TCG Conference Day 1: RAW NOTES

Okay so here are the notes I took from Day 1 - or really I guess day 0?
The "Pre-Conference" in Washington DC.
TCG: ACTivate Change: Bridging Cultural Exchange and Creativity
info on entire conference www.tcg.org

There is a ton here - so good luck! (maybe good subway reading)
Also a note - if it is in quotes - it is a direct quote and I am pretty sure I got it word for word.
If it is not in quotes then it is a mixture of their words and my own words/understanding/interpretation of what they were saying... so if you want to quote people directly I suggest pestering TCG for the recordings they hopefully made and will be posting as podcasts for all to listen to.
And these are "notes" taken as I was listening - so I apologize in advance if sometimes things get cryptic, but hopefully they will be useful to puruse for those of you who couldn't make it down.
TCG is supposed to be putting together an official summing up of the proceedings sometime soon.

okay here goes:

WHERE ARE WE?
"in a box within a box floating on rubber" (Chris Jennings MD of the Shakespeare Theatre Company)- literally that is where we were as we were listening to the keynote speech - its a neat image so I thought I would pass it along... we were in the The Shakespeare Theatre Company's newly opened Sidney Harman Hall and I made one of the acoustics design guys tell me all about it at lunch. Someday we are going to have a space for contemporary performance in New York that is sonically isolated from the rest of the world! - but I am getting off track...

Morning Session

Keynote Speech: Jeanette Winterson
Notes / thoughts I thought were interesting:
"theater is a confrontation"

language barrier - because language has been parsed - the upper class having access to the rich more complex language, the rest being relegated to a lowest common denominator language of "soap operas" and cliches.

art has to get beyond the obvious - otherwise it isn't art

"art is challenging that is its nature - it tells the truth"

artist wants to be "in a place of authenticity" - as opposed to "spin"

false assumption: art is about time & money to spare

response: creative life is central to all to any life
live art is not an invention of the over-educated bourgeoisie
it is an invention of cave men - of humans in ages of hunting and gathering survival.

art is not elite, excess, luxury
"art is an expression of our human-ness both in the making of it and in our participation in it."

"art by its nature is a different value system"
"art lives in a permanent present"

"making time for art is not about spare time, its about real time"

"art is a kind of mouth to mouth resuscitation" - it gives us back the energy to make change in the world - and to face the chronic crisis of our lives, not just immediate crises.


Q&A
1. comment from an artist from Colombia -
despite years of internal warring - she read a recent study that placed Colombia towards the top of 'happiest' nations - and she thinks it must be because art (esp music) has such a central place in their lives.


2. Winterson's response to someone else
"thankfully, God is religion-proof"


3. comment from audience member
Belgrade- people defying curfews in 1999 - to see art - because it was the "only way in the midst of all this chaos that we could maintain our sanity"...

W's response:
two bags -
1 = time & money
2 = life & death
where is your problem?
art is in #2 bag


4. Question from audience
what is the place of "bad art"?
is the act more important than the result?

W's response:
'there's no such thing as good art or bad art - there is just art or not art
art "does"
a good test of art - is that it goes on speaking long after any contemporary relevance is passed.
the thing is to expose ourselves to as much stuff as possible - it gives us a way of developing our own critical faculties - to determine whether or not it is the "real thing"
its the self-regarding mediocrity that gets in every one's way.
you can't know too much, have read too much, seen to much
start with the stuff that has stood the test of time and build your own understanding and critical eye from there... don't listen to anyone else...


5. W's response
keep doing good work
don't apologize for it
there is no debate about whether or not art is "important" - it is "important" period.
its not an optional extra
believe it is central and absolutely necessary to a civil society, to a cultural society
you can have no ambivalence about this

"anybody who works in the arts and says they don't have time to go to the theater needs to get another job"



Teresa Eyring's take away -
its not the creative economy
its the "creative continuum" - connecting people across all kinds of strata
(creative continuum is a term W used.)
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Next Up:
Cultural Exchange
Opening Panel Discussion


AEA Kathryn Lamkey's "brief"
changes in the use of media - between AEA and its bargaining partners
theater is a "live medium"
- it is difficult to translate into other media
- and yet how we sell theater and promote it now involves new media
- but we have sister unions (SAG & AFTRA(?)) who's jurisdiction is media
- not recording - now calling it "capture"
- need to be able to get media for public relations, for sales, tours etc. from beginning of process to end result
- media package - allows the capture of some rehearsal, backstage, and production itself for use in public relations - in exchange producers pay a media fee to actors.
- changed because they realized that the productions that did not use AEA performers had access to better promotional media because they didn't have the same limitations.
- media can be used for website materials, festival etc applications
- still some limitations
- recognizes that these are techniques necessary for theaters to keep earning income and receiving grants and employing actors

- also short engagement touring agreement - national for "economically challenged" groups... not yet ratified, but they are working on it.


Frank Hodsoll - Resource Center for Cultural Engagement... "brief"
Has been increasing support in - Cultural Diplomacy at the State Department (& Defense Dept)
Lobbying effort to get the funding up to $25 million - starting w/ Americans for the Arts
- RCCE is meant to be a web hub for knowledge and collective practice
- nature of public exchange, best practices, opportunities, best partners, funding

- (in a previous incarnation FH had a film-makers exchange program)

to communicate with him further about these things..
- fhodsoll@verizon.net
can't find a website for them though ... so not sure how to give you reader types more access to what they are putting together... sorry!


Damien M. Pwono's "brief" from Aspen Institute's Global Initiative on Culture and Society
- cultural diplomacy: misunderstood often as an instrument of propaganda, how can we rethink cultural diplomacy and create a new path for its development
- global convening to look at cultural diplomacy
- a cultural diplomacy master's program
- culture "on the move" - a new trend of cultural institutions having satellites throughout the world...
- this year they will be in Spain Sept 15 - theme "Culture & Security"
aspencdf.org
- culture can be a bridge and it can be a "bullet"
- cultural dimensions of global security - the issues of ethnicity & identity based conflicts, civil liberty abuses in the name of culture...
- security of art & culture circuit, how art can prevent conflict or heal after conflict
- security of artists and of cultural institutions becomes a necessity because they are part of national / human security
- cultural diplomacy and creativity
- also part of the discussion is going to be about resources & about dance diplomacy


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Break-out session B
"Navigating Cultural Exchange"

Philip Hinberg (PH) from Sundance Institute's Theater Program (Moderating)

no one anticipated the number of people wanting to participate in the international rack - indicates perhaps a "movement" towards international exchange across the arts in the US.

Olga Garay (OG) from LA's DCA - where she started an international exchange program
Cultural Exchange International
- grant from Durfey? Foundation - 150K, City double matched it - total up to hopefully 600K with the rest of the partners ("Dutch, who will fund anything that looks like art") - more partners who are excited because they are not used to Americans having $ to do art. Americans never have $ to send artists abroad, or to bring internationals to US. There is a perception that the Host country has to pay for US artists, and the Native country has to pay for Internationals to come to the US. She is trying to change this with this new program.
yes people you read that right - she has managed to raise 600K give or take for international artist exchange activities for LA artists - COMMISSIONER LEVIN & HONORABLE MAYOR BLOOMBERG, THE GAUNTLET HAS BEEN THROWN> What are you doing to match or compete with LA?


Melanie Joseph (MJ) from The Foundry Theater
international work is simply natural to art making
- its not a movement (MP i.e. not an economic model)
- the lean in you get when you sort of get it, but don't quite get it - reason not to subtitle...
- World Social Forum
- what do individual artists do in the crossing of borders?
- The Foundry - commissions, develops, produces work from scratch
- interested in individual artists who go out into the world and make the connections themselves and then bring them back to producers...


Daniel Banks (DB) from DNAWORKS among many other things
consciousness of what is "international" and what is "national"?
What he does through DNAWorks
- directs all around the world various projects
- works with emerging artists, devised & hiphop theater to think about leadership training and community development
- takes artists into non-art environments and work with people in that community
- remove artists from the institutional realm of art, and back into the community, social structure of the people in the community
- is this therapy? or is it meaningful artistic engagement in opposition to commercial chattel call art?


PH wrap up of introductions...and what he is doing at Sundance.
American artists were suffering because they were not being exposed to international art and things happening outside the US borders.
East Africa 5-year initiative


Q&A Discussion
PH: Cultural Diplomacy
players in this world -
artists (artist initiated?)
institutions
funders
government
- what is the relationship amongst these players?

MJ:
not necessarily artist lead/drive
- no individual artist support in this country really - likely more institution driven.
- but the artists should be the leaders, otherwise "we don't have anything to produce", some weight of that leadership potential should sit with the artist.

OG:
federal government = Bizzaro world, right now, there is a window in though.. look at Obama's arts platform (from campaign) there is wording in there about needing to send more US artists abroad, in order to increase their range of experience and cultural diplomacy... we have to change the dialog now, because that window is there -
Robert Sterling Clark study - looking at percentage of funding that goes from funders to international projects - less than 1%.
Artists have continued to do the work at their own expense, and it is wrong that the vital cultural exchange is happening without institutional support.
Her program was viewed as a 'boondoggle' - for mamby pamby artists to go on a vacation junket... - she parallels it to public works research where they send water plant folks to other countries to research how they do water treatment...
It can't just be about Arts Education.
In the presenting world - international exchange has been a vital part of things, now everyone else seems to be catching up...

PH:
Travel and cultural exchange cannot be cut when budgets get cut, especially if it is a core value of the institution.
How do you answer the question: why is travel necessary? why is cultural exchange absolutely necessary? why is exchange with local diasporic populations not enough?


DB:
Speaker's Bureau? State Department Grants.... not yet a protocol for how art gets made, in a way that could fit in to the speaker's model (when someone is brought over to speak at something).
Theater without Borders - what does it mean to be a parachute artist? what is the integrity and moral responsibility in being a parachute artist?
- WHEN ASKED GO. because even a day can make a difference in the lives of those you make art with...


Q/A/Comment from audience:
1. go on a research trip first - before you bring the theater there - do exploration first, then make... takes between four & five years to make a piece.
cultural people as "non-state actors" - not just terrorists...

2. issue with taxation & visas - be careful - there are all kinds of fun things that can become really problematic hurdles.
- takes 2 years to make shows for the people she works with
- question: are we looking for the exotic in our cultural exchange? or are we looking to share and create similarities across boundaries...

3. trans-national
in many contexts the national borders are imposed and don't necessarily reflect divides between people on the ground including artists

DB:
there is a sub-sector of the art world actually collaborating on-line via social media....this helps overcome visa, borders, and funding limitations -
MJ: America is behind in this... its been happening in other countries for years..

MJ:
it takes years to actually make a work.
and how do we support the work for those many years?

FH (from opening panel discussion Center for Cultural Research) -
yes they want artists, institutions are easy to find, artists are harder...

PH:
How do you measure success when you are doing international collaborations? esp. when it is a long tail project.


4. hurdle: language barrier - English to English...
also - avoid cliches - that US has money but no culture, world has culture but no money - instead focus on the personal need - why do you go where you go.


5. beyond your "pathetic impossibility excuse for artistic expression"
what do you do for the community over there... don't go just to "score"
when you go just to take from them, just to make your work, you are abusing them, and the people who are financially supporting your trip/work.


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had lunch with Dijana Milosevic and Philip Arnault and a number of other lovely people.
we discussed all kind of things including
- a reservation about this notion of "cultural diplomacy" that some have, is it state art? i.e. is it more than being an extension of state ideological expression? can it be benign, is "cultural exchange" a safer/less potentially controversial term.
- why do we do cultural exchange/like to take our work internationally? is it just part and parcel of being an artist? is it the only viable economic model for art? is it because there is something inherently valuable about going abroad? or is it just because you have to meet this person - they are interesting, and they happen to be over an ocean, so what?
- government funding models - National Funding, Regional Funding, City Funding - which is a better strategic use of our time to go after?


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Afternoon Session

Think Tank
I'm calling it: Defining our terms

sadly most of the responses went too fast for me to understand or write down... but the TCG staffer wrote the highlights on a paper - so maybe they will share those later...
but here are mine (MP) and some highlights I did manage to pick up....

Theatre:
MP: personal def (i.e what I imagine when I say the word) = contemporary performance, that leans more heavily on text than on choreography
Erik Ehn (former?) Dean at CalArts - something along the lines of = 'a permanent or temporary disturbance that happens in a live context'
Yoko Shioya from Japan Society: "Human being's live production which is language oriented"


Cultural Exchange:
MP: project in which cultural values are shared and mutually expressed



Cultural Diplomacy:
MP: project with the aim of sharing one's own culture with peoples of other cultures
EE again former Dean at CalArts - diplomacy is somewhere between a lie and a platitude...



International / Global:
MP: International = a project that involved artists who have passports from more than one country
MP: Global = a project that reaches audiences across the globe???


Producers / Presenters:
MP:
producers - fully back a project, funding it in large part (possibly staging it)
presenters - cooperatively commission and offer space to a project

s.o. from audience not sure who...
Producer = creates / assembles a work of art
Presenter = gives a work a stage and delivers it to an audience
3rd term is posited : Commissioner


Wrap-up and lead in to break out group....
What is the value of international cultural exchange?

- Quoting Lucien Bourjeily from Lebanon "If I have an idea I just do it."

Come up with a list of the things that must be said about the importance of international cultural exchange.


: NOTEs from break out group 1 (ORANGE) Answering that question in red:
MP's summed up bullet points that were read out after the break out session:

1. If theater is to keep up with an increasingly fluid world it must be universal, in motion, and carry with it intense integrity that stems from its very immediate locality.

2. International collaborations & exchanges force transformations in perspective, self and cultural questioning, and a recognition that difference and similarity are ignorant of national and geographical borders.

3. Younger generations and social media do not recognize the national and geographic borders, neither should live art.

4. The U.S. is known as a mixing pot / as a salad bowl, collecting immigrants and internationals from all over the globe - its art should reflect this.

5. Cultural exchanges bring deeper understandings of human nature,
5.5 which will provide valuable returns on any investment in that this understanding can extend to all of our global commercial activities... (lubricant and creative engine for good global business practices)

Notes that led to those bullet points:
the way people want to organize themselves is that people are insisting on universal access and freedom of movement
if theater is to keep up -- it needs to be universal & in motion

global in a healthy way - theater with its inefficiency can promote the availability of the local in a global circumstance - because theater is hard to move, it has to move with an intense integrity...

international work moves us out of our comfort zones and forces us to question our work - how do we maintain the integrity of our work in other environments.

perspective - world is very fragmented and we suffer from absence of understanding and knowledge about other cultures, we take for granted our own culture - one way to transform narrowness - is awareness of other communication forms... and theater is a powerful way of communicating that... facility as much exposure as possible in the world - works wonders in global and self understanding - not to overlook the self-understanding

speak in terms of theater - it has to be exchanged because it is a non-scaleable event- has to be exchanged if it wants to be global

globalization is happening in theater to make theater international
taking theater as an outreach tool as world becomes smaller - there is a pull back from understanding as it gets smaller - and nothing goes further towards bridging gaps than someone standing in front of you making sth beautiful and expressing something that is common around the world -

exchange is not an experience of congruence
it has to be me spending soemthing of myself that changes me, and in return, I expected to perform an act of charity, but I received an act - has to be transformation on both sides and sacrifice on both sides...

there is much debate about whether or not the goal is to reinforce ourselves - or to speak this to the "civilian world"? what is the value of bring someone from far away? how do we speak this to people outside?

perception & self-recognition - the brand - the human brand is the most tested and best surviving brand, and therefore most deserving of support...

every aspect of our lives are global already... there is a glitch - the same people who are already participating in international commercial markets - seem to want to protect our own culture - keep it closed off and sheltered..

next generation is creating a new global culture that doesn't identify with the old nationalized cultures... they are looking for something that reflects who they are and that is a mix of various national/ethnic "sources"

our sites need to be set not only abroad - but also towards educating our selves and our youth and universities?

what is the benefit?

at what point do you fire your audience, do you fire your donors...

macro issue & micro issue
what is the value of creativity?
what is the value of creativity within international exchange?
perhaps one answer is - how does the thing change the person? how does it change the community?

how do the creative countries justify supporting their artists?

by emphasizing international exchange we are simply promoting the American "dream", which is multi-cultural, salad bowl, mixing pot of cultural difference...
- central characterstic of Amercian Values = the validity of each human story next to other human stories...

support like rock and roll has to be fommented - it has to be agitated from the bottom up.

we have to all see ourselves as ambassadors and begin networking personally across borders, as is happening through social media

storyteller - bring back the experience from where we were - share it with the people in our local community

find a way of proving to the investors that they get something back that is valuable to them - you do this in music and cinema... we just need something like 1% of National Budget and it would change culture here -

cultural exchanges bring deeper understandings of human nature.


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pre-amble to second break-out group.
"if money can fix it - it's not a problem"

What does (success in) international exchange look like in 3 years?
(these are all the notes from the break out session I was in)
- more of it (means more community organizing)
- collaborations, rather than just 'exchanges'
- value of cultural exchange should be as common place and accepted inside and outside the arts world as it is currently in certain arts niches
- more wider shared experiences for artists & audiences with the live art performance as the pinnacle of that experience
- easier to do
- prioritize process
- art will have a different role than it had - they will be the central drivers of social change

What resources and knowledge will help move this work forward?

What needs to happen to get to that 3 year goal?
be civic groups, get involved in civic groups,
build consortium/partnerships
identify cultural partners outside the arts
NETWORKS, communication tools (that don't replicate themselves, but work together)
Homes, families, we need to be invited into the audience's space, ' America Houses'
ministry of culture
aggregator for knowledge and resource information


Action Items:
individually
individual and collective activism

organizationally
learn to speak with a political voice

field in USA
cabinet minister
TCG/ITI Center - for knowledge and resources

field internationally
hospitality houses


notes from some of the discussion that got our group to those answers above....
questions (q) & comments (c)

q: how do we deal with questions of "preservation", cultural preservation?
what does "preservation" mean?
sometimes exchange can show the value of the local art to the locals, in ways that they had begun to take for granted or forget or devalue for various reasons

q: in exchange, how do you give and receive what is expected, desired and how do you shift those expectations
exchange - interaction is reciprocally transformative

c: inter-generational challenges are similarly affecting the work, as much as international
c: micro-cultures - the cultural differences are not simply differences of nationhood - there are cultural differences from neighborhood to neighborhood, city to city

q: if we assume the value of cultural exchange, to make it happen in 3 years - what sorts of dialogs do we need to have with people outside these rooms in order to make it easier, richer, more productive?

c:
1. walk - slow food movement, selling inefficiency, meditation
2. nba- passports - the country is not very internationally minded - 10% of population has passports-- but now if you look at the NBA more international atheletes, more consciousness of international within mass culture
3. artist - art is too important to leave to the artists, when we go to other countries we can learn about health care and other things - broad based learning exchange
4. pedagogy - problematize quick presses for slick results... push against that

c: artistic qualitative criteria

c: look at - cultural preservation, jazz & heritage in New Orleans - festival industrial complex

q: how do you get the cultural micro-cultures that are already around, how do you get them to engage with other micro-cultures - how do you get the Japanese locals to come to the Ukranian show?
a: long-term community investment and joint cultural exchanges... build bridges for them.

q: are the way we are using performing arts venues going to facilitate these changes we want?

c: Have to develop TRUST - can't do that with marketing.
Trust is labor intensive, sacrifice involved.

c: ITI - as resources for all kinds of things that we may not know about...


Closing Discussion

What we need notes from the other break-out groups:
TCG has to have an international component to all its conferences
a knowledge center where we can learn about everything it takes to tour
on going creative projects,
reciprocal touring of finished work in a systematic structured way
international works without union barriers
initiative for an international festival circuit - that might happen from City to City
visa & taxation streamlining
stronger understanding and support from our diplomatic core
a cultural exchange field that is not US centric
an audience that is more open to coming to intnerational work
exchange that is autonomous from US policy relations
more robust NEA
strengthened relations with and amongst universities
talk about how long the process really takes - especially with 'funders'
deepen and commit to long term relations with international partners
parity across cultures - sending our work out as much as we bring it here
advocacy
creating non-results based criteria for evaluation
benchmarking the field


concluding ah ha moments
unions have been a challenge to the arts, but we don't want to be in opposition to unions
maybe we need to be integral to the changes and new labor movement

art remains alive always in the present tense

there are many baby steps to working on an international collaboration, and it can take a long time - this is not something wrong with you, this is the nature of the beast, make it a positive aspect

maybe we should meet with internationals and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the various models (ex. minister of culture)

what can we do to make more artists - world artists, owned by the world... Arthur Miller for example is no longer just an American playwright - he's a playwright who belongs to the world historical culture - in translation, he becomes a native of other countries.


there are web people and there are wall people - wall people like to hide in silos, web people like to make connective tissues




Phew - that's it
then I went and got on a train up to Baltimore and passed out in the MICA dorms, at least that is what I am going to go do right now.

More tomorrow I promise.