The Review Hive is intended to take art writing out of its traditional comfort zone of presenting structured critique via a single authoritative voice. We (the students carrying out the project and the instructor guiding it) are interested in seeing what happens to criticism when it is forced to incorporate several distinct viewpoints at one time.
As the Spring 2010 semester at SVA progresses, we will select several artworks and/or exhibitions to view. The students (and sometimes the instructor) will check out these shows and post comments on the spot, using our iPod Touch devices. In addition, some of us may choose to post follow-up remarks later, as our thoughts about the works we’ve seen develop over time. There is no limit to the number of comments that any participant may post, either on-site or after the fact. Some of our visits will be done as a class; others will be assigned as homework and carried out by individual students as they see fit.
In order to keep the responses to the art we’re viewing spontaneous, sharp, and multivocal, we have chosen to use Twitter as our platform for posting our reviews. The limitation of 140 characters per tweet (less the inclusion of hashtags to allow readers to gather the tweets into one place) will impose an interesting challenge for our writing. Longer and more complex thoughts will have to be built up from shorter snippets of text, with the constant possibility of interruption from someone else’s input breaking the flow and taking the conversation in a new direction.
Each new assignment will be announced on this blog, and widgets will be added to allow readers to follow the Twitter streams for each exhibition we review.
The legacy of Donald Judd’s art criticism looms over this project. As part of the VCS senior essay workshop, we have read a fair amount of Judd’s short reviews, with an eye toward his ability to convey a great deal of information in a very small string of only 60 or 70 words. Yet this project also stands at odds with his writing, because its additional debt to the cut-up techniques of the Surrealists and William Burroughs preempts the sort of careful editing and definitive writing that allowed Judd to speak from the standpoint of an omniscient expert.
Because the project is a new experiment for all of its participants, we have no idea what the results will look like. Readers may discover an unruly cacophony of dissonant voices, or a larger order that emerges from the cluster of opinions. We will be as surprised as anyone else to see what happens.
