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Summer Vacation 2012, Asia Edition

July 23, 2012

by:

Joe Patti

So I am back from my vacation (my thanks to Drew McManus who kept an eye on the blog). This trip took me to China and Mongolia, both of which will provide content for a few days of discussion. Both countries have long and interesting cultures.

However, the most immediate and visible celebration of national culture I saw was in Korea’s Incheon Airport. Not only did they showcase the talent of their classical musicians as is common in many airports. (click on any image to get an expanded view)

They also had people wandering the terminals in traditional costume. I had seen people in costume coming out of a back room when we transited to China and assumed perhaps it was a special occasion. It wasn’t until I returned that I realized this was a regular event. There are a number of Korea Traditional Cultural Experience Centers throughout the terminal and the costumed people move between each one, gathering a fairly large following as you might imagine. They perform a short program and then pose for pictures.

Between these performances and the multiple cultural experience centers, it appeared to me that the Korean government is pretty invested in promoting its cultural assets. They are letting people who visit know what cultural resources are available and giving people like myself who are transiting reason to think about visiting in the future.

Korean Traditional Costume — Korean Traditional Cultural Experience

One thing I have enjoyed in China are some of their large, beautiful public parks. They also have some beautiful historic gardens wedged into the middle of their cities like Yuyuan Gardens in Shanghai and Prince Gong Mansion in Beijing, both of which I visited this trip.

Beijing is also the home of the 798 Art District, the site of former military factories which artists gentrified into Beijing’s version of Greenwich Village. The district has been frequently under threat of being closed down and redeveloped thanks to its geography but its prominence as a tourist attraction seems to be staving that off for the present.

An arts administrator I met while in Beijing complained that the district was becoming too commercial and the artists could no longer afford to live there. Welcome to the negative side of the market driven economy I told him.

I experienced a little of the commercialization myself during my visit. The last time I was in China, I learned about the 798 Arts District and a sculpture, The Wolf Is Coming. I was really interested in seeing the sculpture and asked my friend who had been to the district a few times before to take me.

However, this was what was in its place-

Now I wonder if she was mistaken about the location because this courtyard doesn’t look like the one in the picture of The Wolf Is Coming I linked to above. That said, there were a number of Transformers robots in this courtyard and in the windows of stores and galleries around the district.

I couldn’t take pictures in the galleries but here are a few other pictures from around the district.

This trip afforded us the opportunity to walk over to Macau which was generally a little too cheek to jowl living for my taste, but did have some wider, attractive plazas.

We just happened on the start of a parade that included all sorts of musicians, lion dancers, people bearing a long dragon on poles, characters from Journey to the West and other mythical figures I couldn’t identify. They also had hand drawn carts with little girls perched so precariously at top a small platform that the girls had to be supported by pole bearers walking alongside.

This entry is getting a little long so I think I will continue tomorrow with Mongolia and some reflections on the whole trip tomorrow.

However, while I am on the topic of precarious situations, I wanted to comment on an amusing, but seemingly ill advised hotel design trend. One of the hotels we stayed at in China offered an unlooked for artistic display of a sort–windows in the shower.

View from the throne — View from the “throne”

Yes, you are seeing correctly, the rooms offer some interesting view even with the shades closed. I thought maybe this was a trend in China but our hotel in Mongolia had the same features. I could understand if these were a romantic hotel, but both hotels were very much aimed at business travelers. Both hotels had blinds you could close, but the ones in Mongolia were inexplicably perforated which meant you could still see someone in shower unless the lights were off. (My room mate on I opted to warn each other when we going into the bathroom.)

General Musings

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Is Art Still Good For Us?

July 18, 2012

by:

Joe Patti

A few years back, I wrote some reflections on Joli Jensen’s, Is Art Good For Us? I had taken the book out of the library but have since bought a copy of that book as well as John Dewey’s Art As Experience.

The book is a very interesting look at the many definitions of the purpose of art throughout the history of the U.S. as well as the ideas about how art and democracy are related.

Reading Jensen’s work helped me flesh out my thoughts about the prescriptive model of the arts.

One aspect plays into the medicine metaphor quite well in the form of the old adage that it has to taste bad to be good for you. The value of avant garde art has always been in its power to shock and challenge. Just as consumers are always looking for a more pleasant tasting cough formula, a good portion of the public doesn’t want to pay for art that is foul to their senses. Nor do they want to be told that they will be better for it. In a way, like Mother trying to force big spoon of cod liver oil into the mouth, it treats people like children.

There will always be an audience for avant garde art. Like the pain of tattoos and piercings, its benefit is best realized by those who come to it willingly.

And as Jensen writes:

“If we gave up notions of art as social medicine, the logic of American cultural and social criticism would become unraveled. The arts must maintain their conceptual distinctiveness so that they can still be invoked as a fudge factor in criticism…”

“Invoking the arts as a fudge factor also allows us to avoid the hard work of directly defining what we value and what should be done…Current arts discourse allows us to be for all good things, and against all bad things by invoking the presumed good of the arts in opposition to the presumed bad of media, commerce and the marketplace.”

“Such a discourse has significant costs. It guarantees that our social criticism is vague, overblown, insulting and impotent. When we discuss our common life, what is wrong with it and what can be done to improve it, we need all the directness, specificity, clarity and compassion we can muster.”

There have been a lot of years of blogging since I first read Jensen’s work. I am interested in reading it again to see what new insights and understanding I may have developed since that time. I suspect (and even hope) that I may disagree with some of what I wrote in my original post.

General Musings

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Stuff To Ponder: Snobby Opera Lovers Aren’t The Problem

July 17, 2012

by:

Joe Patti

A few years back I reported on an article by Bill Ivey and Steven Tepper in which they reported that surveys show classical music lovers are more likely to have omnivorous tastes and consume a wide range of non-elite forms of music than a lover of rock music.

But I don’t cite the article to make classical music lovers feel good about themselves, but rather to highlight their suggestion that it is technology which is creating a cultural divide between the haves and the have nots.

“A few decades ago, cultural consumption required a small number of pieces of equipment – a television set and antenna, an AM/FM radio, and a record turntable. Now cable television, high-speed Internet connections, DVD-rental services, satellite radio, and streaming-audio services all require hefty monthly fees. Even consumption that feels like a purchase, like an iTune download, is often really a rental…”

According to the authors the new cultural divide will be comprised of those who have the time, resources and knowledge to “navigate the sea of cultural choice” to inform, cultivate and share their cultural lives on one side. Those who lack these things will obviously be on the other side of the divide receiving their culture via tightly controlled media channels.

This was about six years ago and at the time I didn’t see that this divide would be any more or less destructive than the cultural divide out of which we might be transitioning, even though it may involve different segments of the population.

Looking back, I don’t know that a new cultural divide has manifested yet. I don’t doubt that the potential of a technology based divide exists, I just think that there is still a good mix of options for people. Once certain channels of delivery disappear because there is no longer a critical mass of support for them and choices are more limited, then I think we will see what the basis of the divide is.

On a related subject, I am also not quite sure if technology is segmenting or broadening audiences. While people have much greater control to choose only what they want to consume, it is also much easier to immediately explore new artists when your favorite performer says they were inspired by Etta James.

Thoughts on these ideas? Do you see a new cultural divide emerging? People’s tastes becoming more or less segmented?

Arts in an Age of Technology, General Musings

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Be Perfect

July 16, 2012

by:

Joe Patti

One of the ideas I have occasionally touched upon here is the idea that perfection is expected in the arts. That line of thought really started for me with an entry I did in 2006.

Audiences expect a sublime experience for what they paid. Funders expect that everything met or exceeded expectations, a mindset Andrew Taylor suggests arts organizations created and reinforce regularly.

Artists are expected to be exceptional always, yet musician openings at orchestras still frequently go unfilled despite many highly qualified people auditioning.

Come to think of it, that sounds similar in many senses to the current situation where we currently have thousands of jobs going unfilled in manufacturing because employers expect the perfect worker and are generally unwilling to provide training to close the perceived gap.

General Musings

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