Over the past few days, many art bloggers have been giving the New Museum's Richard Flood a lot of rightful flack for his comments on bloggers being prairie dogs. (To be clear, he hoped for a negative association on this comparison, though I must say I kind of like prairie dogs--that's what you get for spending developmental years in the same province as the Torrington Gopher Hole Museum.)
It seems that some related themes might be raised--albeit more subtly--in the Canadian Journalism Foundation's upcoming panel, "Arts Journalism: Staying Critical in the Digital Age," which takes place April 20 at Innis Town Hall in Toronto.
According to the event's press info,
From the cultural giants of the past to the celebrity culture of today, how arts criticism and literary journalism have changed. Mainstream media cutbacks and the proliferation of blogging means everyone is a critic. Can the web save arts journalism? A CJF Forum moderated by Bronwyn Drainie, Editor of the Literary Review of Canada, and featuring Kamal Al-Solaylee, Assistant Professor at Ryerson and former theatre critic at the Globe and Mail, Seamus O'Regan, co-host of CTV's Canada AM and host of Arts & Minds and The O'Regan Files on Bravo!, and Globe and Mail columnist and feature writer Kate Taylor, currently on leave as the Atkinson Fellow for 2009-2010.
Though I'm looking forward to attending this event--panels on arts journalism (not just art criticism) are few and far between in these parts--I must note that despite the setup's reference to blogging, no one on this panel is a blogger, nor seems to work heavily on the interwebs. Ah well. At least Kate Taylor has been studying "Canadian cultural sovereignty in the digital age" for her Atkinson Fellowship, and Seamus O'Regan seems to have a Twitter account. It will be interesting to see what discussion is generated.
Image of "The Train to Gopherville is Coming" from jky.net
someone should cut some head-size holes out of a giant sheet of plywood, and each critic has to pop-up through the hole to comment on the discussion. artists in the audience get big giant soft hammer, to whack 'em back down.
ReplyDeleteand everyone gets to eat cotton candy.
Hey KIA,
ReplyDeleteI think that event would likely be very, very popular. Hard to get panellists for, though.
On a related (if somewhat less wack-a-mole-ish) note, there's an event planned for Nuit Blanche 2010 (one I'm kinda involved in) that will have Toronto art critics doing "speed criticism" face to face with artists and viewers. BYO-mallet, perhaps?