12:
Should we give a fuck about what our audiences think?
Should we be appealing to the tastes of our audiences? I had this conversation once with a friend. He suggested that The Substation’s shift towards creating shows that would “involve and appeal to the community more” was a flawed idea because if every exhibition space starts aggregating their shows towards a lower level just so that it can earn the recognition from the public (who is the public?), we would not be pushing art-making or exhibition-making, hence why are we even doing what we are doing?
Another part of the argument for not giving a fuck about the audience is that who the fuck is this audience? Often we speak of an invisible public—a mysteriously general demographic of people. This public that we imagine should also be acknowledged to be constantly shifting in interest and level of art literacy. To use the rhetoric of catering to the public is often also a suggestion towards simplifying or watering down art to the point where it is easy to consume. This is something I think most of us are against.
Isn’t it then more productive to pursue quality, benchmarked by our knowledge of the arts rather than by audience recognition?
I’m thinking about this constantly with regards to the space and the exhibition we are running at —Tom. Should we, as a response to low visitorship and interest from the school community, compromise our decision to make challenging and non-conventional shows that reimagine exhibition-making?
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