Dear List...
I recently wrote a little review of tech_2 in Bristol. It wasn't an art /
indymedia festival so much as a piss-up with loads of practising and
aspiring nerds, but I think it provided some great pointers as to
how new media festivals can be successfully organised.
http://www.metamute.com/events/tech.htm
Just musing on the themes of the above a bit further...
I always find it extraordinary that festivals relating to networked cultural
practices persist in linear formats. I understand that the officious,
name-badge-fetishist funders and institutions have to be sated, but surely
there are more network-centric forms of crowd control that the auditorium
model.
Tech_2 was a brilliant event, and could probably scale very well.
some of the things I loved about it were:
- The format was very open. Impromptu presentations and conversations were
happening all the time
- There was enough time in the schedule for relaxed socialising - the place
where most work gets done at festivals anyway.
- There were enough connections and computer facilities for everyone, or
tools and support for people to make them.
Also, the ridiculous and often irritating "inner circle" mentality had been
thrown out. Whoever was interested in joining in evening events (walks,
drinks, recreation....etc..) came along and were made welcome. Academic
hierarchy (organisers and invited guests/presenters at the top, attendees at
the bottom) may be necessary in huge institution-backed events, but somehow
it seems antithetical to network practices and in my opinion, damages the
atmosphere and potential for change at a festival.
If the publicity for the event has filtered through appropriate channels
(lists, word of mouth, flyers in the right places etc..) then the people who
attend are probably interested and involved in the subject of the festival
already, and don't need to be introduced to subjects from the beginning
(another common problem at many new media festivals). If some can't keep up
then perhaps someone else at the event can explain the basics to them. If
this behaviour is encouraged, people with all levels of familiarity with the
subject have an interesting time and a nice friendly atmosphere can emerge.
While I'm on the topic, I wrote down some thoughts about the model of
"lecture" at new media events/conferences last year. I never found a
good place for it, but it kind of fits in this topic so here goes...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Any Questions?
To my horror some people actually asked me questions during the inevitable
question time that followed a 15 minutes talk I gave about Open Source and
Art practice at the Arts Council of England's "Open" event
(www.thisisnot.com). I didn't really understand them and either ignored them
entirely or spluttered incomprehensible and dismissive responses.
Although the substance of the talk I gave emphasised the value of Open
Source strategies of distributed authorship, the physical set-up of the
discussion (speaker behind mic facing chairs containing audience) was not
, of course condusive to any kind of collaborative engagement. This was not
a bad thing in my opinion. It was a 15 minute talk, not something you would
think likely to be improved by everyone talking at once.
However, the traditional opening for other voices comes at the end when the
chair asks for questions from the "floor". This lowly status of "floor"
often seems wholly applicable to those poor wretches that inhabit it because
of the (often) poor quality of questions asked and the answers given.
There are good reasons for this:
1). The questioner is usually nervous.
I am always nervous about asking questions in lectures. My voice shakes and
squeaks, my knees feel weak, I garble my words, or use the wrong ones, make
non-grammatical sentences and am incomprehensible to everyone including
myself. This is most probably because in order to ask a question in that
environment you have to put up your hand (classroom traumas come to mind), a
person with a mic rushes over to you and you hold it, Karaoke style, as the
attention of the room swings round 180 degrees to face you. Then
you have to try to control your voice while worrying about your sweaty palms
and the fact that you can't remember what it was you wanted to say anyway.
2). The questioner usually doesn't actually have a question.
After most lectures I have an opinion, and am occasionally roused to speak
it because I think it will be useful or relevant to the speaker and the
other audience members. Any direct questions that come to mind often seem
too banal to raise in that context. A question is usually something
technical or simple, relating to the minutiae of the speaker's topic or
experience "How many of ..." or "Did .... work..." etc... What usually
happens is that someone has an opinion that they want to make known, but
because of the situation they feel forced into formulating it as a question.
This leads to long, rambling, incomprehensible questions that often end with
"What do you think about that..." or "Could you respond to that" when often
the speaker's opinion is not really needed for the point to be made.
3). The speaker doesn't have time to think about it.
In the unlikely event of a good question being asked (occasionally someone
skilled enough in public speaking and with a quick tongue can do this) the
speaker doesn't have time to think of a good answer. The public context and
the shifting of attention (like a tennis ball) from speaker to audience to
speaker adds a confrontational or competitive edge to most questions. It
seems as if the speaker were to say "you've got me there" or "um..I don't
know" then they would have "lost". This is an extension of a long tradition
of academic debate and public/peer review that is, as Michelle Serres puts
it "Based on a militaristic model of truth-finding, where the strongest
competitor in an argument determines what is and is not true". The situation
inevitably leads to the questioner and the speaker "defending" their
arguments and really trying to cover up the weaknesses in their story
rather than attempting to take on board anything that the other has said.
What I would have liked to see at this event is a more productive way of
carrying on discussions. "Any questions" would be better replaced with "Does
anyone have anything to say", and any non-technical questions could be
continued constructively in a bulletin board or a pre-arranged q&a e-mail
session (where each party has time to think up a useful answer).
Saul Albert
21/12/2000
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hope that was useful to someone.
cheers,
Saul.
www.twenteenthcentury.com/saul
----- Original Message -----
From: Beryl Graham <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2001 9:44 PM
Subject: Re: Theme of the month: Curating Festivals
> Dear List,
>
> It has been a very strange month in which to be discussing festivals,
> but one which throws an interesting light on the idea of
> 'International' events. In the last week of September, I'd like to
> encourage a few last musings on the idea if possible (even if very
> personal), before next month's theme of architectures.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Beryl
>
|
