performance art in the age of YouTube
There’s a great article/discussion in the Times inspired by the recent Ocularpation: Wall Street, a street “protest” featuring naked people as a metaphor for the lack of transparency in our financial institutions. The act itself wasn’t particularly interesting, but it is a great launching point for broaching the broader context of performance art in the digital age. And for that matter, not just performance art, but the value of live experience versus “mediated” experience. In the piece James Westcott hit the nail on the head when he noted:
The ubiquity of digital spectacles and curiosities today is one reason performance art has had its thunder stolen. Another is more insidious — a new form of subjectivity prompted by platforms like Facebook: the constant need to Perform Yourself (which could be YouTube’s slogan, rather than “Broadcast Yourself”). It’s not surprising, then, that many people were blasé about the nudity on Wall Street.
Indeed, while our online selves can function as augmentations of our not-online selves, I’d argue they also function as separate entities entirely, crafted and updated as a result of a hyper-self-awareness that generally far exceeds our degree of self-awareness in our not-online lives.
I’m going to quote his next thoughts at length because, again, they are spot on:
Marina Abramovic’s incredibly popular three-month performance at the Museum of Modern Art last year — where people sat and looked her in the eye for as long as they could take it — seemed to mark a crucial transition from the physical to the virtual in performance art.
In the flesh, the pure presence and catharsis of agenda-less eye contact (causing many of the 1,400 sitters to break down in tears) became, online, an exercise in obsessivecataloging and celebrity-spotting. Whereas the performance itself opened up vertiginous depths of empathy, the online experience was addictive and alienating.
Through the alchemy of the Internet, the performance loses some of its luster. From gazing to gawking, total immersion to idle browsing, the level of engagement is no longer the same. But at least more people could engage with it than the few who are part of the art world.
There were three other commenters who all touched on the notion of the value of live events or art, where multiple senses are engaged in a way that the internet is not capable of doing.
I recently interviewed street artist Gaia (excerpts will be posted soon on this site) and he discussed many of these same issues in how they relate to street art. Namely, I prodded him to explain how the knowledge that he will be posting images of his art on the web immediately after he creates it on the street affects his creative process, and the experience for the viewer of his art online versus the viewer on the street.
As technologically mediated* experience becomes more and more the norm, rather than live direct experience, the myriad ways, both nuanced and blatant, that we are affected is a source of increasing fascination for me.
*Disclaimer for academics and semantics police: Yes, all experience is technically “mediated.” When I refer to mediated or unmediated experience I generally mean the difference between experience that is either direct between two or more people in the live vicinity of each other or direct between a person and the natural environment, versus experience that solely occurs through, or that is augmented/influenced by, (hi)tech electronic equipment such as smart phones that connect us with the Internet and others, take photos and video, etc., and even (lower)tech media like newspapers, magazines.
Jane’s Addiction - who is the real performer?
I recently learned that Jane’s Addiction are playing a free show at NYC’s Terminal 5 on July 25th. Why is the show free? 1) Because there is a corporate sponsor: electronics company LG. But also 2) because the fans will actually being working during the show. From the LG press release:
The technological force of LG is uniting with YouTube, the largest video-sharing site on the web, to create a one-of-a-kind concert experience that will push senses into another dimension. On July 25, LG Mobile Phones and YouTube will give Jane’s Addiction and tech fans the exclusive opportunity to watch and be a part of the World’s First 3D User-Generated Concert event. Adding a whole new dimension to the concert experience,attendees will use LG Thrill 4G devices to shoot their own 3D video of what is sure to be an electrifying performance. The 3D creations will then be collected and combined by LG into one 60-minute documentary - culminating in what will soon be known as the World’s First 3D User-Generated Concert. Consumers watch the concert live on YouTube (7/25) or at an AT&T store on the new LG Thrill 4G. Fans can tune back into the LG Thrill YouTube 3D channel on August 4th to view the premiere of the 3D documentary. Visit LGThrill4G.com for more information about the concert and the awe-inspiring glasses-free 3D LG Thrill 4G exclusively on AT&T.
There’s an interesting meta-ness here, where the fans will actually function 1) as employees of the band (and LG), filming a video for them, and 2) as knowing actors in said video. Yes, technically anything filmed is a document of something, but this in no way will result in a document simply of a band performing for its fans. Here, as much as the band, it’s the fans who are performing; their role is being “fans.” I’d argue it is nearly impossible for any fan, armed with a camera, and tasked to film a full concert they know will air as an official documentary on the web, to feel and behave unselfconsciously simply as a fan.
Have you ever noticed that any time during a concert when a lead singer announces something like “this show is being filmed for MTV!” that the crowd goes apeshit? It’s the second that people shift from being in the moment as fans to being actors playing fans, and apparently it’s inherent that no one wants to appear that they are at an event that’s not completely awesome. What’s interesting and new about this Jane’s show is that not only do the fans know they are being recorded, but they are also doing the recording, moving them yet another step further from being present, in the moment.
An aside - does LG honestly expect consumers to keep this all straight: 3D LG Thrill 4G … LG Thrill YouTube 3D channel. LG, 3D, 4G - the wording and acronyms on this project and for the products are just nonsense when read together.
A Small Nod To Globalization Not Being As Bad As I Often Tend To Think It Is
I just got back a couple weeks ago from lecturing about FDS at the Society for Philosophy and Technology’s biennial conference (aka SPT2011) at the University of North Texas. While there, I met up with my pal Yoni, a philosophy grad student from Belgium. Out for beers one night in Denton (good college town btw!) somehow it came up that both of us are huge Neil Diamond fans, and Yoni was in fact going to see him perform the following week. After a few poorly (but enthusiastically) sung renditions of his classics we hit upon Sweet Caroline. When I got to the fan response “so good! so good! so good!” part, though, Yoni was silent and looked at me like I was crazy. To my surprise, apparently the “so good” chant is only done in America (or at least not sung in Belgium).
The first time I heard the sing-along chant was 1990. I was a sophomore in high school and visited my sister in college, where, at a party all the students shouted out “So Good!” with a glee only drunken 19-year-olds can muster. Ever since then I can’t hear the song without also, (if not singing “so good” myself, then certainly) hearing it in my head.
Thinking more about the chant, and its absence outside the states, I did some quick searching online and found that Sweet Caroline - and the “so good” chant - is a bit of a phenomenon at US sporting events, especially at Boston Red Socks games, where, according to wikipedia, it’s been played in the 8th inning during every game since 2002. The same entry lists a bunch of other teams, both college and professional, of football, hockey, and baseball that also apparently play Sweet Caroline as a tradition. Because I don’t follow sports (except for the NY Giants), I had no idea of the stadium phenomenon of Sweet Caroline. Alas, sometimes I feel like a stranger in my own country.
A particularly solid example of the “so good so good so good” chant, 40,000 people strong, complete with terrific stadium echo, is the above clip from Fenway Park, home of the Red Socks.
All this, albeit tangentially, reminds me of my friend Brian Gresko’s recent piece on going to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a neighborhood that used to be cutting edge, and now is as edgy as a butter knife. This change, in part, has to do with the standard progression of “transitioning” neighborhoods: artists first, then hipsters follow the artists, then the bankers and lawyers follow the hipsters, then the families move in and the priced-out artists move elsewhere (rinse, repeat). Brian wondered if NYC has now fully become lame, Disneyfied. To a degree he’s right, the globalization of brands, of chain stores taking over ever-increasing amounts of real estate from mom n pop shops, of people in France wearing the same clothes, listening to the same music, watching the same movies, as people in New York, Sau Paulo, and Tokyo, has indeed affected New York, but it’s a global phenomenon. As New York goes, so goes most of the world - or visa versa. An ironic counterpoint to this phenomenon worth mentioning, however, is that in the past few years there has been an explosion of Etsy-type artisanal shops and services in Brooklyn, from handmade pickles to high-end made-to-order furniture by reclaimed-wood-only carpenters.
My Neil Diamond story, though, is sort of my ideal kind of globalization: it involves the unifying aspects where people around the world can share in the same thing - where a guy from New York can have a moment of joyful singing camaraderie with a guy from Belgium while in a bar in Texas - yet it’s not so overwhelming as to eliminate the joy of little geographic/cultural differences like the America-only “so good” chant.
Funny post script: Yoni reported that when the “so good” sing along section of Sweet Caroline arrived during the show, Neil gestured to the audience but no one sang it, that is except for Yoni and his girlfriend. I’d like to think that perhaps they were sitting close enough for Neil to hear them.
