Another response to Silence
Monday, June 23, 2008
This is a response posted to Brenden's blog. Read the earlier bits lower down:
When you start contacting specific people to talk around issues, then you are shutting down fluidity and informality. People will talk about what you want to talk about. Not that that is a bad thing, but I'm not sure it is the thing that either of us are talking about. As for eliciting discussion on this blog, I wander if you are pitching your writing right. Have you written anything contentious without being knee-jerk? Have you asked difficult questions without being infantile? If yes, then have you been writing here long enough to build a regular and engaged audience? Are you writing often enough to keep people coming back? I think one way to build an engaged audience is to keep working at it.
If you look over at my blog, there are responses to the questions we have posited. I think over time I have built up the trust of my audience, so they know they will be heard whether they are knee-jerking or have something serious to say. Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference.
Finally, as for what I say about your writing, we can have that discussion face to face.
Robert
When you start contacting specific people to talk around issues, then you are shutting down fluidity and informality. People will talk about what you want to talk about. Not that that is a bad thing, but I'm not sure it is the thing that either of us are talking about. As for eliciting discussion on this blog, I wander if you are pitching your writing right. Have you written anything contentious without being knee-jerk? Have you asked difficult questions without being infantile? If yes, then have you been writing here long enough to build a regular and engaged audience? Are you writing often enough to keep people coming back? I think one way to build an engaged audience is to keep working at it.
If you look over at my blog, there are responses to the questions we have posited. I think over time I have built up the trust of my audience, so they know they will be heard whether they are knee-jerking or have something serious to say. Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference.
Finally, as for what I say about your writing, we can have that discussion face to face.
Robert
Labels: Brenden Gray
posted by Robert Sloon at 10:52 AM
3 Comments:
To be fair, this is not entirely true. From the outset, ArtHeat was pretty much plugged into the young and productive art scene of Cape Town. Your comments section was infamous early on for not only rudeness, but also large amounts of participation. If anything those numbers have gone down drastically (the percentage of serious comments may have gone up, but I don't think the number of them has - just less rudeness). This is not a criticism, just an observation, and it does go against your argument. Your larger point is true - people want to feel heard in their participation; but who you are and who you know and what the platform is and how buzzy and hip you are is more important than consistent writing or fair writing (people like bitchiness, dude; they want to argue or agree; look at the only things that DID garner response for Brenden). if it were about consistent writing, wouldn't artthrob or nathaniel stern (back when he actually did shit) get more comments than 1 or 2 every 10 posts?
I agree. Sadly it is true that you have to be in a particular scene to get any response at all. The same goes for if you are an artist... you can be a complete genius but unless you have a lot of social influence you don't have a hope in hell of getting a response. Or you won't know if you do get one, because people will tell their friends if they like something, so you have to know them to find out.
It would be interesting to have statistics of how many people actually read any particular online art criticism. I'm sure Artheat must get a lot of readers on account of being fun, whereas reading other sites is a bit more like doing your school homework.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home