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Showing posts from March, 2015

Happy 2015 International Women's Day!

I love what I do and I'm so blessed to have so many other fantastic women who have walked this path before me and are on it now with me (and those yet to come!). I hope everyone takes a second to reflect on how far we've come... and then gets back to work on where we're headed.

High Art vs Low Art

“The masses seek distraction whereas art demands concentration from the spectator.” - -The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin, 1936 Is there any more contentious question in the art world than the concept of “high” versus “low” I like venn diagrams. And shouldn't art really be in the middle?  art? Who gets to judge? What are the parameters in which to judge? There is no standard definition for either concept and personal explanations range from simple to incredibly complex. One common theory about how to explain the difference is high art is “popular” and low art is “unpopular”, that is, appealing (or not) to many people. This also links to another version of the difference: that high art fosters the widest connection between people while a smaller subsection enjoys low art. This is in direct contradiction, though, to the idea of low art being part of mass culture (raising yet another question of “is art culture” or merely a com

Ignoring our nose to spite our face

What information are we not seeking? R-O-B/Structural Oscillations NYC Dept of Transportation Creative Commons license What feedback delays are we not paying attention to? What incentives are we ignoring? As well and artistically fantastic as subsidization is (through direct patronage or tax relief), it harms our organization and system because it severely weakens or removes several feedback flows necessary to a stable structure. -the oscillations of ticket sales do not provide a reinforcing loop to performance decisions (when, where, what, marketing) -the constant stock of free labor serves to reinforce the dangerous growth of itself, of unpaid labor -the reasons companies collapse are ignored because of ease of new company creation Yes, artistic growth can be hampered by the vagaries of market forces inclining artists to make comfortable choices. But it is also stymied by an inefficient support structure that is incapable of properly responding to market forces. T