Build Feedback and They Will Come

On Saturday, as part of FotoWeek DC, I was at my photography home-base, Photoworks Glen Echo, taking part in a digital portfolio review session. Photographers, both fledglings and veterans, had the opportunity to show a selection of images that they brought in on discs or flash drives to be projected on the wall. I was invited to be one of the reviewers, a new experience for me. Here, in no particular order, are a few observations from that experience:

1. People really want the feedback experience. We had high participation in this event, much of it from folks who'd never been to Photoworks before. It seems that if you just hang out the shingle and say you are offering critique, folks will show up. Why? Some of it is a desire for guidance, since most of the photographers were asking for advice about organization or how to shoot better. But a lot of it, I believe, is the desire to connect, to get the artwork out of the realm of the personal and into some kind of forum where it is connecting. It is so interesting to note how keyed up, excited, nervous, just plain alive people are in the moment when a room puts its undivided attention on their work.

2. It is strange to be positioned as an authority. This was a situation where I was one of two, sometimes three, people in the room designated to offer comments. At times I felt much more qualified as a kind of articulate audience member than as a person especially knowledgeable about photography. In a way it was freeing to be set up as an authority, kind of like putting on a mask.

3. In some ways, it is much easier to be asked to comment as an authority figure than it is to take part in a feedback dialogue of multiple, equalized voices. It's easy to rattle off your reaction to something. What we ask responders to do in a CRP session actually requires a level of listening, thinking, processesing, weighing, choosing to speak or keep silent, that is highly demanding for those who really invest in it.

4. Questions are really powerful. I felt as a commentator that I had the most chance of being useful when the photographers brought not only their images but their questions to the table. And I had the most chance of getting through to something valuable for the artists when I was able to form a good question for them to think about. But we knew that, didn't we?

5. Editing is artistry. Photography is an artform that puts this principle in high relief. What you create is just the beginning. How you choose from what you create is where voice and meaning truly emerge.

Stop the Misery!

Sometimes you just have to go negative in order to make a point. That was my reaction upon reading “How To Feel Miserable as an Artist,” a ten point list that is currently going viral in the arts world. It arrived at my desktop courtesy of Dance Exchange artist Ben Wegman, and I’ve traced it to the blog of artist/author Keri Smith – someone who is new to me, but whose work I definitely plan to check out in greater depth.

Looking over this list I’m struck by how many of these sources of artistic misery stem from two questions: How do we measure success? and What constitutes approval?: Ultimately, while acknowledging all the external forces (family, money, clients, society) that bear on an artist’s sense of self-worth, Keri Smith is clearly preaching that artists need to look within for the final measure of their own value.

What does this mean for critique? Maybe that it’s overvalued. Maybe that artists need to strengthen their own internal voices within the dialogue of criticism. Maybe that we can take nothing for granted in terms of how we measure quality.

Notable Quotable: John Steinbeck

A guy at my gym this morning was wearing a T-shirt that read:

"No one wants advice -- only corroboration."
--John Steinbeck

I wonder if Steinbeck was thinking of creative matters. It certainly holds a grain of truth when applied to artistic works-in-progress. When we put such work forward for comment, there’s often a part of us that wants most just to get confirmation that what we’ve done is brilliant and doesn’t need any fixing.

Can we manage that desire? Can we channel it constructively? Should we just get over it?

The theory of the Critical Response Process on this issue might be: Step One provides the corroboration that something, at least, is working, something is conveying and communicating. Having that impulse fed, even to a limited degree, helps open us up to hearing more -- even advice.

Well, Yes and No...

Here’s another reflection about Critical Response Process emerging from our recent work in Boulder, as passed on from an artist in that community by ATLAS’s Rebekah West:

(some artists) argue people use "parts of it." My thought is that you either use the whole "container" or you do not use it. Using convenient "parts" does not get it done!!!!

This comment raises a stimulating question: Can you use just parts of the Critical Response Process and still have an effective feedback experience? I’ll offer the Yes answer and the No answer:

Yes. Once you’ve learned the Critical Response Process, you may well find such concepts as the Step One comment, the neutral question, and the permissioned opinion to be very useful on their own. They can be effective when used with colleagues who are versed in CRP and who grasp the bigger context, but they also can be applied “stealth style” with people who may have no idea where you are coming from. (Using Step Ones in particular – naming meaningful details and citing stimulating connections – may lead you conversation partner to decide that you are very intelligent!) And once people get their legs in CRP, it’s possible to jump from a step one to a step four in a quick exchange. But beware – and this is the caveat on the “Yes” answer -- when the Process is thus “sampled” you may have useful tools for a feedback conversation, but you don’t have a full-fledged critique process. Every now and then you need one.

No. The elements of the Process have been refined over time and sequenced for a reason. Mess with it at your peril. Now, maybe there’s been some cherry picking of CRP somewhere that has effectively combined it will other elements, but I haven’t seen it. I have seen some train wrecks, though, when folks have played fast and loose with the Process.

My final advice? Do the Process in its full form a bunch of times. Get to know it well. Stay curious even as you encounter challenges with it. Don’t try adaptations or extrapolations until you feel secure with CRP in it four-step format.

Quack!

Speaking of variations on the Critical Response Process, I heard about the following mode of critique being used in a college level drama class. After a showing, the instructor poses three questions:

What do you see?
What do you love?
What are your questions?

“Isn’t that just like the Critical Response Process?” I was asked.

Well, no.

But I can see the resemblance. In common with CRP is the value placed on inquiry and observation, and the good will implied by that big-hearted “Waddaya love?” But in the nuance between this and Critical Response lie some major differences. CRP’s opening round, which is initiated by the facilitator’s question “What was exciting, stimulating, meaningful, memorable?” offers both more focus than “What did you see?” and more range of possibility than “What did you love?” -- and does so in one question rather than two. The responder isn’t required to love anything, and the process isn’t premised in the idea that the artist needs to be loved. Big difference.

What about “What are your questions?” It’s always good to ask for questions. And it’s even better to ask for neutral questions (CRP Step 3) because the discipline of framing neutrally helps the questioner and opens up the dialogue with the artist.

What quacks like a duck may not swim like a duck.

And in that case, it’s not a duck.

Pervasive Process?

“I don’t think the Dance Exchange folks realize how pervasive the Critical Response Process is. Every artist in the United States who has any form of critical response is using a derivative of the CRP.”

A comment to that general effect was passed on to us by Rebekah West, who recently hosted a small Dance Exchange team for Critical Response activities at the ATLAS Alliance at the University of Colorado, Boulder. In her email reporting this comment, she asked what I thought.

Here goes: I’m a little skeptical given the absolute quality of the comment. But Critical Response Process definitely has a life of its own out there beyond the institution where it began. It is in the nature of a technique like CRP that it may get passed hand-to-hand, or mouth-to-ear, on a kind of oral history basis. Hence derivatives are inevitable. Some of them are probably thoughtful adaptations for the needs of a particular setting and use; some may turn out looking like more distant relatives (I’ll admit I’m resisting the urge to use the work “bastardizations”); and sometimes worthy practices may have features in common with CRP but descend from separate lineages.

I definitely hear reports of CRP thriving in places where we had no idea that it was being used. I also encounter plenty of people in the arts field for whom it is entirely new and surprisingly different from what they are used to. And then I hear people describe what they think is CRP or “just like your process,” when in fact what they are describing is different in one or more essential features.

Frankly, it is a challenge for Dance Exchange as an institution to keep track of where the Critical Response Process gets used, who’s doing it, how it gets varied, what’s a practice we’d endorse and what isn’t. We have ongoing discussions in our offices about getting an intern to do research on CRP’s use in the field and about the desirability/feasibility of setting up a certification program. The most realistic position for us at this point is to do our best to be a resource with our book, trainings, and now this blog; and to continue to act as a kind of laboratory probing deeper and wider into the applications and implications of a process that's clearly too big to be contained by just the institution that started it.

This Is Also a Form of Critical Response...

This fine woman was first to vote at our precinct in Takoma Park, Maryland. "I'm not usually first," she said, "but I wanted to be first today." You go, voter!

Genial Taskmaster

Today's New York Times includes an article on Donald Palumbo, who recently took the reins as chorus master at the Metropolitan Opera. Thinking about the topic of artistic leadership styles (addressed in my "screaming and throwing chairs" post last week), I was struck by the following passage, which quotes Mr. Palumbo as he gives notes to the chorus preparing for the Met's new production of Berlioz's Damnation of Faust:

"“No, your ‘hélas’ must not sound like whining,” Mr. Palumbo urged. “The color is too bright and high. ... Articulate with more pulse. ... Trust your instincts, and go with it when the harmonies weave together. ... Basses, on that ‘tra-la-ho-ho’ passage, give me more boom and a less churchlike ‘ho.’... Can that phrase bloom rather than just explode? ... Grab every note of this rising passage. Don’t just run up the scale. ... The chorus of celestial spirits must be completely passive, with no forward pressure on the voice at all. Soft but specific. Don’t ooze into the note.”

The specificity of this language is just bracing, and I think it's notable that in every case where he cites a "don't" Palumbo also gives a very directive "do." No screaming or throwing chairs. The article notes the marked improvement in the work of the Met chorus since this "genial taskmaster" assumed his post.