Reproduction of Picasso's Guernica. Artist: Joaquín. Location: Madrid, Spain

Violence, a Keyword for Interdisciplinary Collaboration

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
Martin Luther King, Jr. ’55  ’59 (Hon)

I invite our community: CFA faculty, students, alumni and friends, as well as the greater Boston University community to participate in a year of creative discussion and action on the concept of violence. Every layer of society is touched by violence.  It weaves through the individual and into family and culture, threading its way through war and sports, medicine and politics, constantly fueled by a voracious news media, and via this overload finds its way back to the individual again. Violence – “horrible and heroic, disgusting and exciting, the most condemned and glorified of human acts” (R. Collins) – is one of the world’s most complex problems, and finding solutions requires a holistic, interdisciplinary approach.

The participation we seek may come in the form of attending or hosting activities related to performances or exhibits that comment on different aspects of violence. We are fortunate to work within a University that includes most disciplines; an enriching, plural dialogue can be developed.  A successful example is Visions and Voices: The USC Arts + Humanities Initiative.  This program focuses on the vibrant community of Los Angeles as an extended campus of the University of Southern California. We aim to go further by utilizing the wealth of resources available in our diverse community to explore solutions to a devastating societal issue.

Our goal is to build a two way street between text and context, in order to develop paths through conflict and obsession to resolution and stability.  In choosing to develop a year of programming on the keyword of violence, the College of Fine Arts is taking our School of Theatre’s lead, which will consider violence in drama, from Shakespeare to Masked, a look at the Palestinian Intifada, and Execution of Justice, a play about the murders of Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone of San Francisco.  The other Schools have already begun programming, with the School of Visual Arts welcoming Enrique Chagoya, head of the painting program at Stanford University, whose recent work denouncing the abuse of children at the hands of priests met with a violent response from one viewer, and the School of Music choosing to present works written in times of violence, such as the French, Mexican and Bolshevik Revolutions, as well as the Second World War.

This initiative welcomes participation by our own students, and faculty, as well as commission and presentation of works from alumni and other members of the community.  Our friends at the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and the Huntington Theatre Company will present exhibits, plays and concerts that invite discussion on our keyword.

‘Perspective’ is an important word in this discussion, as no piece of art, no matter how forceful, reflective or coherent, can offer final answers – it can only provoke discussion by presenting one perspective on a multifaceted issue.  As John F. Kennedy said, “We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.”

BU alumna Nancy Livingston and her husband Fred Levin, have made a generous gift that will help the yearly development of this initiative.  We eagerly invite your diverse perspectives on this issue, and welcome all suggestions and feedback as an integral part of the collaborative process.  In developing opportunities for cultural participation across the BU campuses and beyond, the College of Fine Arts looks forward to creating new space for the arts within our community and defining a new role for itself within the University.

Benjamín E. Juárez
Dean
College of Fine Arts

I am grateful to Stephen Paulus for spending time with our students.  I know that he was very happy with the results, placing it above professional productions of the opera.  I look forward to having  him work with our students in the future.

Congratulations to all of those who worked on this collaboration between the School of Music and the School of Theatre.

See BU Today article including video.

William Kentridge

Tonight

I would like to call your attention to two important events:

William Kentridge will give the 2011 Tim Hamill Visiting Artist Lecture on Monday, February 28, at 6:30 pm in Boston University’s Morse Auditorium, 602 Commonwealth Avenue.

One of South Africa’s leading visual artists, William Kentridge is best known for his remarkable films, works on paper, and theatre productions. Kentridge’s work touches on the atrocities of apartheid and social injustice, yet also reflects the exhilarating freedom of the new South Africa.

March 10

Fineberg Commission Performed by Les Percussions de Strasbourg

Les Percussions de Strasbourg joins the BU Symphony Orchestra to perform the world premier of Professor Joshua Fineberg’s Speaking in Tongues. The program also includes performances of Paul Dukas’ Fanfare pour précéder La Péri and Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5. John Page, Conductor.

Thursday, March 10, Tsai Performance Center at 8:00 pm.

Carlos Fuentes. Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Placed in public domain by Noticias e Información de la Presidencia.

Aura by Carlos Fuentes

Recently, I attended a School of Theatre production of Aura, based on the Carlos Fuentes novella of the same name. The story of sexuality and aging, among other things, unfolded as the audience moved from room to room.  The production’s artful staging allowed the audience to be within inches of the actors bluring the third wall.  Having known Fuentes, I think I can say that he would have liked the production.

In 1968, Fuentes and I were neighbors. We became friends and during that golden time, I met a marvelous group of writers through him, including Gabriel García Márquez and Octavio Paz.  I remember one night Fuentes and his then wife, the actress Rita Macedo (who died in 1993) asked me to have dinner at their house because they wanted to talk to me.  They had come to the conclusion that instead of music, I should pursue a career in acting.  Although I did not take their advice, it touches me that they took the time to so seriously consider my future.

BCAP’s Road to Mecca

The Boston Center for American Performance features Professors Elaine Van Hogue and Mark Cohen in Athol Fugard’s masterful examination of artistic freedom in small-town South Africa during apartheid. Directed by Professor Judith Braha, the cast also includes Ali Kerestly, a School of Theatre student.

Watch the ethereal set come together in a BU Today video.

Three Sisters at the Calderwood

Chekov’s characters have the time (lots of it)  and material comfort to ask the big questions.  ”Why are we here?” may be a dangerous one to ask in late-February Boston but Chekov though challenging,  is never disheartening. His very genius and willingness to commiserate is answer enough. Directed by Professor Sidney Friedman.

Review excerpt from The Tufts Daily:

I would urge anyone with reservations about going to see a student production to think again — between the excellent original text, its masterful translation and the incredible justice the actors and director have done to their material, this is a must-see for anyone in the Boston area.

ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art) on Boston's Waterfront. Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

Inside Higher Ed reports that some academic institutions are having trouble hanging on to their art collections in the face of tight budgets.

Fortunately, BU is not in this position as it is not a collecting institution.  This is because our students have a broad array of galleries and renowned museums from which to choose in their own backyard.  This is in keeping with the general mission and philosophy of BU to be in and of the City of Boston but open to the world.

I urge students to take advantage of the inspiration, knowledge, and exhilaration Boston’s museums provide.

From the political, yet deeply personal Mark Bradford show at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art) to the Arts Abroad: London, Paris, Venice and Rome show at the Museum of Fine Arts, and of course, the new Americas Wing (free admission to full-time BU students to MFA).

Near the MFA is the charming one-of-a kind Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum where masterpieces by Bellini, Manet, Matisse, and Michelangelo, among others, are still hung where Mrs. Stewart wanted them.

Boston gallery guide.

Don’t overlook the Harvard museums: Sackler, Fogg, and Busch-Resinger.

Digital sound and tactile sculpture by Jean-Robert Sedano and Solveig Ory (France). Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

The National Research Council of the National Academies has published Beyond Productivity: Information Technology, Innovation, and Creativity.*

The full report is available online.

A summary is provided below.  I invite your comments.

Information Technology and Creative Practices (ITCP)

Technology and the arts have collaborated for a long time.   “In the 19th century, for example, optical, chemical, and thin-film manufacturing technologies converged with the practices of the pictorial arts to establish the new domain of photography.”   This led to a collaboration between the performing arts and moving photography called film.  Though we take movies and photography for granted today, the cultural and economic consequences of these collaborations are difficult to overestimate.

Information technology (IT),  “the technology involving the development, maintenance, and use of computer systems, software, and networks for the processing and distribution of data” (Merriam Webster), “has matured to a point where it can now be used to open up new (artistic) possibilities.”

Music and graphics have joined forces with IT for many years but other artistic areas lag behind.

Why?

One of the reasons is that the push to make computers easier to use has also resulted in more constricting software.  “…Software tools encode numerous assumptions about the making of art and design – precisely the sorts of presuppositions that truly creative practitioners will want to challenge.

Proprietary software and closed operating systems also diminish creativity.  Open source systems may need to be used instead.

Another reason is that computer scientists and artist/designers are often stuck in their respective roles of producer and consumer.  The IT scientist produces software for the artist to buy and use.  Collaboration between the two is rare because communication is sometimes difficult and each sees his/her role as essentially a distinct one.

On the whole, computer scientists are less likely to have a deep understanding of art and design than artists have about computers.  The solution might be to train the same person deeply in both fields.  This is expensive and time-consuming and may have mixed results.

Serious training in both fields for more people should be a long term goal but it may be more practical to set up teams of computer scientists working with artists. This model has worked well in the video games industry.  Architects have also worked well with IT people in computer-aided-design and computer-aided-manufacture (CAD/CAM).

The best known example of a successful team of artists and IT people working together is in the film industry (Avatar, etc.).

Another way to foster collaboration is to improve communication between existing IT and artistic groups, individuals, and organizations by setting up “ITCP clusters.”  Europe and emerging Asian countries are ahead of the U.S. in creating ITCP clusters.  A local example is the Media Lab at MIT.  The Media Lab is housed at a leading research institution utilizing the talent and resources offered there combined with the support and capabilities of industry leaders.  It is difficult to replicate the Media Lab however, as it takes major start-up funding.

In Canada and Europe, standalone government-backed ITCP centers are being built.  “Such centers are typically conceived of as instruments of arts and cultural policy, rather than as equivalents of national research laboratories.”  But they could be used as both.

Boston appears to be a highly desirable venue for ITCP clusters to spring up.  It has the talent, strong IT and artistic institutions, and potential corporate and governmental support.

Recommendations for Educators and Academic Administrators

1.) “Support the achievement of fluency in information technology (IT)…by art and design students through the provision of suitable facilities, opportunities, for hands-on experience with IT tools and media…”

2.) “Support educational experiences for computer science students that provide direct experience in the arts and design…”

3.) “Foster exploration of information technology and creative practices (ITCP) through incentives and experimentation with a range of informal (workshops and seminars)and formal vehicles (centers, awards, majors, minors)…”

4.) “Support curricula, especially at the undergraduate level, that provide the necessary disciplinary foundation for later specialization in ITCP.”

*Publisher: The National Academy Press, 2003, Washington, DC

It is an initiative that helps colleges and universities to integrate the arts into all areas of student life.

(Program Description and Program Goals content taken from Creative Campus website.)

Program Description

The purpose of the Creative Campus Innovations Grant Program is to identify, support, and document cross-campus interdisciplinary collaborations that integrate the work of performing arts presenters in the academy and the surrounding community. Arts Presenters will award between 8 to 10 one- to two-year project grants, ranging from $100,000-$200,000 each in 2010 to college and university presenters for projects that go beyond conventional practice and perspectives, feature innovative or experimental approaches, connect with arts and non-arts constituencies, and stimulate discussion and debate. Funding support is meant to both support new initiatives and deepen existing efforts to integrate the performing arts into the academy.

Project Goals

Creative Campus Innovations projects incorporate a variety of campus-based programs and activities that integrate the work of presenters into the life of the academy and the community by working collectively with other college or university partners and community partners to maximize resources and capacities in the performing arts. Each project meets the following goals:

• integrate the performing arts into the education, service, and scholarly missions of the academy and engage chief academic officers and executive leadership;
• provide opportunities to deepen and expand the participation of artist(s) in the academy through long term residencies, commissions and/or other creative activities; and
• identify, document, and share lessons learned that will contribute to an evolving knowledge base and learning community for campuses and the wider performing arts and presenting field.

For more information on Arts Presenters, please visit artspresenters.org

Examples:

At the University of Alabama students in the Manderson Graduate School of Business may opt to complete the Cultural Awareness Program.  The program has two levels.  Level One requires graduate business students to attend an introductory session on the arts and commerce, six cultural events and debriefing sessions.  Level two requires everything in Level One plus active involvement in running a production, arts marketing campaign, event programming or board membership.

At Dartmouth College, the Hopkins Center for the Arts  used a two-year grant to “raise awareness and spark discussion about socio-economic difference in communities throughout the Upper Valley region of New Hampshire and Vermont.”  The “specific goals with this project were to: (a) Provide opportunities for artists, students, faculty, administrators, and community members to engage with an important topic within a largely undergraduate liberal arts institution setting; (b) Raise awareness within the organization and academic institution to issues of class; (c) Build and deepen relationships with community organizations and academic departments; (d) Model a successful role for a campus arts presenter in creating and touring new work; (e) Build new audiences.”

I wanted to let you know what I have been up to and where I see the College of Fine Arts going as we enter 2011.

This year began at full speed with classes, rehearsals, exhibitions and performances going on all over the College and University. You can review many of the events I attended on this blog.  A myriad of remarkable events closed 2010, among them, a visit by Geena Davis (CFA ’79, Hon. ‘99), who brilliantly discussed her career and work on the largest research project ever undertaken on gender in children’s entertainment.  It was wonderful to have her back at BU.

Two performing arts associations, the International Society for the Performing Arts (ISPA) and the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) held their annual conferences back to back in New York during the first ten days of January. The buzz words there were “collaboration” and “vision 2021”. These two themes are at the core of our current strategic planning process at CFA, and it is very pertinent to discuss them both within our community at BU and with world leaders in the arts.

One such leader I encountered in New York was Akram Khan, one of the most acclaimed choreographers in Britain today. His dance company has provided him with a platform for innovation and a diverse range of work through collaboration with artists from other disciplines. His latest project, Vertical Road, has attracted a host of performers from east and west to collaborate with him. Ballerina Sylvie Guillem, actor Juliette Binoche, composer Steve Reich and artist Antony Gromley are among his collaborators, and it was fantastic to hear about his experiences with the risks, opportunities and rewards of artistic collaboration, especially for me, since collaboration is the very reason for the existence of a College of Fine Arts at BU.

Among the many meetings and interactions at and around these conferences was a get-together with the violinist Aaron Dworkin, a friend of BU, who has sent many students to Boston University Tanglewood Institute, our summer music program in Lenox, MA. Aaron was named a 2005 MacArthur Fellow, is a member of President Obama’s National Arts Policy Committee and was the President’s first nominee to the National Council on the Arts; he is also founder and President of the Sphinx Organization, a leading national arts organization that focuses on youth development and diversity in classical music.  An author, social entrepreneur, artist-citizen and an avid arts education advocate, Aaron is a great example of how a virtuoso musician can also be a social leader and the best possible advocate for his art.

To succeed, Aaron has had to develop what we might call social entrepreneurial skills – skills that can be learned and taught, and which are at the core of the vision that is emerging in our strategic planning discussions. I have also found the roots of such social entrepreneurial teaching in some of the writings of Eben Tourjée, founder of the original College of Music at BU in 1872. In order to clarify a relevant vision for the future, we must carefully trace our history and remember the lessons learned along the way.

These two examples of collaboration and social responsibility come hand in hand with excellence in the artistic training of our students, who will face a challenging and uncertain future. It is our mission to provide the best possible tools for them to be relevant, resilient and, yes, successful, although in my choice of this word, I urge everyone to create their own definition of what “successful” really means.

The arts are the perfect space in which to face complex issues and to collaborate. My final thoughts go to my meetings with my friend Alan Brown, a leading expert on audience participation in the arts. We talked of many things, but of capital importance is the Creative Campus initiative, whose purpose is to develop cross-campus interdisciplinary collaborations that integrate the arts into both the academy and the surrounding community, in
order to further develop the role and influence of the arts within the education, service, and scholarly missions of the university.

We hope to engage chief academic officers in helping us to create opportunities to deepen and expand the participation of artists in the academy through long term residencies, commissions and/or other creative activities. Along the way, we must identify, document, and share lessons learned that will contribute to an evolving knowledge base and learning community for campuses, as well as the performing arts world. We have begun the necessary conversations toward establishing BU as a most creative campus, one that shares the arts with its community, city, and world.

We fully embrace our role at the forefront of global knowledge creation and collaboration.

Our mission at Boston University is to make the arts relevant to every student.

The University cannot do it alone.  This effort must be a collaboration involving students.  To have a genuine encounter with the arts, students must commit to a threefold experience:

–First, do it. Draw, paint, sing, act, dance, play a musical instrument. Find out how hard it is; how joyous, too.

–Second, know something about the context in which a particular art work was created.  Who was Beethoven, the man?  What were the times like when Bach composed?  This will add crucial richness to the experience.

–Finally, and most importantly, enjoy the arts. Attend productions, exhibitions, recitals. Learn something about the artist and his/her work before you go.

Opportunities here are nearly limitless but you must make a commitment. This is different from some forms of popular culture that make few demands on you.

By “doing” art, learning about it, and enjoying it, our students can move from the merely curious, to the interested, all the way to becoming active participants and passionate arts advocates.