Reviewing Live Art.
Philip Stanier
The unpleasant task of writing and reading reviews.
I have written and received bad reviews, and, I have written and received badly written reviews, the first can be unpleasant, but the latter is inexcusable. After recently witnessing some bizarre examples of reviewing in the mainstream press, I wanted to challenge the role of reviewers and reviews for Live Art, what we as artists and audiences should expect of them and how they could be written.
It is also vital to address this, as the coverage and quality of press for Live Art in the UK is shamefully thin and listings are virtually non-existent. It is remarkable that at a time when the sector is so active, that there is no regular dedicated publication to Live Art, and that other magazines do not see fit to cover Live Art, unless the event is connected to a gallery or larger event.
Where is our Hunter S. Thompson?
I recently saw a performance that received some reviews, and it was as if we had not seen the same performance. Their reviews refused to engage with the piece and were startlingly aggressive and poisonous. They had clearly spent most of their time coming up with insults, and I immediately rejected their comments. Yet, I kept thinking about them, and now, while I still find them idiotic and misguided, I realise that they are the most engaging reviews that I have read in a long time.
The purposes of reviews are usually identified as: To critically evaluate a performance, to disseminate information regarding the event to a larger potential audience, and to record it for posterity. However this is not the case, performance is either documented through video and so does not need recording through a review. Also, if the work is antagonistic to documentation, then it will be disseminated through word of mouth, and so the review, while still a valuable document in its own right would hardly seem to hold a key role in documenting for the future. So disseminating information through a review now seems somewhat outdated when our sector is highly networked and our marketing strategies are sophisticated and wide-ranging. As for providing a critique of the work, this is the part everyone has the most trouble with.
Matthew Goulish in his book ‘39 Microlectures’ suggests that the role of a critic is two-fold, the function being to cause a change in the critic or readers, a change that facilitates a singular understanding and unique experience of the work. The second function of the critic is to “understand how to understand” (Goulish, M. 2000:44). Through this the critic offers new perspectives through which we can understand and experience performance. The critic, when presented with a new piece of work, should propose new languages and new frames for its discussion, and can achieve this through the standard functions of reviews that include:
To document events.
To discuss ideas and their enactment.
To contextualise practice.
To critical evaluate practice.
To give accounts of personal experience.
To initiate a response.
To provide entertainment.
So for Goulish, the usual functions of reviewing, are secondary to the generation of understanding. However, the list above also displays the very reason for the poverty of writing in reviews. We say what ‘happened’ and what it was ‘about’, we say whether it was ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and why, we try and make ourselves look clever and finish with a sound bite to praise or punish the practitioner. This is a mechanical, indulgent and patronising approach, of no use to anyone but the reviewer. Unfortunately most reviewers are guilty of this to some degree and it is not easy to avoid doing it. Worst of all, because we are familiar and endeared with the kind of work we review, we repeat the same explanations of what work is doing, and avoid giving strong critique because we wish to support the field in which we ourselves operate. All of this means that reviews are discredited as sources of critical evaluation and as sources of documentary evidence. Our approach to writing reviews and the function of reviews needs to change to account for the changes in the art scene as a whole.
What we so often forget about reviews is their entertainment value. The best reviews have historically come from writers who provoked responses, who allowed their personality to be present in their writing, who were funny and outrageous. Where is the gonzo journalism of Live Art, where is our Hunter S Thompson? When we cut back on the personality, on the entertainment and on the provocative possibilities in reviews we end up with a bland and homogenised result. This is what we have too much of, empty descriptions of events. I would be happy to see more reviews like the ones I mentioned earlier, reviews that were provocative with their language and took no prisoners with their critiques, from reviewers who aren’t afraid to expose themselves in their writing, and dispense with tact and diplomacy when it isn’t really needed or wanted.
Four reasons for not reading reviews.
If it seems so simple to define the purpose of a good review, why then do we so often find those qualities lacking, and what takes their place that we find so objectionable? It would seem that the fundamental crimes in writing reviews are:
The creation of static or homogenising categories,
The promotion or abuse of one body of work in relation to another,
The promotion of ones own artistic agenda,
The lack of an active critique.
Embedded in this list are the reasons for the eternal frustration of artists with reviews, and the lack of serious academic valuing of reviews. Reviews occupy a peculiar territory, hovering between the artist and other artists, their audience and the public, academics and experts, funders and producers. As such they are driven towards the use and creation of categories by academic training, the implicit promotion of their own agenda as a result of often being artists, the valorising of one form at the expense of another by being supporters of the sector, and a lack of critique from fear of causing offence, being seen as unfair or even worse, lacking in insight or taste.
We should balance this by noting the increasingly common practice of artists writing sophisticated programme notes. Critics can feel threatened by the autonomy of the artist, the co-ownership of the language through which work is discussed and to some extent on whose terms it is discussed. But this actually provides an opportunity for the critic to engage more fruitfully in a discussion with the makers of the performance and the performance on its own terms, to make a more singular reading. It does seem however that some reviewers take offence from programme notes, we might assume that they feel threatened in this context, the writing seems effectively to deny the critic their opportunity. This is not the case; it is irrelevant whether the critic agrees, understands, or sees the point of such texts as long as critics can use them as an opportunity for a better review. The reviewer can accept the propositions made in such texts, or play devils advocate, provide an experiential review if the text is sufficient in giving a conceptual context for the piece. We can be harder in our critiques and more sophisticated with our writing when an artist raises the level of debate on their own work. In this way the validity of reviews could be somewhat restored.
Something worth reading.
What then is the practical function of a review, what should all reviews provide? Here are some suggestions:
A sense of the event,
An identification of the ideas present in, or applicable to the work,
A contextualisation of the work,
A critical engagement with the work,
An engaging or entertaining read.
These features should be interpreted in the broadest way possible. The sense of event could be provided through an almost infinite range of approaches to responsive writing. The freedom of writing as a form to move away from literal description indicates where reviews can demonstrate their distinct value in relation to other forms of documentation. The contextualisation and discussion of ideas in an event should be seen as invitations to the reviewer to find distinct means of placing and theorising events, rather than confirming the established means of reading a work. The best reviews are often those with a strong personal contextualisiation of the piece and the application of unconventional ideas.
It is easy to write an aggressive review and pleasant to write a positive one. My tendency in the past has been to review performances that I enjoyed, and if I didn’t like it, to be diplomatic. However, this is a habit that none of us should indulge any longer. It is clear that Live Art would benefit in numerous ways if its press were more impartial and firm with their critical feedback.
The critic as artist.
As a result of the relatively small size of the sector, our reviewers most commonly turn out to be artists, academics, promoters or enthusiasts. All reviewers are different, some are objective, others aggressive and others over-friendly. None of these types or attitudes are essentially better than the other, as each one lacks the comparative benefit of the other. What genuinely distinguishes one reviewer from another is their commitment to writing singular reviews, where the form and language of the piece responds directly to the piece observed.
A major concern is the prioritisation of the critic over the work, we must be wary of the critic as celebrity as it rarely serves the work when the reviewer is considered more important. It would seem that recently the overriding preoccupation of reviews has been to respond to the failure of objective documentation and the uncertainty of language, as such the identity of the reviewer occupies the gap left behind. However, to counter this problem we do have the critic as artist; and if the critique can be maintained this would not be such a bad thing. We have the benefit of reviewers who can write creatively in response to work they have seen. So rather than try to make all reviews and reviewers produce the same kind of writing and smooth over personal differences, why not do the opposite? Encourage reviewers to respond creatively, to acknowledge their limitations of knowledge and to be subjective, to challenge the conventional form of the review, while maintaining its quality and function.
For example would we accept artists reviewing their own pieces? Or critics writing reviews based solely upon their subjective experience? Perhaps alongside broadening the kind of language used in reviews, we could broaden the kind of writing that we consider a review.
Where are the artist statements, articles, interviews, diary entries, work-in-progress evaluations? Where are the arranged conversations, conclusions of meetings and reports of networking and training days? Where are the open letters, provocations and rebuttals? Strangely they all exist, it’s all out there, but it just hasn’t been gathered, edited and arranged. We can often find these things on artist’s websites, on e-lists, or left forgotten in a notebook. Or someone says ‘Someone should write this up’ but no one does. If you think someone should write it up, then you should write it up. If the Live Art sector wants greater and more involved press coverage, the first thing to do is to provide it for ourselves, the mainstream press and listings will only join in if they feel they are missing out on something.
Expect less.
We should expect less from our reviews, less understanding on the part of our reviewers, less objectivity in fact. But far from naïve and bland reviewing, this should produce more attempts to be singular with our responses to work, and give less concern to upsetting our peers, because we can take strong criticism and more importantly we want it. We need to provide a depth of consideration and quality of writing that equals the quality and depth of the work, and most crucially while remaining critical and honest to ourselves.
Artist should not expect reviews to give them publicity quotes, and you can call me a hypocrite for saying this because I have written poster quotes and used them. However, the less a reviewer tries to reward good practice with good reviews, the less power the false economy of reviewers as judges of work will hold influence. I for one do not go to shows on the basis of poster quotes, in fact I am more likely to stay away. Either I distrust the source, dislike the manipulation of the review, or find nothing of note about the quote itself. Most publicity quotes are banal, and those most creatively put to use are the ones least intended for use on publicity.
We need to have less respect for the views of reviewers, so that artists can make use of them freely, so that audiences can engage with reviews for what they are; the limited and subjective experience of one single person. If we can do this then an understanding of, a context for and a language to discuss work can begin to emerge.
Reviews are for posterity, but for those of us alive at the moment, spending our time recording the work of others for the interest of people in the future is a task I find a little tedious and missing the point somewhat. The future can work out what was important from what we leave behind whatever that may be. We should concentrate less on information for the future, and more on multiplying our understanding of what is going on now.
Other publications will not generally seek out new material or new reviewers unless they need to, so if we want coverage from them, we shouldn’t expect them to send reviewers, we should send them reviews of everything they don’t cover. As such, the most important thing that we as artists can do is to be proactive in reviewing our work for each other, and putting it where we can all see it.
When our critical responses match the quantity and quality of our practice, and when they exceed the coverage, sophistication and accessibility of other arts press, then the reading and writing reviews will be a far more rewarding process and the press coverage of our sector would be raised.
Sources:
Goulish, Matthew (2000) 39 Microlectures: In Proximity of Performance, Routledge.
Philip Stanier
The unpleasant task of writing and reading reviews.
I have written and received bad reviews, and, I have written and received badly written reviews, the first can be unpleasant, but the latter is inexcusable. After recently witnessing some bizarre examples of reviewing in the mainstream press, I wanted to challenge the role of reviewers and reviews for Live Art, what we as artists and audiences should expect of them and how they could be written.
It is also vital to address this, as the coverage and quality of press for Live Art in the UK is shamefully thin and listings are virtually non-existent. It is remarkable that at a time when the sector is so active, that there is no regular dedicated publication to Live Art, and that other magazines do not see fit to cover Live Art, unless the event is connected to a gallery or larger event.
Where is our Hunter S. Thompson?
I recently saw a performance that received some reviews, and it was as if we had not seen the same performance. Their reviews refused to engage with the piece and were startlingly aggressive and poisonous. They had clearly spent most of their time coming up with insults, and I immediately rejected their comments. Yet, I kept thinking about them, and now, while I still find them idiotic and misguided, I realise that they are the most engaging reviews that I have read in a long time.
The purposes of reviews are usually identified as: To critically evaluate a performance, to disseminate information regarding the event to a larger potential audience, and to record it for posterity. However this is not the case, performance is either documented through video and so does not need recording through a review. Also, if the work is antagonistic to documentation, then it will be disseminated through word of mouth, and so the review, while still a valuable document in its own right would hardly seem to hold a key role in documenting for the future. So disseminating information through a review now seems somewhat outdated when our sector is highly networked and our marketing strategies are sophisticated and wide-ranging. As for providing a critique of the work, this is the part everyone has the most trouble with.
Matthew Goulish in his book ‘39 Microlectures’ suggests that the role of a critic is two-fold, the function being to cause a change in the critic or readers, a change that facilitates a singular understanding and unique experience of the work. The second function of the critic is to “understand how to understand” (Goulish, M. 2000:44). Through this the critic offers new perspectives through which we can understand and experience performance. The critic, when presented with a new piece of work, should propose new languages and new frames for its discussion, and can achieve this through the standard functions of reviews that include:
To document events.
To discuss ideas and their enactment.
To contextualise practice.
To critical evaluate practice.
To give accounts of personal experience.
To initiate a response.
To provide entertainment.
So for Goulish, the usual functions of reviewing, are secondary to the generation of understanding. However, the list above also displays the very reason for the poverty of writing in reviews. We say what ‘happened’ and what it was ‘about’, we say whether it was ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and why, we try and make ourselves look clever and finish with a sound bite to praise or punish the practitioner. This is a mechanical, indulgent and patronising approach, of no use to anyone but the reviewer. Unfortunately most reviewers are guilty of this to some degree and it is not easy to avoid doing it. Worst of all, because we are familiar and endeared with the kind of work we review, we repeat the same explanations of what work is doing, and avoid giving strong critique because we wish to support the field in which we ourselves operate. All of this means that reviews are discredited as sources of critical evaluation and as sources of documentary evidence. Our approach to writing reviews and the function of reviews needs to change to account for the changes in the art scene as a whole.
What we so often forget about reviews is their entertainment value. The best reviews have historically come from writers who provoked responses, who allowed their personality to be present in their writing, who were funny and outrageous. Where is the gonzo journalism of Live Art, where is our Hunter S Thompson? When we cut back on the personality, on the entertainment and on the provocative possibilities in reviews we end up with a bland and homogenised result. This is what we have too much of, empty descriptions of events. I would be happy to see more reviews like the ones I mentioned earlier, reviews that were provocative with their language and took no prisoners with their critiques, from reviewers who aren’t afraid to expose themselves in their writing, and dispense with tact and diplomacy when it isn’t really needed or wanted.
Four reasons for not reading reviews.
If it seems so simple to define the purpose of a good review, why then do we so often find those qualities lacking, and what takes their place that we find so objectionable? It would seem that the fundamental crimes in writing reviews are:
The creation of static or homogenising categories,
The promotion or abuse of one body of work in relation to another,
The promotion of ones own artistic agenda,
The lack of an active critique.
Embedded in this list are the reasons for the eternal frustration of artists with reviews, and the lack of serious academic valuing of reviews. Reviews occupy a peculiar territory, hovering between the artist and other artists, their audience and the public, academics and experts, funders and producers. As such they are driven towards the use and creation of categories by academic training, the implicit promotion of their own agenda as a result of often being artists, the valorising of one form at the expense of another by being supporters of the sector, and a lack of critique from fear of causing offence, being seen as unfair or even worse, lacking in insight or taste.
We should balance this by noting the increasingly common practice of artists writing sophisticated programme notes. Critics can feel threatened by the autonomy of the artist, the co-ownership of the language through which work is discussed and to some extent on whose terms it is discussed. But this actually provides an opportunity for the critic to engage more fruitfully in a discussion with the makers of the performance and the performance on its own terms, to make a more singular reading. It does seem however that some reviewers take offence from programme notes, we might assume that they feel threatened in this context, the writing seems effectively to deny the critic their opportunity. This is not the case; it is irrelevant whether the critic agrees, understands, or sees the point of such texts as long as critics can use them as an opportunity for a better review. The reviewer can accept the propositions made in such texts, or play devils advocate, provide an experiential review if the text is sufficient in giving a conceptual context for the piece. We can be harder in our critiques and more sophisticated with our writing when an artist raises the level of debate on their own work. In this way the validity of reviews could be somewhat restored.
Something worth reading.
What then is the practical function of a review, what should all reviews provide? Here are some suggestions:
A sense of the event,
An identification of the ideas present in, or applicable to the work,
A contextualisation of the work,
A critical engagement with the work,
An engaging or entertaining read.
These features should be interpreted in the broadest way possible. The sense of event could be provided through an almost infinite range of approaches to responsive writing. The freedom of writing as a form to move away from literal description indicates where reviews can demonstrate their distinct value in relation to other forms of documentation. The contextualisation and discussion of ideas in an event should be seen as invitations to the reviewer to find distinct means of placing and theorising events, rather than confirming the established means of reading a work. The best reviews are often those with a strong personal contextualisiation of the piece and the application of unconventional ideas.
It is easy to write an aggressive review and pleasant to write a positive one. My tendency in the past has been to review performances that I enjoyed, and if I didn’t like it, to be diplomatic. However, this is a habit that none of us should indulge any longer. It is clear that Live Art would benefit in numerous ways if its press were more impartial and firm with their critical feedback.
The critic as artist.
As a result of the relatively small size of the sector, our reviewers most commonly turn out to be artists, academics, promoters or enthusiasts. All reviewers are different, some are objective, others aggressive and others over-friendly. None of these types or attitudes are essentially better than the other, as each one lacks the comparative benefit of the other. What genuinely distinguishes one reviewer from another is their commitment to writing singular reviews, where the form and language of the piece responds directly to the piece observed.
A major concern is the prioritisation of the critic over the work, we must be wary of the critic as celebrity as it rarely serves the work when the reviewer is considered more important. It would seem that recently the overriding preoccupation of reviews has been to respond to the failure of objective documentation and the uncertainty of language, as such the identity of the reviewer occupies the gap left behind. However, to counter this problem we do have the critic as artist; and if the critique can be maintained this would not be such a bad thing. We have the benefit of reviewers who can write creatively in response to work they have seen. So rather than try to make all reviews and reviewers produce the same kind of writing and smooth over personal differences, why not do the opposite? Encourage reviewers to respond creatively, to acknowledge their limitations of knowledge and to be subjective, to challenge the conventional form of the review, while maintaining its quality and function.
For example would we accept artists reviewing their own pieces? Or critics writing reviews based solely upon their subjective experience? Perhaps alongside broadening the kind of language used in reviews, we could broaden the kind of writing that we consider a review.
Where are the artist statements, articles, interviews, diary entries, work-in-progress evaluations? Where are the arranged conversations, conclusions of meetings and reports of networking and training days? Where are the open letters, provocations and rebuttals? Strangely they all exist, it’s all out there, but it just hasn’t been gathered, edited and arranged. We can often find these things on artist’s websites, on e-lists, or left forgotten in a notebook. Or someone says ‘Someone should write this up’ but no one does. If you think someone should write it up, then you should write it up. If the Live Art sector wants greater and more involved press coverage, the first thing to do is to provide it for ourselves, the mainstream press and listings will only join in if they feel they are missing out on something.
Expect less.
We should expect less from our reviews, less understanding on the part of our reviewers, less objectivity in fact. But far from naïve and bland reviewing, this should produce more attempts to be singular with our responses to work, and give less concern to upsetting our peers, because we can take strong criticism and more importantly we want it. We need to provide a depth of consideration and quality of writing that equals the quality and depth of the work, and most crucially while remaining critical and honest to ourselves.
Artist should not expect reviews to give them publicity quotes, and you can call me a hypocrite for saying this because I have written poster quotes and used them. However, the less a reviewer tries to reward good practice with good reviews, the less power the false economy of reviewers as judges of work will hold influence. I for one do not go to shows on the basis of poster quotes, in fact I am more likely to stay away. Either I distrust the source, dislike the manipulation of the review, or find nothing of note about the quote itself. Most publicity quotes are banal, and those most creatively put to use are the ones least intended for use on publicity.
We need to have less respect for the views of reviewers, so that artists can make use of them freely, so that audiences can engage with reviews for what they are; the limited and subjective experience of one single person. If we can do this then an understanding of, a context for and a language to discuss work can begin to emerge.
Reviews are for posterity, but for those of us alive at the moment, spending our time recording the work of others for the interest of people in the future is a task I find a little tedious and missing the point somewhat. The future can work out what was important from what we leave behind whatever that may be. We should concentrate less on information for the future, and more on multiplying our understanding of what is going on now.
Other publications will not generally seek out new material or new reviewers unless they need to, so if we want coverage from them, we shouldn’t expect them to send reviewers, we should send them reviews of everything they don’t cover. As such, the most important thing that we as artists can do is to be proactive in reviewing our work for each other, and putting it where we can all see it.
When our critical responses match the quantity and quality of our practice, and when they exceed the coverage, sophistication and accessibility of other arts press, then the reading and writing reviews will be a far more rewarding process and the press coverage of our sector would be raised.
Sources:
Goulish, Matthew (2000) 39 Microlectures: In Proximity of Performance, Routledge.
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