 This is the story of this bell, it's actually a pretty special day for, I guess, New York theater. Hello, I'm Mayen, I'm the associate producer of Under the Radar Festival, and to the day, 2011 is today the anniversary of Ellen Stewart's passing, and what she used to do was to ring a bell before every performance at La Mama, and we do the program, so I'm here, I'm over there, and we were working with La Mama during the festival, and Ellen passed in this amazing, glorious activities, and so we, this is actually one of the bells that we rang at every performance during the festival in 2010, so we have decided that it would be a nice way to just sort of start a little ritual, and I want to give you a new course of culture by. Hi, good morning everyone, thanks for coming, thank you Mayen, oh sorry, so I want to welcome everyone here to the second Scanning the Landscape event as part of Under the Radar Festival, today we're going to have a discussion about social practice and performance. We have gathered a very wonderful, esteemed group of people from all over the world to talk about that. They have name tags here, on the thing, on the table right, here, as well, sorry, because I want to, because the point is that there are empty chairs at the table, so one of these is that, okay, so a little bit of background, this is, we're going to be using something called the long table format, it was developed by Lois Weaver, the wonderful Lois Weaver, as a way, it was based on the film Antonia's Line, where she starts making dinner, and more and more people keep coming over, and the table keeps getting longer and longer, until eventually they have to move out into the garden, and everyone is welcome, and everyone comes and shares, and we had heard about it for a while, but then last year we did a couple of panel discussions under the radar, particularly after one on visual art performance versus contemporary performance, we got a lot of very smart people coming up and going, you know, the presentational aesthetics of the panel discussion reinforced the power dynamics that you're trying to subvert, I was like, wow, you're right, so how do we try and work against that, you know, and horizontalize the situation a little bit, so this year we're doing that, also you tend to spend a lot of time with everyone, sort of making their opening statements, and who they are, and then, you know, 45 minutes of the time is gone, so you have programs, pretty much everyone except for Bartos here, who's visiting us from Poland, and unfortunately we had an email thing, so everyone but Bartos has their bio in the program, so, and they will say who they are, and you can see that, and so you can check that out then, and ask a question, so if you mentioned there were empty seats at the table, what about the empty seats? Right, thank you, welcome, I hope you had any good questions, I'm just getting over cold, so I'm a little not at the top of my game, the empty seats at the table are for you, to come up to the table, if you have a question or a statement, we ask that, you know, when you come up, or come, I mean that's why we're trying to fill it in and try and make this a little less presentational, sort of limited architecturally with what we can do here, but if you have a question or a statement or care to participate please come, take a seat, say who you are, say your piece, if someone leaves the table you're welcome to take their seat, if they want it back, please give that back to them, you know, we ask, you know, if you look in their program you will see a guide of etiquette for the long table in the first page, and that's basically it, and then at, you know, about 125 we will conclude, but of course the conversation is never over, it's just sort of on pause until we pick it up again, I want to thank May Yin and Mark who just came in for giving us this opportunity, I want to thank all these wonderful people for giving their time and all of you for joining us for what is sure to be an exciting conversation, also today's host, so the whole idea is it's like a dinner party, and the host of today's dinner party is Ruth Wickler-Luker, she will help keep the conversation going or embrace the silence or whatever needs to happen, so thank you, and I will leave it to you, thank you, so this is our meeting, we won't be taking questions from the audience, if you have a question you have to come to the table, okay, so welcome everybody, and thank you all for being at this long table, I think we will take it just a minute to kind of say each person your name a little, just a little snitch about what you do, and then I'd love to talk about common ground, common challenges, one really exciting thing about this table is that there are lots of people working at very different, in very different spheres, in very different levels and roles in the artistic process, and the non-artistic process, so we have, I think we'll have a very interesting conversation that will be more eclectic than maybe everyone has been at in the past, so very exciting, so can we start with you? Okay, hi, I'm Ben Silvilla, I work for the Goethe Institute, I'm the cultural programs director there, so I'm in charge of the programs here in New York, and also I coordinate the programs in North America, lately I've been interested in fostering a little bit more programming in North and South America at the intersection between politics and the arts, so I'm here to represent a big institution, I'm less a curator and less an artist, but more like somebody who tries to enable stuff at these intersections, so I'm very excited to be here and to talk to all of you. And everybody here? No, no. I'm Jan Cohen Cruz. A lot of my work has been through universities trying to get young artists out of universities and into the world, you can't spend 24-7 in the studio and become an artist, but you've got to spend some of the time in the studio, I've done it through writing, through projects, through teaching and partnerships, and then through a national organization called Imagining America, Artists and Scholars in Public Life. Gonzalo Casals, deputy director of Museo del Vario, I'm going to speak in Twitter language, you know, the hashtags are cultural organizer and social art as a tool for social change and cultural producer. My name is Sarah Zatz, I'm the associate director of Ping Chonging Company, and at Ping Chonging Company one of the things I do is manage our undesirable elements series, which is an oral history theater series using real people on stage telling their stories of difference in different communities around the country and the world. My name is Michael Rode, I'm fighting a cold this morning, I apologize. I'm the artistic director of Sojourn Theater and the director of the Center for Performance and Civic Practice. I also teach at Northwestern University Theater and Performance Studies programs, and I would say that in addition to making work, I'm really engaged right now in conversations about advocating for and demonstrating the capacity of the artists to to increase civic capacity in our communities and at varying levels of the practice of democracy. My name is Hetman Kul, I teach at the Iver-American University in Mexico City and there I also work with several theater companies and dance companies which are very related to social awareness or social some sort of political social practice and I run a little festival forum there called Reposiciones which tries to question the ways performing arts are being produced and aesthetically thought of and conceived in Mexico City. I believe we're all meant to speak to each other but this part of our conversation can be addressed out of contrast. We also have a camera here that's streaming. My name is Loha and my center I'm a curator of performance in Germany and my focus is I guess on theater that is rather non-dramatic post-traumatic and dance, this is rather conceptual etc. As a dramaturg I've worked with groups like Vinnie Portugal or Richard Dierdorff and I also wrote about them and recently in the last years and months I have more and more focused on the question of the relationship between arts and politics and the common ground in between and they're very explicitly also like in really directly engaged not only critical arts. Barthos Szydłowski I'm theater director and I run the venue theater in the district post-industrial district of Krakow it's called Nowaputa and we are mostly realizing big project social artistic project for revitalization of the district and I also run the festival which is called Divine Comedy in Krakow which is mostly focused on presentation of Polish theater but it's also destined other issues has strong influence also for development of my venue and district. Hi my name is Melanie Joseph and I am the founder and one of the current stewards one might say of the Foundry Theater in New York City we both make work from scratch except we're about to do a classic text for the first time coming up but primarily we make work from scratch by commission and then produce it and tour it often or sometimes and from the beginning we've also kind of focused on what it means to create context for that work how what that work lives inside of and there's a lot of ways to think about it and one of them is I feel like the sort of confluence of what it is that we do attempts to constantly the different kind of space for artists to be in the place in endeavoring to change the world in a different kind of public space for artists to make partnerships in the remaking of the world daily. And I'm Simon Dove I'm an independent curator my background really is in running art centers and festivals both in England and in the Netherlands the last five years I was at Arizona State University where we were really reinventing the dance curriculum to ensure that creative practice and social engaged practice was central to the way students are thinking about their work and now we've developed a cross art form certificate in social engaged practice at the Arizona State so that's a real really good development. Here I'm a co-curator of Crossing the Line which is a really a transdisciplinary festival happens every fall in New York and really is about finding appropriate platforms for I guess key artists who are making important work today so that's really neat. And I'm Ruth Wickler-Licker I live in Portland Oregon and run a presenter producer of socially relevant theater boom arts now and I also work at the Martinese Eagle Theater Center in New York at the Keeney Graduate Center. So what's wonderful about all the voices around the table everyone has very different roles but it seems like a common some common ground is the desire to both honor the professional artist but also connect the arts and non-arts world and everyone's doing that in very different ways but I wonder if we could kind of start this conversation off by just talking about what your passions are and what concrete projects you're doing that take what's you know the value of professional art making and then also embrace the non-arts in order to kind of broaden the impact of the arts that's a very broad question but everyone's doing something like that in very specific ways so let's start there like you're looking at me yeah isn't everybody this is such a funny format like you were just in it's a very strange format interesting we're excited to be sitting with you but um you know when you listen to me and says oh do you want to talk about this my first impulse at the dinner party is to say yeah yeah yeah yes yes but what are you doing but but but if i'm at a thing where it's supposed to be this then i'm having to like gather on about six projects for a while so i'm trying to figure out like how to how to honor dinner party but also i want to hear what simon does i like i want to hear what you guys do well you know let me uh i'm sorry i'm i i'm so excited like i wanted to stay out i wanted to stay away from the dinner party i mean i i just because i look around the table i'm just like super excited by uh we had a great discussion yesterday uh bringing about european and us exchange and we've managed to sort of open it up uh even more uh uh with uh edwin here from mexico and wenzel's project and and i guess one of the things that really bubbled up uh yesterday was um sort of about um the challenges of practices across across borders and sort of the way we you know um are dealing with issues in different ways and i and um so i i guess i was really interested to sort of um you know think about um um how how these things have different uh different resonances in different parts of the world when i was in portland edwin uh gave a great um speech uh about the representation of the real and in latin american theater and we also had a great where they took the um your style but they only did the first few books of it and then they brought people together and then they were talking about the excitement of wanting to do it in central america or latin america and edwin i think i think that's very rightly pointed out that it might not play so well there for a bunch of um anglo americans to come down and do a socially engaged piece about justice and freedom and in latin america when we have such a rough time that's such a bad history so i so i so i think what one of the things that was really fascinating to me uh about having this amazing group of people on the table was sort of about what we were talking about is sort of that impulse and i think what melanie was talking about this impulse to to sort of do social justice sort of enact social change through art and culture but like what are the what are the what how does that impulse manifest in the work and how does it manifest in different places so i was just can i just say that in response to what you said is that i think that we put issues in on the table and that they all we all contribute so that the electricity is through the actual bounce back in conversation and that kind of you know awesome we can launch it by talking about an issue we can launch it by talking about a project whatever it is whoever throws it in there somebody's gonna extract them you know i want to know what what difficulties people are facing like i want to know like what are you wrestling to the ground in this regularly all the time like that makes you think i can't do this anymore i want to know not that i think i can't do this anymore but you know but you know i'm a little dramatic and so i have big feelings around challenges and they come up all the damn time around thinking about this stuff and also articulating it to the world and there are so many sort of troughs of meaning that we fall into immediately there's so much encrusted language that to say how do we talk about this so that how do we invite people into its consideration what are the what well that's right so now it's now it's translation that's what i feel like you're talking about translation not just of language but of context and intentions and practices so what i hear in your question is like for me when i think about the challenges particularly around working with artists and non-arts partners myself and also supporting others it's the question of how are we building languages forms opportunities for people who either come to the table with an appreciation in context for what assets artists bring or for people who are not in the arts field but are interested in that conversation and how do we in a non-sort of ownership way say well let's have a conversation together and map assets and needs on all sides of the equation and that's where i would take that question what are the challenges people are having when they're doing work in community you talked about a large community revitalization process i've never been to poland so i'm curious when you do that work in poland is it a given that everybody understands that there's value in you doing that work or you having to translate to bring your assets to the table but michael before we go there just because in the spirit of a dinner table to just get a little conversation station here would you would you um share with the dinner table the difference you make between social practice and civic practice because i think those terms are two of the definitional terms that will help us with the conversation we're having sure sure i mean for me just in trying to come up with a way for the center to do work uh in different in different locations both geographic and also sort of contextual um been sort of looking at social practice as arts-based projects or aesthetic based projects that initiate with an artist's concept or vision but that require partnership or collaboration with non-arts partners to implement or execute whether those are shows or large-term processes or events or whatever they are and that civic practice is based in relationships between artists and non-arts partners where the needs or desired outcomes of the non-arts partners are actually the sort of primary impulse driving the partnership and the artist is still bringing their aesthetics and their vision and their possibilities to that collaboration but that civic practice sort of primatizes the needs and that social practice originates and sort of pursues ethically ideally the artistic sort of vision or concept it's a continuum not in either or right and it's messy and lots of artists blur in practice but it's been helping me talk particularly to non-arts partners about the distinctions and how people work together and michael can you use the words non-arts partners non-arts partners yes you see i'm dead when i do that yeah i use it all the time i'm dead when i do that it's like saying the non-white people or the not it's like saying i say i get killed often civic sectors is what we say yeah but i'm getting i'm getting stuck on this in my work a lot too with the arts partners people are coming to me and saying well what does it mean when you're working with non-artists and how do you let people know that this is quality art and i'm getting really stuck on that and so i've been thinking about that a lot this week under the radar in the conversation and the answer i came to is good art is good art and i've seen really crappy professional art made by completely professional artists 100 professional actors professional theater companies etc and it's awful and i've seen really beautiful art made by people who are not considered artists by the art world and so for me even getting into this question of what is an arts partner and a non-arts partner is tricky because you know if you're talking to a community organization you know who are we to say that they're not artists and then american red cross though is not an arts organization the mayor's office is not an arts organization regardless of what creativity so you're talking about organization yeah sectors is different from individuals and then just the question of community is also something you know we're talking about community engaged art community and you get sharp benzala and i live in the same neighborhood we both live in jackson heights i don't know that we but i don't know that we live in the same community even though it's a real jackson height so even that conversation has something that i've been struggling with when you talk about community i'm curious to know you know like why are you guys each of you doing this because in my case we're the museum of brown people so we're supposed to do it and also people think that we're great at doing that and that's not true none of those but i mean we're just we're in the same place that all of you and then you know what i'm noticing more and more is that uh although we're working hard on this is that you know my colleagues now they realize that they have to do it for whatever reasons and they're coming to us and they're trying to copy our model which cannot be replicated so what i always ask them is that you know why you want to do it you know as opposed to you know i need to do it because of thunder or i need to do it because you know i need to show some social responsibility so i'm always curious you know again for some reasons we don't have any any other option we have to do it you know for whatever reasons but you know i always curious to know you know those that you know like they don't have for a cultural specific institution or or represent the specific community um where you guys are doing this which is the first step you know for everybody else to understand you know how to do it sorry no it's a it's a why do you do it well i do it um i i'm not an artist i'm not a curator and i guess you know i have a background in design so i always saw artistic practice as a very functional thing i uh i just i don't understand art for most of the time you know but i understand there's a tool to get something accomplished i'm very practical to that and i don't think you know i ever saw it in a different way and that helped us you know understand you know um the way that our museum has the practice is that you know what's at the center is people and the the work of art is a tool to create our experience around that um i guess we do it because we don't know how to do it any other way it's very interesting to describe yes i'm going to say there's really critical reasons why it's important and that's to do with the you know the answers a way of engaging with the world as a way of knowing the world we live in and i think as we see all the structures around us you know failing whether that be economic ones or political ones or even religious and spiritual ones the arts give us a real way of connecting as a as a group of people around ways of thinking and ways of looking at how we want to build this world and so for me it's a critical way in which the arts yet is a tool but it's a vital way in which we can engage people in artistic practice and thinking about the ways in which they want to be an active you know constituent in the way they want to build this world we're all inhabiting and i get really worried when we even us around the table start to define artists and non-artists if we're if we're thinking in these separatist ways we're already building the tools for our own destruction you know we need to find ways in which we can engage everyone in real creative artistic practice and that's really a way of entering the arts to an important part of all our thinking not just the kind of marginal entertainment that we might do on a Friday night but it's incredible it could have been the way we think about you know how society evolves and how we play a part in it so can i um there was a guy named bob alexander who founded and ran living stage in washington dc the 60s through the 90s who some people here hopefully know about but who is an amazing artist who had this thing that every human being is an artist he talked about that and it was his life and i was in los angeles in the mid 90s and i was doing a workshop for cornerstone in a in a community with folks um basically with with day workers from a lot of different sectors and i was using that i was using that quote we're all artists and we're here working together and for me it shifted the way that i that i see sort of describing other people as artists as a way for me to acknowledge that we are all creative because what i got back that day and over the course of that week was um it's great you're here this is a this is a good day do not tell us what we are i'm not telling you that you are what i do don't tell me that i'm an artist so what i do is what i do and we can talk about sort of our practice for the day where the art is something we're coming together through so i don't mean to generalize into artist and non-artist but for me the language of that and for me myself the presumption of naming someone else in that way became a real um point for me to figure out i mean everyone lives as labels i think the critical thing is that we see everyone has a vital role to play in forming and shaping the world we live in and that's what we're working with whether we define it as you know a craftsperson it doesn't matter we're all people with imaginations we're all people who have a state in this planet you know in this world we inhabit that's that's the critical and it's that it's the young it's the it's also the young artists who somehow think well if i'm an artist if i want to do something around environmentalism or if i want to work with older people that's something separate so there there also these very overly defined sense of what it means to be an artist even as we see everyone is creative every artist is something besides their artist self and this recognition that we can live these hyphenated lives that we can combine the several things we care about and that we can then in terms of you know the whole question of well how do you assess it aesthetically well the project isn't just about aesthetics you don't just assess it aesthetically if we're using the term social practice then we want to say what are the social goals as well as the aesthetic goals then we have to look at both and how we would assess it and that's i'm really struck by how much this term social practice has taken off it's like way more popular than you know beyond the people who do it than community-based grassroots there's certain terms that have kind of like this pejorative connection but social practice man everyone is really good with which i think is great but i think it's often the same thing has been going on for hundreds of years it's the current language it's in a lot of books at the moment and then it will change in a way what we call it doesn't matter as long as we understand what it is and how we can resource it and facilitate it dividing the along the two lines and i thought that you were talking about tune allows for which what agenda is leading or what you know what is the process or product that has to you know so let's open up to our guests here hi hi can you just say your name and then if you have a question yeah my name is elizabeth cost and i'm an art therapist by training i taught at nyu and i ran the first master's program in art therapy in southeast asia elizabeth you're going to have to speak up because you're back no i just mean at the table okay i'm an art therapist and i um taught at nyu and ran the first master's program southeast asia um in art therapy and um when i came back here when i returned to the us i started documenting the art of occupy which i know is quite controversial probably for many people to hear but i think in comparison to much of what i see that's professionally done and commercially done it's it's so much better and real time and engaging and interesting to me from the best theater happening in the world and i think this is happening globally um in a lot of the revolutions and changes um in the world so i just felt that was an important part to to consider in this discussion can you say what specifically is it engaging about the work what why do you say it's the most important of the moment because i feel it affects all of us you know that there's we're engaged because it has meaning for everybody we're all involved in this together you know all of these issues whether it's the environment whether it's corruption whether it's we can't afford you know our homes or whatever it is so so the quality comes from connection and engagement i want to hear from i want to respond to that but i'm more interested in this right what um well i didn't want to i don't want to take the direction off but i wanted to go back to two phrases that i heard that really were interesting to me my name is alex by the way i'm from new york city i'm a performer um and one was when you said um that the feeling you get when you say non-artist is similar to the feeling you get when you say non-white and the other one is when you brought up um the difference in the cachet of the phrases grassroots and community-based versus social practice so these are two like sort of linguistic and cultural issues that really interest me and bother me and um and kind of frustrate me like i don't know what to do about that and what i hear is that social practice the phrase sounds educated it sounds art world community grassroots sounds more non-white it sounds more uneducated it sounds like it lacks a certain legitimacy and so it's so interesting to me because it sounds like what i hear you all saying is that you want to break through that sort of barrier or that social practice is about social engagement and community-based engagement and you know i think there's a racial element here and a class element here that i kind of don't know how to talk about and articulate in a more straightforward way because if we look around the room it's pretty you know visually apparent so i was wondering if you guys have thoughts about that can i just add something very quickly this idea of artists and non-artists i'm not saying it's wrong at all there is a distinct you know i think we're immediate we're in a language transition right now and i i get i i don't feel personally really upset to say non-artist because i know what i mean when i use that with other people they pretty near kill me so i want to be really clear that i'm struggling with these definitions right now as well and also we have to have in mind that what's key in this kind of work is that you know it's a horizontal dialogue absolutely and then we can come up with a lot of definitions but then you know you have to see what on the other side what definitions are coming up for you so you can present yourself as a non-artist over all artists but then you have to see how the others are looking at you and work with that but you're trying to like establish that it's horizontal because my name is jose for as the fourth i'm a i'm a fight choreographer i'm a theater maker um we could use a fight yeah i figured that's what was lacking at the table um but but anyway um i've noticed this thing i come from a place called sagnaw michigan it's smaller town very racially divided and very um i think sort of set in its ways and this thing happens when you present yourself as a creative type where it's almost like the stigma gets put on you of saying like because it's it's very like i don't know it's very blue collar it's very homophobic it's very like white catholic that's where i came from and so when you when you sort of identify yourself outside of this bubble that they have i feel that this this color sort of gets put on you and it's hard to like what we were talking about sort of get your way in there i i've been really wondering about let's say let's say you're in a community like this that maybe isn't as embracing to the arts but you want to do something for the community you want to show them how like an arts creative practice can solve maybe a social issue that's going on in this particular town coming how do you get them to come out when they've painted you a certain way you know it is like that thing because people always tell me when i go back because there is a Hispanic community it's like use that use that just use that community you know because you won't get the other ones because you already you know there are like racial things but i'm wondering like how do you pierce how do you get in there and get them to come out how do you get them to trust you whether that whatever angle you could come in on that but i really think that this this term of translation was a really really really very central term to this discussion because it's not only about like within the art world and outside but it's within the art world there are so many different voices and things that we when we were at this preliminary workshop with where Simon was there of a project that we're planning to do with where we tried to bring together different voices from different countries in north and south america and germany and also from different disciplines it really struck us that as to how how how long it actually takes to kind of like find a find a language to to speak about these things about social practice about relational aesthetics about everything that's in there so so so this so i'm pretty sure that actually this distinction between the art world and the outside world is is is valid because because it is there but there's also all sorts of different other sort of distinction that that that i think translation is is a core question i want to kind of turn the the discussion around a little bit sorry i want to go back and take a few of the ideas that have been shared but just kind of try to turn it somewhere else i think your original question was very interesting how do we produce and how do we face whatever we're trying to do with these things and it's always the question this question with social practice whatever we would call it it always takes me back to ethnography it's always the question and you're using all these words that are very common to ethnography non-white just let's just translate it into non-artist or whatever non-community non-racially whatever so why don't we take why don't we go instead i'm always concerned with with social practice there's always the question of how pragmatic can we be can we actually do something for the community pragmatic how practical how much can we give a practical solution to whatever we're doing i think in andy's introduction and the concern that we're talking about when when the big art group was saying oh we want to take this this work outside of germany and the states which were the only two countries where they actually presented it and they said oh we want to take it to central and south america just like like that and i don't think so well maybe we can talk about this but there's a big issue there that has to do not so much with translation but with untranslatability right let's just turn it around and make it a much more ethnographic problem and not so much make it a given so it's always the question when we're talking about social practice the question always comes oh are we being ethical with the community are we being considerate enough are we being turning into those people going in the late 19th century with their cameras into africa trying to take pictures with these people and asking these questions the same it's an absurd question if we turn it around let's just go the other way let's go completely around and make it a more political question what is the the how can the community produce an untranslatable language that regardless if i live in the same neighborhood as someone else it's impossible to understand what is the the possibility or the potentialities of the appropriate work that this untranslatability can can give us out of the community when i see for instance protocols where it's lol areas in argentina it's very interesting how there's a non accessible dimension to the work and that's where the power is it's not so much in how we teach the community to do so and such but how much the community and i don't want to say teach back but how much the community can find a different aesthetic device this positive if you want to use the correct french word um to actually re-engage the the the social interaction and that's that's how where where we go back to the aesthetic assessment how do we take the because it goes back to the aesthetic assessment it would be naive to not aesthetically assess community and social practices but it would also um because they are inserted in an aesthetic in an aesthetic organization but it's it's much more for the question how can a community practice change the way in which aesthetic political distribution is being uh commonly accepted but i think it's kind of switching the the the question around i want to make sure we don't miss part of it yeah because the my experience is that all these distinctions we are talking now mostly i felt that they are trapping me i'm in a trap when i use them so uh the theater is very direct uh field i mean that's uh the the idea is just to keep this directness as strong as much as possible and the first thing i i did i just tried to avoid that we do theater opening my space opening opening venue so trying the that's that's what exactly i had this experience that people don't trust they don't identify with the culture with the culture of communication the culture is something which is outside of them and if you are trying to communicate on the social if you say i'm i'm not an artist i'm social it's also the same it's it's very difficult but it's also very important to uh to to create the the the place of the space of the identification and how to do this it's a lot of work i think it's uh it's making traps it's because we do regular theater in some way but we just doing regular performances and big festival we are reinforcing social uh direct the relation with the community for example but we don't call it like that you know it's uh there's there are two two dimensional discussions and two level of discussion maybe more even that one is uh how we just this meta language uh we do now and the second one is this direct which is for me it was very important that i have to make venue and culture in venue uh organically circulating circulating in the community that's that's the point you know how to make it in a natural way how to really have this feeling that your activity is reinforcing the community community power and just identification with community that people see together we are stronger or together we can communicate better etc etc this this this is some fantastic experience that i i had this that that really changed a lot of lives you know and with with also big satisfaction of artistic work as well so we didn't never distinguish you know it was always combined so much so much deeply that as much it was more human it was also more artistic of it in fact so sometimes we are i i think that the the general discussion a little bit losing the point i mean that's because maybe sometimes it's more simple a little bit simpler more direct how to revive this relation of the spectator because we can we can say the community but we can't be just a spectator i think that the social social discussion is now important and bringing it back to the professional professional film festival industries big theaters because it's giving you the fundamental relation which is which is a little bit lost and europe i can say that's lost when you go to many many places you can you can feel that is a this critical moment of this relation you know that is a little bit more getting ivory tower ivory tower every ever just over invested very sophisticated a lot of people around of course very vivid discussion and vivid vivid ideas but just the basic thing which is which is still reminding that the ticket was always the part of the vita quotidiana of something which is daily life and it was the really part of the society society life not only of the group of the society i don't maybe this is measure of the times but i still believe that can happen and i know that we are dealing in europe this problem is very serious i have a problem or maybe the dilemma that i would say as much as i want arts and politics to merge and have moments where they get indistinguishable i'm i'm really not interested in in weakening the term art and i don't believe that everybody is an artist i'm not interested in weakening the term politics i think a lot of political so-called political critical gage work is not is not that so so how to at the same time to get strong definitions of art and politics in a way and different ones of course but at the same time put them on the table and and and at the same time trying to bring the two things together that's i think in the way from for me and i come more from from arts than from from politics in ways or that's that's the interesting question for me and i think um that's the project that was called truth is concrete which of course the truth is a it's impossible anyway we learned that we cannot talk about truth and concrete is also very difficult so what it was in a way a self self provocation to us where we were i think very much interested are very much interested in in in artistic work like a lot of the performance i like to see i mean there are five people in the audience so it's not exactly so and and and and i as many a part of a generation where we grew up with the idea that that everything is extremely contingent and you cannot name one thing without the same name and the other and so on and the notion of truth of course is totally possible and uh so for me it got more and more interesting to say yes i know this and i don't mean we just need to step back but how do we how do we can put out statements let's say it's a working statement at least how do we do we get that's how do we get in a maybe shantelmuffian way to real um um agonistic fields where where we play out our our positions in in that and that's a bit for me the the question like how to keep strong strong definitions and at the same time bring them together and and and that's why also like maybe the situation in germany and part of europe is a bit different but a lot of the work that engages audience or brings on the society and the extremely protocol etc i i like and i appreciate and so on but i i would at the moment not call political for example germany would not be an example for me that i would mention in this table uh and and relational aesthetics would definitely be nothing i would mention this kind of homoepatic definition of politics and maybe art i'm not not really interested so that's my my dilemma i guess can you tell us a little more details about truth of concrete to make a brief it really came out of this question to see that the and we're traveling that a lot of artists and you know the situation it was before occupy but going to kairos and then they got to occupy out to Moscow where the demonstrations are that of course there are a lot of artists in there from the very first moment but the dilemma very often is as you know like are other there as citizens like only citizens or they're also in some way as artists like how can how can they use artistic practice in this situation i found this question quite interesting because that was the question that was kept coming up really in very different parts of the world and that brought us to think of also that uh but i just said that the certain notion of the political the political already and critical criticality and so on uh kind of uh um came in the arts that we were interested in maybe two towards an end so to say like you know the the idea of the the the private is the political was of course meant to politicize the private and the idea of the aesthetical is the political was politicized aesthetical but it seems somehow maybe the equation turned around in the other direction to a certain point and and and all the self-interest also of art in as a really political means kind of came came to an end so we we wanted to to see in a way with not knowing what it would be but it's a kind of self provocation what it would mean to bring together people from activism theory and art that we felt work on this small field of of direct engagement and uh which enabled us in a way also to to drop a lot of criteria that we had and find new ones and i was still finding new ones i'm not far from being there but to find out what is this small shared field with strong notions of art and activism and so on and sometimes it works sometimes doesn't work but to bring people together on this this field and for this we didn't it was a hundred and seventy hours marathon really hundred and seventy hours non-stop non-stop program very rigidly uh by the clock divided in very rigid time frame so if it was one hour it was over after one hour there was no way of living over it so it had a very strong curatorial notion which was important for me so it wasn't our institution doing that it was not trying to simulate to be occupied or whatever and at the same time it had a very open surrounding where things could happen where we would not interfere so try to really contrast these things and so we invited we really invited 200 people from really all over the world to contribute plus a hundred pounds for for other people and of course normal public and it was running around this field and and trying to define itself around this topics and and we try to uh to say for the end we try to focus on strategies and tactics because we thought in a way just this might be a possibility to stay concrete because the context of course so the translation problem is there obviously but we thought the context is coming with the people anyway they talk about it we'll be there but when we maybe talk completely about the practices maybe we find out that certain practices are quite easy absolutely with all the different contexts so that was the this project can we hear from the yeah my name is Miranda right I'm an independent producer in Los Angeles and uh I came to the table because I wanted to address this question of what are your biggest challenges that make you feel like you almost can't go forward even though you know the work is important so you must uh I produce a project called cooking oil that um is by Deborah the same way and uh has been in development in East Africa going into its fourth year um so two challenges and we have an excellent designer who Michael works with um two major challenges that we have come across one is just the sheer duration that is required to develop a project that allows you to reach a point of true uh true reciprocity and collaboration as opposed to landing and teaching which were not that's not our intention and a duration that allows for aesthetic rigor um like when working with people who are you know are we're really combining two aesthetics they're an East African and an American so it's not so simple to reverse in that way um and then the second major challenge being that of um power especially related to resources the play itself is about international release aid so you know our project may be even more sensitive to it than than others but it's bothersome that the funding for the project is all coming out of the United States and uh uh and and that just kind of intrinsic power dynamic of Americans going to work on something collaborative and all the funding based and and controlled by U.S. organization uh it's something that it's not possible for us to nap there's not a lot of uh public art spending in East Africa so it's not like it's something you can easily accomplish but it's a conversation we're having all the time so I'm just wondering if any of you have experience in dealing with kind of more sensitive um power dynamics and how you deal with the durational projects that it's going to be challenging I have I have actually I want to I'm not going to answer that question because I don't have the answer but I but but what I'm what I'm I'm I'm sort of listening and so what I'm trying to sort of connect some tissue or I don't know if that's right but like so you said looking for strategies and tactics and then it's sort of like dot dot dot and then it's like well strategies and tactics for what um is what I was unclear about and and I feel like like like there's an important and and I'm asking the table collectively how do we how do we connect this right because it feels to me that there is um you know part of the what initially led this to me was was was um uh Pablo Havuera's book a handbook for socially engaged art and I read that it's a great book but on the other hand I was like oh wow the visual arts finally discovered something that theater had been doing for 40 years he was training but he made the impact in the visual arts world I guess and I think so so what that opened up for me was this interesting universe of questions that the young lady that was sitting here before was talking about which is like well now that it's socially in practice and socially engaged art it has legitimacy in in academia and in critical theory whereas before when it was merely usually is doing stuff with the sanitation worker maybe it didn't have the same credibility or when it was when it was you know cornerstone or LAPD or whatever so so I guess I'm seeing I'm hearing these different levels of things one which is like I'm in the trenches I'm trying to do this work and we're gonna like you know and and what are the challenges there and then I'm like well I've gathered you know 200 people from around the world and we haven't really like I'd be curious to know like honestly like were they from western Europe or were they from was it ethnically diverse culturally diverse politically diverse and and having a very serious critical discourse in Europe about that and how does the critical discourse that is happening there relate to practical challenges on the ground and how do the practical challenges that we face in terms of trying and to it's a chance point like this came up yesterday it's like you know the evaluative criteria you know if we if we hold and ping-pong ping talks a lot about this it's like well if we hold you know the aesthetic criteria of western European art structures and we look at you know certain work from other ethnic origins or other cultural conditions and then we lay those evaluative structures on them um is that you know are we are we are we are we setting preconditions for failure or are we setting are we are there inherent aesthetic biases that we are then using that are so so so I guess what I'm trying to figure out is how do we sort of hold these things into discord in a way how do we take these discussions that you know okay well great now that it's called socially engaged art the academy the the the ivory tower now thinks there's value here um now how do we use that to translate to and you would know because you work in the universities you would understand this don't blame her again this is what I'm trying to pull together because and it comes up a lot because I think that like that you know I think and this is my part this is one of my things is that I said I found you know it's like like in America our our multicultural system our multicultural world is a very very different world than that in Europe or in Asia or in Latin America or in uh uh the Middle East like all these places are multicultural and we live in a global society even if you go to you know um anywhere like they're multicultural and we're all negotiating living with difference in the in these places and these have ramifications in capital allocation and our production structures replicate capital systems and um and and and and value is created through intellectual contextual material so so how do we how do we bring this world of ideas around these uh down not down to but in correspondence with actual practice on the ground and and and build a meaningful conversation so that so that people who are doing so that we can create aesthetic structures or I mean one thing I would say is at different moments we each find different touchstones you know and right now writing um I'm and you're talking about well tactics and strategies for what and I was thinking of well for a history of art that's not only imagining but also doing and I'm quoting this great quote Muriel Rookizer quote Muriel Rookizer in the life of poetry she said because you have imagined love you have not loved because you have imagined brotherhood you have not made brotherhood you may think that you have but you have not and I just love that quote and I feel it's relevant to what you're talking about Andy that it's not of course the imagining is wonderful and important I'd never say leave a static center and sit at this table but it's not enough it's not the same for those of us who want our work to be both an imagining and a doing we have to go beyond what happens in in the small room now depending on what's happening outside the room we have different opportunities lots of things make it different so that's the one thing just want to make three things I something that you said way early ago made me think of Bill T Jones you know like how do you bring people in who you would like them to be part of it but they don't want to be part of what you're doing and I just remember when he was making still here and he said the questions that I have can't all be answered in the art world how do people live with terminal illness and he needed to go outside the art world I mean I think that need is like super important what is it and if we go out with a genuine need people can feel the difference yeah how do we get them into our club like we're in a club here how do we get out but the club is a bigger club because it's an ecosystem it's not there is much part of it because it's Bill T Jones as a human being trying to live with with eight being HIV positive it's not because he's an artist there are many people living with terminal illness whether artists are not and that was a reason to bring them together because he is an artist and wanted to make a piece about it and then just the last thing I wanted to say to you in terms of the problem with who's funding what I just heard this great woman speak Shana Ratner if anyone heard Liz Lerman and and jelly will it joes all or the other night at the Y talking about poverty and wealth and this great woman who works in thinking about wealth she says well there's seven kinds of wealth money's not the only kind of wealth and if you have a progressive way of trying to eradicate poverty then no one kind of wealth can wipe out another so for example one the example she gave was so so in the in the pursuit of economic wealth you can't wipe out natural wealth the natural resources and take them all for yourself so once you start thinking of the different kinds of wealth and who's contributing what I mean I think you're you're there first of all you're working with Shannon who's great and and and but secondly you're talking about reciprocity and I found that a very helpful thought the different kinds of wealth I think that you know to answer a little bit your question is that in order for academia to kind of like address it they need to there's a new practice here and rather than talk about the practice they need to embrace embrace the practice and this is an example of these that's horizontal of these it can be 50 percent of the people that should be in the conversations not here absolutely they're not well yeah they're not art you know like you know if you look at this as a partnership of artists and non-artists or however you want to call them we need to stop doing this we need to open the conversation right and then to answer both of your questions is that you we all have to forget that you know this is our project we have to come to the table with an extremely open agenda and just knowing you know where your resources and you know where is it that you can give and it might take you know for you to work with this other group and you know work the way they want to work with the with the objectives that they want until you build trust and you know and you build equity and equity is not about 50 50 equity is you know how many resources you have and how many we have and what is it that we can put on the table I want to speak to something in response to Gonzalo because Gonzalo partnered with Pinchang company to do something that I feel really was successful to your question and to something Simon said earlier about it's not just why do we do this but what can we do with this so Pinchang company made a piece called Secret Survivors which was working with survivors of child sexual abuse and we weren't sure who was going to come to that we weren't sure who was going to tell their story and we weren't sure who was going to hear especially in the arts funding world and in the traditional theater world who is going to show up to hear these stories and Gonzalo saw a reading of it and he invited us to El Maseo to present to El Maseo now this on the surface doesn't this wasn't a piece about Latino survivors of sexual abuse this was a piece about all survivors of sexual abuse so on the surface it doesn't necessarily appear that maybe it's the right fit for El Maseo and he invited us into his theater to do this and was able to make it free so anyone who could come could come and it was sold out a month in advance but the interesting thing about it was that the people who came they weren't coming to see Pinchang company necessarily they weren't coming because they'd been to El Maseo before necessarily they were coming because they wanted to hear about survivors of sexual abuse using art to address this issue that isn't being addressed in the mainstream art world and that isn't being addressed in the mainstream media outside of a sensational news version of it you're not hearing from the survivor's voices so I feel like what Gonzalo was able to offer us as a theater company was to go into a space that we're not normally in to bring an audience to us that it isn't normally coming to us and in that piece in that collaboration I really feel like we were able to cross a lot of these barriers and so the question of you know why do we do it and why is it important is we're telling stories and everything told elsewhere that's what we can offer and addressing these issues through art and that's what we can offer just really quickly now that we're bringing it back down to like practicality as opposed to theory could you maybe explain the how of that how did you fill the room well partly the people who are in the show are engaged with their own communities and they're each acting as their own advocates to their own stories and so we have five survivors each one of whom was able to reach out to their own networks we had an audience of people who already were engaged with King Changan Company or were already on the El Maseo engagement and we reached out to the network of sexual violence intervention organizations in New York City and got the word out and we made it free and I think I mean I know we can't always make it free but if you can make it free a lot of people are going to come to the table that can't be a professor on otherwise and I think there was an alignment of values you know it wasn't necessarily when I decided to join that project it was because I thought personally that you know I needed to be done and I think everybody you know in this partnership and not only the two of us but you know the performance and everyone everybody believe in values around the display and I think you know that that transpires and that's you know how many networks can get together and you can just get 600 people. We have one person to give we haven't heard from so can we hear from you. Thank you. My name is Nick Nasrath I am a ceiling designer and I'm co-artistic director of the assembly and we're going to live in theater right now. I was thinking a lot about Jan's question or sorry Melanie and regarding why what the challenges are that we face of course the one that really strikes me is that there seems to be a general prejudice against theater that is involved social practice that is a somehow is lesser of an artistic form and I think that you know I hear what Florian says about wanting to keep these really strong distinctions between politics and art but I think part of part of keeping those strong distinctions is that there's this assumption that art in general is not political or social and that somehow we have the mainstream work and work in general tends to have a neutral character which I think is a problem because you know we have a lot of work that's happening all over the place that is contributing to our society in some way and reinforcing norms or not and those and it's really in these times that we can find these these niches that have yet to be spoken and articulated that we find the most potent change sometimes but in general I find that there's still room to basically articulate art as a place in general that is having a political and social impact all the time. I don't think that I'd not just be performing I don't think that I don't think that anybody is saying that the work isn't that work isn't I think isn't inherently political I mean I think that it's such a huge fraught topic in terms of like you know I think that I think I think for me I think that what is political is not I mean it's interesting it's like there's sort of traditional theater narrative storytelling which is one form of addressing kind of like issues in one form but the production the way an art project is made is political you know the way it is funded is political the the the presentational aesthetics but like everything has a political balance and I think what's what's sort of rising up for me as I'm listening to everyone is actually this really interesting distinction between people talking about creating more traditional works of art that engage with social issues or perhaps use non-self-identified art people non-self-identified artists as participants in the making of that work and then and then also a sort of idea of non-traditional art making that investigates these ideas around politics and aesthetics and social issues and you know I think like when you talk about and this is where sort of Michael's distinction about civic practice versus social practice comes in and starts to become helpful I think when you talk about the work of a remaining protocol the way that they do you know with what's 100 people in 100 percent you know like that's a they're very specific mode of sort of socially engaged work and I think I think I think one I think yeah point out something that actually we need to ask ourselves a lot of questions in terms of as art makers you know two sort of things that have bubbled up for me in terms of what contemporary is versus like regular theater you know it's contemporary practice tends to exist you know to me there's two things one is it's interrogative and one is that is investigative right so it's investigative meaning you know using um the sort of devised theater idea thank you idea uh you know these people this place this time what are we going to make so there's this idea of like we're going to investigate something we're not starting with an answer and I think when I listen to sort of this idea like I think that's actually a great complication in socially engaged work are you coming in with an answer and saying why aren't you into what I'm into I want to offer you this or is there something that exists in the world that is curious like Bill T is like I've got to learn more about this and I think those of us who are constantly bemoaning the lack of audiences you know should think about pointing our attention outside of what we do and into the world as investigative agents the I'm almost done and then um the other piece is interrogation which is like the interrogation of the assumptions around what we do are we in a theater are we not in a theater what are the assumptions of the theater if we're not in a theater why are we there what does time mean what does space mean what does embodiment mean what are the words that I think I'm saying actually mean and and and when we start to interrogate those questions then we start to develop a contemporary aesthetic which doesn't take any of these things for granted so so I think there's a tension here that we need to as our people involved in this arts ecology need to start asking ourselves both you know both directions one is like you know because oh the thing about Pablo's book was that he talks about this project where you know if you go into the community and you do the video work and then you know you create a protest but nobody from the community actually comes is it successful artwork and it's like well I don't know you know it's like and to me the fact that you would even ask that question is sort of like pointing to the problem right it's like if you make the video and you stage a protest for workers rights and beings and then you put it in a gallery and all the art people come and look at it but nobody in the actual community actually like was affected then it was not successful no matter how many you know people in our form say it was so I just want to interrogate something I'm Daniel banks I'm a co-director of dna works and co-director of theater without borders and I teach in the master's in a flight theater so there's a couple pieces that I'd like to try to tie together because I think it's very important we started off with some language around non-educated versus educated non-artists versus artists and that really got the conversation going that language is actually dialectical thinking if it's not black it's if it's not day it's where did dialectical thinking come from it came from a tradition of western rationalism where when did western rationalism begin what major world event was happening at the time that western rationalism began anybody oh professor well no I think it's really important that we understand this connection the colonialism colonization the the the chattel slave trade so as certain european philosophers were creating the language by which we would determine who people were in the world we were being taught to think in these dialectics so that one quote-unquote race which doesn't biologically exist if people was good and one was bad one was smart and one was ignorant so taking a page from king's work we're even at this table using a language to try to discuss our work that forces us into a binary of separation that that automatically separates us jung where writes in this play bosons in the black there's it's a loose quote but one of the characters who's trying to communicate with a father who's starting to have some dementia says I just hope that I'm going to find the right combination of words that's going to get through to him and unlock it and and I'm going to be able to have a real interaction with him he's going to know how much I love him and I'm going to care for him so I think words language locks unlocking and I just want to advocate for spectrum thinking and spectrum speaking that that we as practitioners and artists who have who have championed our capacity for creativity take responsibility for speaking in a way that that creates a space for all people and that that that everyone is literate in something everyone has been educated in something by some formal or informal institution that makes them an expert at something now I'm now putting another European person but that's okay you know all people are philosophers so it may not be that all people are artists but first of all what is our definition of art who gets to wear that title I can't tell you the number of institutions that we go into and we insist uh not insist but we gently gently coerce our place to not have you know workshops with just the quote-unquote the artists or the student artists students faculty and staff volunteers staff and docents you know that we're bringing people together and you know we all know how many people are working big jobs who actually are brilliantly talented artists who because of the economics of art don't make their primary living through it so not only are there actually I would say you know studied trained artists who are looking in other places in in the work that we do but um you know I'm really fascinated by this question of like on one side of the table if you call people artists your your or if you call people artists it's coercive and on the other side of the tip I mean it's just really fascinating I've we you know the creating a space for people's creativity to show up finding the right combination of words where people step into their creative beings and their creative selves and produce as I think it was you or the person sitting there before you saying you know really brilliant work from a non necessarily trained formally trained perspective how do we find the language that actually in this particular kind of work maybe not in all settings but in this particular kind of work embraces all possibilities and leaves room for people to show I mean Daniel you were saying that it's always this binary right well not always but no no but I know it was how we're talking and I agree with what you're saying but I want to go and take it a little bit more radical what if you don't resolve this thought because I think the problem is that we're always talking in this binary world thinking that this is the the solution of it that's right and going back to your question and taking it through more practical approach as someone said how do you do with when you have to go with american funding into whatever other country that is over it's going to hate the american country um well we wouldn't have a trip um so what what do you do with it I think the best way to do it is not to assume that there's a transparency in how the funding goes back and forth because that would be to assume this very simple dialectics rather radicalize it and make make this difference very evident there's going to be a difference that's why I was talking about I'm translating whatever I was trying to say it means what I'm trying to say is there's always going to be a part of the other culture that is never going to be understandable to you and there's always going to be a part of you there's never going to be understandable to them if you assume that principle I think that very creative and powerful work can come up from we're never going to be able to deal with this I wonder what from a different from a multinational perspective what you two are working on in latin america vis-a-vis what I mean well actually um actually maybe maybe essentially it's precisely this moment in which some sort of like hybridization of knowledge or like new cultural production might come up and this is actually what we've been talking about like oh sorry um how what what um what what what well maybe maybe we can I can I can just say what we what we what we did in in Bogota so what we want to do is we want to yes we the good institute we want to we want to start a bigger project that actually involves activists artists curators from from these all these different fields and and we had a preliminary workshop in in Bogota where we invited people from different disciplines from New York from also from Los Angeles from from Bogota from Caracas and from Sao Paulo in order to to to find a way to develop formats which would be which would be actually good formats to to approach this this whole field and I think a very sort of important point is that there is this intelligibility of there's always like a core of intelligence in unintelligibility of the other and of the of the of other fields of the other cultures of the other of the other subject that we kind of encounter and and this and this this unintelligibility can actually be the moment which can be very productive for artistic production and this is actually what I think maybe you want to add a little bit about so what about for me and I think it comes back to this whole question about why we're all involved in this practice is that actually it asks you fundamentally to step outside of all your assumptions about what you're doing and to look at you know what is the framework what are the ways in which I can engage with this work how can I read it how can I identify what's going on I need to understand the context I need to understand the language I need to understand the frameworks from which those artists are coming and I need to understand them the frameworks in which that particular project is being made and actually I think that's critical not just for the way you think about socially engaged practice but all artistic practice that we we leave our assumptions aside and we say how do I really engage with how do I understand what is going on here and I need to understand a lot about the the context because that often is informing a lot of the content I need to look at the kind of participants and what skills are being brought in order to look at the intentionality of the piece and what it's saying both for the people involved in it and how we are reading it and I also need to look at how is it being resolved you know what what systems is it engaging with and I think that's a healthy thing for us to do about all what we look at otherwise we end up with notions that in a sense perpetuate the practices that have built you know these these buildings you know a lot of the nature of art support internationally has been built around creating very specific kinds of practices within very specific kinds of architecture which frame the way not only a work is made but the way it's received and I think you know there's something great for you know Florian to have five people in his audience to see something but it says something about how sustainable and how engages that with what else is happening so I think the the bigger question is the infrastructure we've created over the last 200 300 years to support the arts are fundamentally challenged by a lot of social engagement practice and that's why it's important because it makes us think about what is the work how is it for how's it going to be seen by those people you know touring doesn't cannot really exist you know we need to rethink all the mechanisms absolutely that's really crucial absolutely can I just say on the sort of semi-pragmatic side in relation to this also that you know Andy brought up a lot of things about form we haven't we haven't actually really talked much about form because we're talking about other interesting things but of course it's all connected and I just want to I want to say that I feel like one of the reasons certainly that I and I think a lot of artists more and more are exploring different kinds of engaged work is that if we look at theater as not just being plays but being a spectrum of performative activity that is as unknowable as whatever the next artist can imagine then actually collaborating with individuals and entities that don't come as artists to the table mean that we have the opportunity to discover forms that we do not currently know so I know that you know we have a project that started as a sort of social practice show with community members around urban change where the audience planned a city and it was five years ago and now five years later that show has turned into a modifiable form that we're working with planning commissions all over the United States helping them work in diverse underserved communities on how to use this arts-based project to actually do planning for how resources will be allotted in those communities so whereas we thought we made this thing that was the thing now it's actually a thing keeps changing is it a world community is it an urban community is it a suburban community is it in Kansas is it in Oregon we are we are learning through that practice because it's now sort of in service to but we are still collaborating and conceptually developing it with so I just want to say part of what feels like it comes back to what you said Andy some projects start with a goal of expression and they know what they want to express or they do the digging to get to the thing they want to express and some projects start as inquiry and the goal isn't to complete the inquiry and then share the results the goal is actually to make more inquiry and to invite others into a shared inquiry and for me formally those distinctions not to be binary because I really agree with the spectrum approach but I do want to say that I can delineate much much much work in our respective fields on projects that have at their core and impulse to express a known or discovered quantity versus those that seek to continue being curious and for me that distinction or that spectrum really really helps me get a handle on where the work is coming from and on where the sort of openings and learnings are to share I want to tag on everybody first of all Michael absolutely I mean I feel like if anything is going to determine how I understand aesthetics it's that who's inquiring and who you know who's asking and tearing their hair out and who actually has something they already figured out that they're burning to share okay fine the a couple of things in respect to measurement in respect to the word strategies in respect to how do we think about moving from local to international etc I mean one is that and going back to also what Daniel was talking about in terms of binaries that grew out of colonialism there's also the transactional binary that performance contains right we do something you come right in in many ways there's it's a transaction and it's and it's also in in this time of late stage capitalism which has a whole other kind of meaning attached to it so I think that one of the things that certainly I've been thinking about for since I started the foundry is like what what is the beyond transactional position of what it is we do and so and I tried to say this also back to you when you wrote to me about my piece that I wrote in howl round one of the things that I'm trying to learn to do is put aesthetics aside because I am the only person that's responsible for my aesthetics and as you know what I mean I don't want to influence the way aesthetic practice is taken or not taken by a given person I but I do think about the dimensionality which Daniel calls a spectrum but I actually think about it as a personal dimensionality which doesn't only apply to artists it applies to everyone in the world if we're going to live in the world we're more than the sum of what it is we do right and so I I wanted to talk about measurement in outs I want to think about measurement outside of these transactional processes and think about it in a kind of dimensional way which is why I wonder and also I don't think that all of us there's no such thing as a model if we can get rid of anything can we please please get rid of the word model because that also starts that whole bullshit leadership thing we've got the best way and now everybody shouldn't you know if we're going to talk about horizontalism we're talking about an ecology of practice of thinking etc it's the only way we're going to change the world enough of the models but that to say how we begin to I mean I wish I could spend a week with you all like I'm dying to talk to you about everything because I'm on fire every day trying to figure out how to invite people where's that young man like how do you invite people into the inquiry like what's the flavor and how do we share the invitation with other people and not be the only inviteers and I also think that's one of the things that we're doing right now I mean we do a lot of different things but one of the things that we do we're doing right now is this program called the audience ambassadors it's a kind of corny title but it actually grew out of something that Lear de Besson they started many years ago called tickets for the people but we took it and what we've done is because our relationships are primarily right now being built with social justice community with low-income communities organizing for social change we have hired organizers to invite to organize people in their communities to go to the theater not just our theater the theater and so we're going all over town and we're seeing like crap and we're seeing amazing things and being able to have the conversations afterwards not about do you like it or do you not like it not about will you buy a ticket to that theater in a week not about like but really about the meat of what's the experience here what you know I mean I can't tell you guys it's been an amazing experience we're not doing the inviting they are all we're doing is scrambling around trying to get free tickets all the damn time which is hard but because there's 50 people right who's going to give me 50 tickets all the time but I guess all this to say that there's a kind of dimensionality about who we are as human beings we happen to be I happen to consider myself to call myself an artist but I think economists feel the same way you know what I mean and I think that considering our dimensionality outside of the measurement of for example we're going to come for free this time and next time we're going to pay or we're going to build a relationship with this community and then they're suddenly going to come to every show I do work like all this bullshit it's we unfortunately are at time so we actually we're not even going to be able to get to the table but this conversation can continue to end it can continue anywhere everywhere we have to go three hashtags three hashtags co-definition of success yes decolonize our practice yes and understand our role and limitations and one question what happens when you go home that's what I think melon is asking after you leave the theater after you leave the art what happens next and you can all discuss this in the lobby or here thank you everybody