown, who offers the harshest and most thoughtful take-down at the end of his review:

How disappointing. For a good stretch of his highly engrossing show, Daisey’s on track to leave us with a truly distressing idea: that we’ve adjusted to injustice. That, in a world of metastatic injustice, we’ve simply chosen the best-designed injustice out there, the commodity whose brand feels most consistent with how we’d like to see ourselves. That everyone in this theater, including Daisey, will exit the room and immediately fire up a product assembled by hand, by another human being, possibly a very young human being, who’s likely in a state of profound mental and physical distress, thanks to barbarically intense work shifts. Instead, we’re treated to yet another one-button solution: You’ve seen my show, so feel good about yourself.

Now, not having seen it myself, my own response is mainly speculative, though I will point out it’s informed by Daisey’s own manifesto performance How Theater Failed America. The point is that reading the descriptions and responses, I think Daisey has fallen victim (as he has before) to the artist’s fallacy I most loathe: That the artist, by virtue of being an artist, has a privileged position that allows him or her to speak on behalf of others, to give voice to the voiceless and by doing so, enlighten a benighted audience.

Sometimes, of course, this is in fact what art does. But it’s rare. More often than not, art like this serves to place the artist in the wrong role (artists are artists, not journalists or truth-tellers) which they fail at, by setting up a straw-man argument (that their audience is actually ignorant of some or another reality).  Alone among the critics, Isherwood admits to being completely ignorant of abuses in Chinese manufacturing before seeing the show (though his review goes on to reference his own paper’s often extensive coverage of these abuses). More likely, I suspect Isherwood is himself exaggerating, much as I suspect Brown’s right in accusing Daisey of the same. The story Daisey recounts of how he became fascinated with the factory workers (the widely reported stories of people getting new iPhones with test photos still on them) is just a little too cute. Daisey is anything but ignorant, and while I’m ready to believe he was intrigued by the story, I can’t believe that a committed liberal like him would be ignorant of worker abuse in China.

Instead, I think he think he readily bends the facts the serve his purposes as a storyteller. Unfortunately, the piece seems fascinated in completely the wrong story. I’m certain there are many Americans who are completely ignorant of what goes on in off-shored Chinese manufacturing. I doubt they’re the sort who buy tickets to plays at the Public, though. As commendable as Daisey’s attempt to reconnect us with our means of production is, to see “blood seeping through the keys of our Macbook” when we boot it up, the reality is, people largely already know this. As Brown essentially argues, the far more interesting story is the pernicious ability we’ve developed to live with the cognitive dissonance of loving things we know are abusively produced. And it’s not even just technology; we do it every time we eat. That is a story that needs to be tackled, and it’s a shame Daisey instead chooses to preach to a choir, and offer them the false reassurance of theatrical catharsis rather than challenge the audience’s assumptions.

Now I fully admit, I might be wrong. I haven’t the seen the show and probably won’t. I’ve seen Daisey’s work and suspect I know what I’m in for, and have spent far too many hours in the theater watching toothless political work to run out and see every show just because it’s getting a lot of attention. But readers who have seen it, I highly encourage to leave their own thoughts, either in comments or by emailing me at jeremy (at) culturebot.org.

On a closing note: I was particularly irked by Teachout–who I do respect–repeating the vapid criticism of Occupy Wall Street protesters as hypocrites for having iPhones. Anyone who wants to put people who repeat this self-evidently dumb in their place are encouraged to check out New York magazine columnist Jonathan Chait’s “Steve Jobs, Occupy Wall Street, and the Capitalist Ideal.” I like Chait a lot, despite being a ways to the left of his decidedly moderate liberal perspective, and in this piece he tears this argument to shreds while maintaining a very skeptical view of OWS. Well worth the read whether you entirely agree with him or not.

Update: A friend and fellow critic has politely chastised me for writing so much about a show I haven’t seen (via Facebook). It’s a valid criticism and one I was aware of writing this and opened myself up to. First of all, I hope it’s understood that this is not a review or informed criticism on my part of the show in question. I’ve linked to a variety of reviews of the piece and am speaking from my own perspective based on seeing prior works like The Last Cargo Cult and How Theater Failed America, the latter of which I didn’t have much truck with at all. All I can say in this context is that I’m trying to be forthright about some things that are rarely aired. Criticism has conventions–for instance, it’s almost never acceptable to say something bad about a show you haven’t seen, though it’s fine to recommend a show you haven’t seen. The fact that the information you based it on in either case is the same has no bearing on the convention; of course, either way, the writer could be very wrong. Furthermore, the process of talking about what one chooses not to see and review is rarely shared, even though it’s the elephant in the room. In this case, I’m also trying to explain why I’ve chosen not to review this show in the past nor am seeing it now. It’s not because I dislike Mike Daisey or think he’s a bad artist, I just have a lot of reservations about the work for reasons I’ve written about previously. See the following, including comments:

• Whither the Political Theater?
• What’s in a joke?
• Story, Story, Story
• Story Matters I.V (on Parabasis; see comments)

Update 2: I’ve had  a slight change of heart this morning. One of the things I’ve always preached is that people need to be more willing to give the performing arts a chance–if they did, many more people would discover that there’s work out there that’s meaningful to them and worth engaging with. So I think I have to practice what I preach and give Daisey the chance to prove me wrong, so I just bought a ticket to The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs this weekend.

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An interesting experimental performance festival is opening tomorrow in London, where it’s hosted by the more established LIFT Festival. Just in its second year, DISTANCE in an international festival of work that explores–you guessed it!–the idea of distance. Or the fact that distance is collapsing in the era of Skype, passport zones, and cheap international airfare. Or, you know, whatever.

Sadly, due to my late discovery of the event, I wasn’t able to coordinate an interview with the curators and founders in time (expect it soon). But anyway, here’s the run-down of what it is.

While the first edition of DISTANCE in 2010 featured some 40 events in one location (hosted by an airport in Surrey), this year, working with European organizations like F.I.T. (Festivals in Transition, a coalition of seven or more European festivals collaborating on large projects), DISTANCE has produced a half-dozen works to be staged over three separate weekends in two countries. Riga, Latvia’s Homo Novus played host Sept. 3-9; now London’s LIFT is doing it from Oct. 14-16, and it ends with a run at Newcastle’s Wunderbar Oct. 31-Nov. 6.

The projects range from Los Angeles-based artist Steve Levon’s “anxiety balloon” (your guess is as good as mine) to the UK-Canada duo Sorrel Muggridge and Laura Nanni, whose 2360 MILES TRAVELLED HAND TO HEART explores distance through scale.

But here’s the cool part–the part you can take part in from anywhere in the world (this is a distance based festival, after all): Field Broadcast. Step 1 is to download the custom software and install it. Step 2 is to keep an eye on the lower right hand corner of your monitor over the weekend. At un-scheduled times, one of three artists in Riga, London, and Newcastle, each of whom is serving a digital residency for the project, can jump on to a live feed. The software will alert you with a ping, and you can join in with God only knows who else around the world to get to witness a fleeting, live event. The process will repeat at the end of the month during the Newcastle edition, too.

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A few months ago I wrote a post that made some waves called “Why Aren’t There More African-Americans In Contemporary Performance?” The responses to it, quite honestly, were more illuminating than what I wrote, including one by Parabasis contributor 99 Seats, a.k.a., Jason Holtham. Well, I was reminded of all this this week when I realized I’d already missed the opening of New Black Fest, the three-week long series of readings and lectures, co-organized by Holtham, that’s doing what it can to support new work from emerging black theater artists. (You can read an interview with him about the festival here.)

You can check out the whole line-up of events on their calendar here; tonight, Friday, Oct. 14, there’s a cool mixer going on up in Harlem at Nectar Wine Bar at 2235 Frederick Douglas Blvd. starting at 7 p.m. Saturday there’s a lecture discussion on progressive culture in contemporary capitalist society, while Sunday features a healthy line-up of new play readings, including a new work from Ugandan playwright Judith Adong exploring the consequences of that country’s now notorious anti-gay political agenda. The playwright will also be taking part in a roundtable discussion at New York Theater Workshop on Monday with other specialists and artists, including the UN’s senior advisor on sexual diversity.

In short, there’s a lot of cool stuff happening. Holtham and his co-presenter Keith Josef Adkins (he’s got a recent interview, too) are working hard to generate new conversations and to help playwrights whose work doesn’t fit comfortably into the narrow categories reserved for black artists in mainstream theater. Most of the events are free or have only a nominal suggested donation, so peruse the site and get involved.

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Image courtesy Leeser Architecture

Culturebot couldn’t make it this morning, but Mayor Bloomberg, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, and the heads of BRIC Arts | Media broke ground on the renovation of the Strand Theater at 647 Fulton St., near BAM’s Harvey Theater, originally built in 1919. BRIC’s relocation to the spot (along with, I understand, the Urban Glass reNEWal Project), which will open in 2013 after $33 million renovation led by architect Thomas Leeser, is the latest stage in the development of the BAM Cultural District, and it provides some cool opportunities for BRIC. In addition to video production studios and a 3,000 square-foot gallery space, it creates a new 250-seat blackbox theater/performance space, along with smaller studio spaces that can serve as flexible showcase performance spaces. BRIC has also announced its initial residency programs. The Ronald K. Brown/Evidence Dance Company will enjoy a multiyear residency, but the Fireworks Residency program, funded the Rockefeller Foundation, looks particularly cool. Intended to support the creation of new large-scale, multi-disciplinary works, the initial beneficiaries include the director of Bang-on-a-Can as well as British impresario Julian Crouch, the artist behind Shockheaded Peter and the more recent The Devil and Mister Punch, which debuted at Philadelphia Live Arts last month (see here for Culturebot’s review).

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