Last week, it was announced that longtime New York art scene resident Tim Griffin would lead The Industry as executive director of the Los Angeles experimental opera producer. Griffin was a contributing editor at Art Forum, where he was editor-in-chief from 2003 until 2010, before heading to New York’s influential experimental space, The He Kitchen, where he became director and chief his curator. he served for nine years.
An observer recently spent time with Griffin to hear about his new job.
What drew you to The Industry?
On a personal note, I have had so many connections with people I know well within the organization in a variety of fields, from visual artists to composers to people who work on choreographies that have collaborated with The Kitchen. Its interdisciplinarity became a point of attraction, not only in terms of art, but also in terms of me and the historical community. More broadly, Yuval and his artistic team transcend many misconceptions by encouraging the reinvention of opera as an art form that can radically cut across disciplines and communities. They performed operas at Union Station and in limousines. The next work by Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade will take place at the Observatory. It’s a unique opportunity.
Obviously, The Kitchen is performance-oriented, but this job is more performance-focused than ever before. What do you think about such a transition?
It’s funny, when I first went to The Kitchen, I remember having a lot of conversations about how performance shouldn’t be considered in isolation from “visual art,” which is traditionally associated with visual art. It was the same even when the performance was already appearing more often in what was considered. art context. They are different things, but it doesn’t always make sense to separate them. Indeed, historically, going back to the beginnings of modernism, such boundaries were not respected. Today you might be talking more meaningfully about the distance between audiences than about the distance between types of works.
As for my own transition, I think my background in working with artists across disciplines, connecting them, and connecting their communities remains a real focus at The Industry. . At the same time, I believe that the use of opera as a sharp lens for the kind of interdisciplinarity we have seen has made the art world more aware of interdisciplinarity and the wonderful model The Industry has produced. increase. The art world of the past decade or more will become a reality in this field in the years to come.
In other words, it may look like a transition to me, but ideally we can all collectively see how these mediums and disciplines have really changed relationships. As long as the industry continues to push the transition to the art world as well.
I remember about ten years ago when many journalists, myself included, had to write an article about the opening of the Tate Modern, a moment of performance in the art world. their performance center And Performa really caught the attention. We are also moving into an interesting moment when Instagram’s dominance is fading and giving way to TikTok. In your experience with The Kitchen, how have you felt the change in performance over the past decade? How it’s made, how people consume it, and people’s attitudes towards it. do you think?
Wow, that’s a very specific question, both big and small.
Please answer the part you want. Maybe just a small part.
More than ten years ago, I think there was a concern that performance was embedded in a white cube without considering it…in fact, as the relationship between performance and static art changed, A different architecture was called for.
And institutions are trying to overcome this problem by giving architecture itself a subtle flexibility inherent in responding to the real, artist-driven changes and developments that are happening in the art field. can now be seen. For example, these days he’s at MoMA’s studio. This change may begin to shape what an audience is, what a mass is, what a group is. The way people gather around your work and create a kind of collective based on the modality of the artistic call, in terms of what the artist is going to do now and what the audience wants. It is something that every agency must do.
But the change extends beyond walls. For example, there are all kinds of interesting performance representations designed to be delivered through cameras. So while you may be looking at something in physical space, I anticipate that this work will continue to exist, perhaps through streaming his platform, etc., and will be able to engage in a different mode of attention and a different kind of It reflects a perception of accessibility.
Going back to industry and opera, we can see historical precedents. For example, Robert Ashley, who was involved with “The Kitchen,” produced a television opera in the early ’80s. Going back over 100 years and going back to radio and futurist opera, there are all sorts of avant-gardists looking to use other platforms for their work.
One of the things that really drew me to The Industry is that opera is a great meeting place for different disciplines and different communities. As with many new and developing platforms, artists and audiences can change the way they think about performance. Organizations are already addressing this issue. They use the Los Angeles cityscape as a backdrop or setting. We distribute music through other technologies. Going beyond the physical limits of face-to-face performance in a historical medium is truly futuristic. And when you look at that institutional flexibility, I think it offers a real way forward for everyone involved in the arts.
Yes, it was a monster question. Thanks for giving me that idea. I heard what you said about audience response and engaging the audience. I’m interested in your thoughts on the development of Los Angeles as a cultural capital over the last few years. What do you think about it and how have you seen it yourself?
For me, LA is always where ideas and new models come from. The entire network of schools here has an incredible history and incredibly fertile soil when it comes to arts, music and performance. In that regard, many of my closest friends were based here, from Baldessari to Silver Rottlinger. And recently, the number of galleries has increased and international profiles have been added. There is momentum here. Although I am new to Los Angeles, I feel there is a great opportunity for the grassroots and greenhouse culture of Los Angeles to grow.
Many also expressed an interest in finding ways to bring together different aspects of creative culture in Los Angeles at an organizational level. The music community is great. The arts community is great. The movie community is great. The dance community is great. There are so many different cultures here. But the question is, how do you actually bring these wonderful people together? How does Los Angeles produce cross-fertilization? I think that having a flexible model for The Industry, and opera as an interdisciplinary art form, actually has the ability to bring together all groups that rarely meet. A kind of marginal possibility is about to reach its moment, not only in the industry but in general.
Opera is the perfect medium for that. The last question, which you can avoid if you want, is to ask about the current state of the media in the art world. It’s in a unique moment.
Art always needs a platform where people can talk to each other and start understanding what’s going on. That way, right or wrong, you have context and you get a sense of being part of that world. conversation. We need dialogue in which people feel a sense of belonging and a stake. And for now, I think there’s still a lot of room for that to happen.
Over the decades, there will be some ebbs and flows when it comes to the number of platforms, the types of interests, and the types of conversations that occur. But I feel that the thirst for it—the thirst for writing and the thirst for dialogue—has only grown in the last few years. And it’s funny, when I first landed in Los Angeles, which ended up giving a guest lecture at UCLA, I realized just how hungry 18-year-olds are for critical writing. I was really shocked to find out. They wanted to read Frantz Fanon. They really wanted to dig.
So, whatever the current state of affairs, I wouldn’t be shocked if another generation comes along that expands on the platform we’re looking at right now. Different generations have different reading habits and attention spans, and they grow, expand, and contract so that no one writes the same kind of essay at any given time. But 100-odd years ago, sayings ruled this country. Inevitably, I think there will be types of sentences and types of connections, and sometimes you don’t always use words. It may be conveyed in some sort of telegraph-like image. It could be another kind of language that isn’t necessarily text-based.
And there are other types of writing that can still make an impact. You may see something that doesn’t work for magazines but works for other platforms. I’m not talking about social media. Writing genres are born in dialogue with different cultural moments.
completely. People want a shared universe to discuss these ideas, whatever it is. it always is.
Thinking aloud, another way of thinking about media might be through the models of all the alternative art spaces that have played an ongoing role over the decades. In the last 15-20 years, when all sorts of new transitions have taken place in the field of art, such spaces have become very important for promoting alternative models, new ways of thinking about art, collecting and collecting. I think it played its part. And that can happen with critical press, too. I think that the alternative model that occurred in the space is now occurring in the art dialogue.
