1,721,110 research outputs found
Occasioning cultural patronage: A mesosociological approach
No full textAcross non-commercial, state-funded cultural organisations in the UK it is a common practice to host exclusive events with a view to producing feelings of attachment within patrons or potential patrons. These are often part of ‘friends of’ schemes. This happens against a discursive backdrop which promotes broadening access to arts and culture to an ever wider public. In this paper, I interrogate how cultural organisations perform multiple identities in order to solicit patrons while retaining credibility as a publically-minded organisation. My analytical approach is broadly mesosociological, with an attention to small groups as a unit of analysis and to events as containers of grouped activities. I stress that these events are highly crafted and carefully managed in order to generate the desired social outcome, a process I call ‘occasioning.’ Data are drawn from an ethnographic study of an opening night of a visual art exhibition which had two aspects: an invite-only ‘friends of’ event, and a ‘public’-facing event. This occasion therefore condensed in time and place the gallery’s performance of multiple and conflictual identities in the pursuit of different organisational benefits. I structure the analysis under the headings arenas, relations, and histories. In conclusion, I suggest further research programmes engaging with ‘friends of’ schemes, such as a cross-art form comparison and an exploration of what happened to such schemes and their attached events in the pandemic context
Documenting the air
No full textThe air sustains, connects and conditions our lives and has been of growing relevance to social scientists adopting an atmospheric approach to social life. Nonetheless, in screen studies, air’s critical uptake has so far been limited to narrative cinema, leaving it undertheorized in non-fiction filmmaking. In this paper, I introduce theories of the air that flow from the broader rise of atmospheric socio-aesthetic theories and suggest that it is possible to understand the air as an agent in the relationship between a filmmaker and their practice, and the film and its viewers. To make this argument, I first present a theoretical orientation to air as it is implicated in the non-fiction filmmaking process, before considering how the air has been understood in film scholarship, and how it has been taken as a subject of filmmakers working in experimental traditions. I then consider two bodies of non-fiction filmmaking through this aethereal lens. The first is Margaret Tait and her concept of ‘breathing’ with the camera, and the second is Arwa Aburawa and Turab Shah’s And Still, It Remains (2023). In these analyses, I argue that thinking aethereally allows us to consider the co-construction of documentarian, document and viewer.</p
Levelling up?
No full textThe regional inequalities that continue to scar the UK, and the other social inequalities that deepen them, are, and have always been, in direct opposition to the interests of art in general – that is, art as a vital part of life, rather than a growing part of the economy
Critical focus: study of an arts centre
No full textCritical Focus: Study of an Arts Centre is a 15-minute, two-channel film documenting the everyday life of an art gallery during the exhibition installation period. It was made as part of a sociological investigation of skilled but invisible labour in the art gallery, such as that of gallery technicians. In addition to this focus on skilled labour, the film focuses on the atmospheres of the different spaces in and around the gallery, and the ways they are produced by different social actors. The accompanying essay introduces the context in which the film was made, as well as the theories that informed it. These include theories of atmosphere and skill, as well as the styles and practices of artists who make documentary-like work themselves. The essay also details choices that are both ethical and stylistic, such as the close angles, the focus on material and architectural textures, and a focus on hands rather than faces
Book review: Justin O’Connor: culture is not an industry – reclaiming art and culture for the common good
No full textJustin O’Connor suggests that art and culture should sit in the pantheon of fundamental social goods such as housing and healthcare, without being made reducible to them (as they often are in the ‘social prescribing’ speak, for example)
<i>Patriarchs</i>, Nira Pereg, curated by James Clegg and <i>Show Me the World Mister</i>, Ayo Akingbade, curated by Carmen Juliá and Olivia Aherne
No full textReview of: Patriarchs, Nira Pereg, curated by James Clegg and Show Me the World Mister, Ayo Akingbade, curated by Carmen Juliá and Olivia AherneReviewed by Laura Harris, University of SouthamptonTalbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, 29 October2022-18 February 2023Chisenhale Gallery, London, 10 November 2022-5February 2023</p
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