Artists on the Verge

Watch video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/4O0W4A2l5ds

I learned the term "scriptlessness" recently and realized it's why I started the Artists on the Verge channel. Source: David Graeber's /Bullshit Jobs/ which cites a a paper called "Unrequited Love: On Heartbreak, Anger, Guilt, Scriptlessness and Humiliation" (R. Baumeister, S. Wotman, A. Stillwell.) 💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/ 👀 Instagram: @artists_on_the_verge About the host ✌🏼: www.emakatrovas.com 💌Newsletter (best way to stay in touch): https://mailchi.mp/45b402876641/artistsontheverge 😇 Become a patron and gain access to "backstage" videos: https://steadyhq.com/en/opera-on-the-verge

I was surprised to learn that it wasn’t until 2020 that the G20 held its first Cultural Ministerial Meeting to discuss the importance of the creative sector to the economy and it wasn’t until 2021 that they established the Cultural Working Group, the purpose of which is to address issues relating to the creative economy.

So, what I’m going to read to you today, is a report on the state of the creative industries which was written up for the first Cultural Working Group in 2021 by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

I have not been able to find any documents on what the three years of G20 discussions on the cultural sector have actually yielded, but will keep an eye on that!

Link to the full report: https://www.oecd.org/cfe/leed/OECD-G20-Culture-July-2021.pdf

💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/

👀 Instagram: @artists_on_the_verge

About the host ✌🏼: www.emakatrovas.com

💌Newsletter (best way to stay in touch): https://mailchi.mp/45b402876641/artistsontheverge

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This is the second part of my reading “The Arts After Darwin: Does Art Have an Origin and Adaptive Function?”

In the first part of the essay, Ellen Dissanayake explained why she thinks it’s helpful to think of art as an adaptive function and lays out some of the existing hypotheses of how art may have helped us survive, in the Darwinian sense. However, she argues most of the existing hypothesis aren’t really general enough or are skewed by Western notions of what art is. In the second half of the paper, which I read to you in this episode, the author lays out her own hypothesis about the adaptive function of art, which she argues is more universal.

The author, Ellen Dissanayake, is best known for three books on art anthropology: What Is Art For? (1988), Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes from and Why (1992) and Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began (2000). I chose to read “Arts After Darwin”, which was published in 2008 as a chapter in a book called World Art Studies, not just because it’s a shorter, stand-alone, piece but also because it is general enough to serve as an introduction for someone, like me, who isn’t an anthropologist. It was also published after Dissanayake’s three main books on art anthropology, which means she had completed the bulk of her research into this subject by the time she wrote this – not to mention that recency is very important when considering academic writing, especially when there’s a scientific aspect to it.  

You can read "Art After Darwin" yourself here: http://mail.ellendissanayake.com/publications/pdf/EllenDissanayake_ArtsAfterDarwinWAS08.pdf

💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/

👀 Instagram: @artists_on_the_verge

About the host ✌🏼: www.emakatrovas.com

💌Newsletter (best way to stay in touch): https://mailchi.mp/45b402876641/artistsontheverge

😇 Become a patron and gain access to "backstage" videos: https://steadyhq.com/en/opera-on-the-verge

This is the first part of my reading “The Arts After Darwin: Does Art Have an Origin and Adaptive Function?”

The author, Ellen Dissanayake, is best known for three books on art anthropology: What Is Art For? (1988), Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes from and Why (1992) and Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began (2000). I chose to read “Arts After Darwin”, which was published in 2008 as a chapter in a book called World Art Studies, not just because it’s a shorter, stand-alone, piece but also because it is general enough to serve as an introduction for someone, like me, who isn’t an anthropologist. It was also published after Dissanayake’s three main books on art anthropology, which means she had completed the bulk of her research into this subject by the time she wrote this – not to mention that recency is very important when considering academic writing, especially when there’s a scientific aspect to it.  

You can read "Art After Darwin" yourself here: http://mail.ellendissanayake.com/publications/pdf/EllenDissanayake_ArtsAfterDarwinWAS08.pdf

*I accidently called the paper an “essay” on the recording, which isn’t the right term for this kind of paper.

💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/

👀 Instagram: @artists_on_the_verge

About the host ✌🏼: www.emakatrovas.com

💌Newsletter (best way to stay in touch): https://mailchi.mp/45b402876641/artistsontheverge

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An under-3-minute summary of the three-part essay "Another Artworld" which examines the fraught legacy of "high" art. Also - my take.

This is actually a video episode, though it can also just be listened to. You can find it on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/PaS0CWcMvEI 00:00 Intro 00:31 Summary of "Another Art World" - in less than 3 minutes 03:11 A Different Take on "Another Art World" --- How do you fund this? --- Art as Care --- High Art vs. Popular Art vs. Publicly-Funded Art... all have their issues --- The big question we have to answer before we can change anything! --- What helped me... 💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/ 👀 Instagram: @artists_on_the_verge About the host ✌🏼: www.emakatrovas.com 💌Newsletter (best way to stay in touch): https://mailchi.mp/45b402876641/artistsontheverge 😇 Become a patron and gain access to "backstage" videos: https://steadyhq.com/en/opera-on-the-verge

We're finally here - at the third installment of reading "Another Art World" by Nika Dubrovsky and David Graeber. Even if you're a new listener, you can start here because in the last segment, the author's promised to finally get to the heart of the matter: What might "another art world" look like?

But – something happened between the last instalment of the essay, published in November 2019, and this installment from November 2020: the pandemic and the anti policing protests of the summer of 2020. Understandably, the authors felt they had to switch gears – so this installment of the essay spends quite some time drawing a parallel between the police state and the art world.

Link to the third installment of "Another Art World" in eFlux magazine: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/113/360192/another-art-world-part-3-policing-and-symbolic-order/

My interview with co-author Nika Dubrovsky: https://youtu.be/j9TyYRo0OQQ

Music: Dieter van der Westen: The Balkan Night Train

💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/

👀 Instagram: @artists_on_the_verge

About the host ✌🏼: www.emakatrovas.com

💌Newsletter (best way to stay in touch): https://mailchi.mp/45b402876641/artistsontheverge

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This episode is a conversation with composer and Web III researcher (and internet sceptic!) Reilly Smethurst. Is it a pessimistic episode? I actually don't think so.

My take: The fact that the internet does not replace real-life communities and live gatherings around art, and hurts artists by creating global, algorithmically-moderated competition, is an empowering bit of knowledge which I hope inspires listeners to find ways to make art outside the internet and use the internet in smart ways to their advantage.

Reilly and I talk about the strange disbalance between the number of viable career paths for artists and the number of people studying creative disciplines, the absurdities of arts funding, the difference between the Dionysian and Apollonian approach to creating, artificial scarcity, how regulation may be the only answer to the excesses of the online arts market, and Reilly’s one actionable solution to the predicament posed by the internet, among other things.

All music in this episode by Reilly Smethurst:

Inheritance (2019)

Uterus (2016)

Organised (2019) Angel (2018)

During the interview, we mention the essay “Another Artworld” by Nika Dubrovsky and David Graeber. Here are some links:

My interview with Nika Dubrovsky: https://youtu.be/j9TyYRo0OQQ

Reacting to “Another Art World” Pt. 1: https://youtu.be/ufgK9PJszYY

Reacting to “Another Art World” Pt. 2: https://youtu.be/9QnxN425yyw

Timestamps (add 30 seconds to account for intro):

00:00 Intro

02:28 Arts careers on the decline but more people studying arts

08:32 The problem with electronic music and Reilly's "Apollonian reactionary phase"

20:00 Mocking the arts funding bodies

23:37 Web II and Web III - almost the same and both bad for artists + failures of Audius and OpenSea and the difference between music industry and art industry

40:57 Reilly's advice about how to face a world impacted by the internet

💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/

👀 Instagram: @artists_on_the_verge

About the host ✌🏼: www.emakatrovas.com

💌Newsletter (best way to stay in touch): https://mailchi.mp/45b402876641/artistsontheverge

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No time to read academic essays? Well, have no fear, we'll read this one together. "Another Art World" by David Graeber and Nika Dubrovsky examines how we might re-imagine the art world.

Part II of "Another Art World" lays out a hypothesis about how post-industrial ideas of production as well as ideas imbedded in Western thought as far back as Greek myth, unfairly legitimize the existence of curators, art dealers, and art administrators, who safeguard the ONE rule that can’t be broken within the art establishment. If you want to know what that rule is, keep listening. Oh, and that faux “experimental,” “boundary-pushing” posture of contemporary art? They argue it’s not a bug but a feature, one that benefits those who most profit from art dealing.

Link to text of "Another Art World Pt. 1" in eFlux journal: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/104/298663/another-art-world-part-2-utopia-of-freedom-as-a-market-value/ 💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/ 👀 Instagram: @artists_on_the_verge About the host ✌🏼: www.emakatrovas.com 💌Newsletter (best way to stay in touch): https://mailchi.mp/45b402876641/artistsontheverge 😇 Become a patron and gain access to "backstage" videos: https://steadyhq.com/en/opera-on-the-verge

David (aka Dev) Devereux's story is one of carving out a space of freedom online. A full-time sound engineer by profession, Dev is the founder of Tin Can Audio, a Glasgow-based audio fiction company which has become home to all the strange sounds and stories Dev wants to make.

Community is important to Dev’s story – from the community of wonderful voice actors and creators around Tin Can Audio to the online community, which Dev has engaged in interesting ways by opening up the creative process to the public (for example by making an entire audio fiction drama, from script writing to sound editing, live on Twitch.)

Dev and I talk about the origins of and funny stories from the series made under Tin Can Audio, about the more unexpected inspirations for stories from video games to music to popular TV shows, the idea of demystifying the creative process and showing audiences how things are made, and about how much time goes into making something that’s actually good, among other things.

This episode features music from Dev’s audio fiction (The Tower and Middle:Bellow, respectively) as well as excerpts from the audio fictions Tin Can, Middle:Bellow, The Tower, The Dungeons Economic Model, and Anamnesis featuring the voices of (in order of appearance):

David Devereux

Charlotte Ryder

David Pellow

Katrina Allen

Mark Gallie

Roger Best

Links :

https://daviddevereux.carrd.co/

https://www.tincanaudio.co.uk/

💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/ 👀 Instagram: @artists_on_the_verge About the host ✌🏼: www.emakatrovas.com 💌Newsletter (best way to stay in touch): https://mailchi.mp/45b402876641/artistsontheverge 😇 Become a patron and gain access to "backstage" videos: https://steadyhq.com/en/opera-on-the-verge

No time to read academic essays? Well, have no fear, we'll read this one together. "Another Art World" by David Graeber and Nika Dubrovsky talks about how we might re-imagine the art world. In part one, they introduce the idea of the art world creating artificial scarcity and talk about how this has roots in Romanticism. They also touch on the Proletkult in early 20th century Russia, which was founded on the (Romantic?) idea that "everyone is an artist" and was one of the few real-life attempts to create art communism.

Link to text of "Another Art World Pt. 1" in eFlux journal: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/102/284624/another-art-world-part-1-art-communism-and-artificial-scarcity/ 💋👁👂🏼 Website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/ 👀 Instagram: @artists_on_the_verge 💌Newsletter (best way to stay in touch): https://mailchi.mp/45b402876641/artistsontheverge 😇 Become a patron and gain access to "backstage" videos: https://steadyhq.com/en/opera-on-the-verge

Nika Dubrovsky is an artist who believes everyone is an artist.

Originally from Russia, where, after an education in visual arts, she was involved with the cultural underground of the 80s, she immigrated to the United States in 1989, right after the communist regime fell. Interestingly, once in the US, Nika seemed to take up the same position she had under totalitarianism, in circles of cultural critics and activist.

One of Nika’s recent projects is the Museum of Care, the concept of which comes from an essay of the same name which she wrote with her late husband, David Graeber, during the pandemic of 2020. The essay imagines a world in which the office buildings left empty by lockdowns are turned into communal spaces, or Museums of Care, after the pandemic, the way royal palaces were turned into state museums after the French and Russian revolutions. The idea of art, and the place of art and the artist, are important to Nika Dubrovsky’s, and for that matter David Graeber’s, cultural critique, which is why I wanted to interview Nika for this podcast.

Nika and I talk about the underground art scene in Soviet Russia, the Proletkult, in which everyone is an artist, the idea of direct vs. indirect action, the creation of autonomous zones, like the Zapatista communities or Rozhava, and at the end I ask Nika three questions about her article, co-written with David Graeber, “Another Art World” which critiques art institutions as they exist today – among other things.

❤️ Time stamps (please add 30 seconds to account for the intro): 

03:14 – Nika’s origins and Samizdat

06:27 – The Museum of Care

10:50 – “The Government is the Government, the State is the State” (and meeting David Graeber)

13:29 – Visual Assembly, the Role of the Artist, Proletkult and how Everyone is an Artist

20:02 – The War Against the Imagination

23:20 – Storytelling, Creative Refusal, Schizmogenesis

24:44 – Technology

26:39 – Extinction Rebellion and Direct vs. Indirect  Action

30:50 – Taking direct action and autonomous zones

40:15 – The Mona Lisa and Its Value

42:09 – Three Questions About Another Art World

42:47 – A Summary of “Another Art World”

44:17 – Question 1: Isn’t the internet a social experiment in what happens when everyone can be a creator and, if so, why are there still winners and losers?

01:00:40 – Question 2: Even if everyone should have the access to the means of producing art, isn’t art also an act of service which requires expertise?

01:12:29 – Question 3: Why use the word “communism”?

👁 Links: 

The Museum of Care website: https://museum.care/

The Museum of Care (article): https://davidgraeber.org/articles/the-museum-of-care-reimagining-the-world-after-pandemic/

David Graeber Institute: https://davidgraeber.org/

Another Art World (essay): https://www.e-flux.com/journal/102/284624/another-art-world-part-1-art-communism-and-artificial-scarcity/

Music:
Dieter van der Westen: The Balkan Night Train

💋👂🏼👁 Podcast website: onthevergetrilogy.com 

In this Snippet, I debate myself-from-a-little-over-a-year-ago about the internet as it pertains to artists by re-reading and reacting to an article I wrote on Medium called “5 Ways The Internet is Failing You As An Artists – And 5 Things You Can Do About It.” I recorded this in the context of having done some interesting interviews lately but not having time to edit them just yet – so this is me feeding the beast of an online platform whilst complaining about the very mechanism that compels me to do so. The irony does not escape me.

Here is the original article:

https://medium.com/@ema.katrovas/5-ways-the-internet-is-failing-you-as-an-artist-1eec8b6e3bbb

💋👁👂🏼 Website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/ 

👀 Instagram: @soprano_on_the_verge  

 💌Newsletter (best way to stay in touch): https://mailchi.mp/45b402876641/artistsontheverge 

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Daniil Posazhenikov is a young Russian composer, curator, performer and improviser who, over the past five years, has participated in gathering what he calls a kind of theater production company consisting of young Russian artists from various disciplines. The troupe’s name is Geometry of Sound and they have so far managed to put on about five productions a year in Russia. Their output is hard to pin down, but falls within the experimental and performance-art category and is often site-specific. 

I was connected with Daniil by another Russian artist who told me in a private message that she is embarrassed by her country and this made me reconsider the question which everyone seems to be grappling with, these days: Should the individual, even the individual artist, be held responsible for the politics or economics of the country they live in? We touch on in this question in our conversation with Daniil.   

Daniil and I talk about the need to connect with audiences, whether experimentation belongs in the education system, how indie performance art can fly under the radar of censorship, and what it means not to be needed by the system you are part of, among other things.   

Daniil's online profile: https://www.ulysses-network.eu/profiles/individual/28621/ 

More about Geometry of Sound (English version doesn't exist but you can use an online translator from Russian) : https://geozvuka.super.site/ 

🎵Music (Composer: Daniil Posazhennikov):  

Nostalgia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zXqayqgKhc 

Figaro Rave (theater music): https://soundcloud.com/posazhennikov/figaro-rave-new?utm_source=clipboard&utm_campaign=wtshare&utm_medium=widget&utm_content=https%253A%252F%252Fsoundcloud.com%252Fposazhennikov%252Ffigaro-rave-new 

G:Grammar: no online recording available  

Mirror (ballet music): https://soundcloud.com/posazhennikov/9-1m?utm_source=clipboard&utm_campaign=wtshare&utm_medium=widget&utm_content=https%253A%252F%252Fsoundcloud.com%252Fposazhennikov%252F9-1m

Violinist Elena Flores has been Musical Director of the legendary Odin Teatret since 2015, and became assistant director of the theater four years ago. The core of her creative philosophy is “discipline,” a word she said many times during our interview. She is also a self-described “rock star” who spent much of her career as a violinist in popular ensembles like Nidi D'arac. Elena has now spent half her career as an actor in the Odin Teatret ensemble and so her journey is also one of remaining open to the unexpected opportunities that present themselves, even when they are perpetuated by tragedy like, in Elena’s case, a devastating earthquake.

Elena and I talk about, among other things, the discipline necessary to become (and stay) an artist, how the institution of classical music might be brought into the 21st century, and how, after initial resistance, Elena began to see theater as a kind of musical composition.

Odin Teatret website: https://odinteatret.dk/  

🎵Music:  

Brahms' Violin Concerto in D Major: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKsMjp1X-vc 

Nidi D'Arac, Pizzica: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCjHzAVSoxQ 

Nidi D'Arac, Ipocharia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DezHm-yPc9o  

💋👁👂🏼 Podcast website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/

Mike Miller and I met on our first day of undergraduate music studies when we were both 18. Mike studied voice, as a countertenor, and, later, organ. When I found out, years after we both graduated, that he had become a protestant pastor in Texas, I was puzzled, at first – he was openly gay and I had heard him complain about his conservative relatives who used the Bible to condemn who he was. But then I realized - Mike had never condemned Christianity or God or religion as such – his complaints centered around how selectively people read the Bible. And, talking to him about his life as a pastor, I realized there are many parallels between what he does as a spiritual guide, and the function that artists might have as cultural guides.   

Mike and I talk about the unpredictable life of a pastor, mistranslations of the Bible, myths about Christmas,  and how creating things is one of the bests paths towards greater spirituality, among other things.    

Mike's blog: https://gaybythegraceofgod.com/ 

💋👁👂🏼 Website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/

Jim Osman is a 25-year-old theater and opera director based in the UK who has already directed a range of interesting projects across mediums and genres - like a sci-fi opera and a fantasy-puppet-satire short movie. He also produced and directed a monthly surreal comedy and puppetry night at Cairo, Brixton, made a video essay about cyberpunk opera for the Cyberpunk Research Network, and had a 1-1 12-week intensive with Daniel Kramer, former artistic director of English National Opera, who supposedly called him one of the most interesting young director he’s worked with. He is currently earning a Masters in opera directing from Royal Welsh College of Music.  

Jim and I talk about the commodification of spirituality and identity, sci-fi as the modern-day fairytale and as a device to better talk about divisive issues, Terry Pratchett as pan-paganism, the problematic union of capitalism and technology, and the future of theater, among other things.   

Jim's video essay on cyberpunk opera: http://cyberpunkculture.com/1st-cyrn-workshop-cyberpunk-music/%C2%A73-jim-osman/

Music:  

Motherload (sci-fi opera produced at Tete a Tete theater), text by Susan Gray and soundscape by Liam Noonan, sopranos: Natasha Agarwal and Julieth Lozano: https://vimeo.com/608895790 

💋👁👂🏼 Website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/

Christoph Ogiermann is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improvisor based in Bremen, Germany. He is founder of Klank, a quartet of musicians who improvise on everything from their instruments to cardboard boxes or balloons.   

We talk about feeling like an outsider, the ballet of improvising on piano, the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of German arts funding and also how well supported many German artists are, building one’s music career around making opportunities for others, and playing on boxes, among other things.  

🎵Music:  

Schubert's Symphony No. 8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWnKMzAedK4

Malcolm Goldstein, Vision Soundings, "From Center of Rainbow": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBbiVI8IkeI

Klank improvisations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogXwSwrf-6A

TOCH M for feedbacking Voice Transformer (Ogiermann): https://soundcloud.com/ogiermann/toch-m-for-feedbacking-voice-transformer

Cheryl Ong & Vivian Wang, "Singaporous": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8qYF70FlZw 

Klank website: https://www.klank.cc/en/ 

💋👁👂🏼 For moe about this podcast: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/

Julia Mintzer is one of those artists who has been able to cultivate a dual career in more ways than one: first, she is both a performer and director. Second, she has worked on the "industry" side of opera as well as on "indie" projects. Julia and I talked about some of her directorial projects, about giving depth to two-dimensional operatic characters (especially soprano ones), performing in art galleries, her direction of the first fully-staged opera in London after the beginning of the pandemic, and the difference between directing for the stage and for video - among other things.   

Julia Mintzer's website: http://www.juliamintzer.com/ 

Music: 

"Si vuol di francia il rege" from Maria Stuarda (Donizetti) and prelude to Der Tod und das Mädchen (Schubert): http://www.juliamintzer.com/audio

Excerpt from /Bread and Circuses: The Wrestling Opera/: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAuBPpTRZ1M

La Bohème at Mass Opera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=datdy5oPEiE

Carmen instrumentals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCrKncOpE7Q 

Dana Varga's research into gender disparity in opera: https://theempoweredmusician.com/supply-and-demand-gender-disparity-in-opera-part-1/

💋👁👂🏼 For more about this podcast: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/