That’s Just Like, Your Opinion, Man

Yesterday we had our first outside critique, or “crit” in the vernacular of the third-year charetting architecture student, at UnionDocs on a hastily assembled cut of our City Symphony Project. Our outside critics consisted of avant-garde filmmaker Mark Street; Benjamen Walker, the host of a radio show called Theory of Everything that has evolved from a talk format into a music show over the past several years (from what I can decipher); and Cassim Shepard, the project director of Urban Omnibus, a web site devoted to fostering a “conversation about design and New York City.” This was only the third group critique of something I’ve done, and I’m still getting used to the process. During my first critique, which occurred within the collaborative group regarding my City Symphony Pitch, I found myself often attempting to explain the concepts behind my work, instead of listening to the suggestions being offered. So my current approach is to not say anything, other than to ask questions to clarify the critic’s points when necessary.

I didn’t really find the last session very helpful. When my piece was up, the critics didn’t really seem to have a lot to say, which I sort of interpreted to mean that either they didn’t really think my piece was either interesting, or they were attempting to shield my feelings from what they really thought. According to my notes, they thought I functioned as a “strong actor” in the piece, and thought that I should be represented, either as an off-camera voice or on-camera. One thought that there should be less footage of the people speaking, and more of the objects for sale. He also described my piece as “raw,” which I can only consider as a euphemism for “amateurish,” a valid criticism considering the poor production values the piece is saddled with.

My Graph of Credibilty Among Intellectuals vs. Terribleness of Art

I think I struggled with the critique because I’m used to getting very literal feedback from an editor in my writing. One of the first things I consider when writing a piece is who my intended audience is going to be. Right now, I’m not really interested in making an artistic statement with my video work. That might change at some point, but I just want to focus on learning how to tell a story, how to paint a portrait of a character. I want my work to be accessible to as wide a range of people as possible, not just a select group of academics/intellectuals/artists. If I had to sum up the general sense of the criticism that we received yesterday, I would say it went something like this:

1. Everything is a cliché.
2. These pieces should explore counter-intuitive notions of the city, and subvert our expectations.
3. This subverted my expectations! That doesn’t make any sense.

The idea of cliché-avoidance was one that came up recently in a blog post by Colin Beckett, who contributes pieces to the UnionDocs web site. I think it’s a somewhat dangerous spectre to invoke when bandied about by a class of people likely to be those who consume the most media in the world. The notion of cliché hinges so strongly on culture, and is a really subjective judgment to make on a piece of work.