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The Pace Report: "Panamonk: Revisited" The Danilo Perez Interview with Terri Lyn Carrington and Ben Street

Welcome to another edition of The Pace Report featuring pianist, composer, educator, and humanitarian, Danilo Perez.

Recently Danilo returned to a week-long engagement at the Jazz Standard in NYC were he brought his trio featuring bassist Ben Street and drummer Terri Lyn Carrington were he played music from his critically-acclaimed 1997 Thelonious Monk tribute recording, "Panamonk." This week marked the 20th anniversary of the record and was the first time Danilo has played the music since its release.

We sat down and talked at great length of why Monk is so important to the jazz community, his role at Berklee School of Music on Boston, and reflects on the centennial of trumpeter and bandleader Dizzy Gillespie.

Last week 'The Art of Mediation' was organised by Manifesta as part of the M10 dialogue series. Both the international and local panellists generated an energetic discussion on the conflicts and traditions of guiding verses mediating. The panel included:

Sophia Kudriavceva (Head of Youth Education for the Hermitage Museum, Russia)

Alexis Boyco (State Russian Museum, Russia)

Ben Street (Art Historian, Mediator and writer, UK)

Keiko Higashi (Powell Cotton Museum, UK)

Firstly what do we mean about mediation?

‘Mediation’ is in fact an ancient form of conflict resolution, which consists of the mediator positioning his or herself between two parties without taking sides, or passing judgement on either of them. An art-mediator thus facilitates dialogue and the exchange of knowledge by stimulating opinions through what the viewer sees and the associations they make.

The West and the East

Mediation is already prevalent as a museum practice in the West, much of the public are already comfortable with engaging in open discussions surrounding artworks. The Russian members of the panel suggested that mediation in the west is almost not required anymore, the contemporary as such a natural process of western culture – the people having been exposed to contemporary art for so long. Their experience Alexis Boyco contrasted to the Russian audience who had a significant void of 70 years in their exposure to contemporary art during Soviet times - from Malevich until the 90s. He told of how some people in Russia today still see a Matisse or Picasso and believe it is not art.

Boyco mentioned that even 25 years ago, when in 1990 they organised a course at the gymnasium at the Russian Museum on 'the problems of modern and artistic culture’ the majority of people still hadn’t reached a high opinion towards abstract art. Despite being more than 100 years old, it’s still not fully understood.

Guiding vs. mediation

As an organisation Manifesta has been practicing mediation for its last few editions and in the context of MANIFESTA 10 is attempting to implement the technique in the form of their art-mediators taking visitors around the exhibition. 

Prof. Alexis Boyco (State Russian Museum, Russia)

Nevertheless as Russian Museum pedagogue Alexis Boyco  commented ‘mediation is dependant on the readiness of the visitor to participate' - an observation particularly relevant since mediation in Russia is completely new compared to the long tradition of guiding.

In the practice of guiding, information is largely imparted to the audience by the guide as facts. The viewers are largely passive and the guide takes the active role an as the informed lecturer. Mediation defies this barrier between viewer and guide – the mediator provides information where it is relevant to the work visible in front of them and the group together arrive at conclusions as to what the work might mean.    

Art Historian, Mediator and writer Ben Street, who spent a weekend training new mediators for the Biennial, explained how that there is little point imparting the artists’ biography if it doesn’t help the visitor engage more fully with the work. The mediator wants to slow the visitor down in order to ask questions, gather responses and discuss varying opinions so that the groups’ own perceptions form the basis of collectively understanding and experiencing the work.

Engagement: Contemporary art as inseparable to mediation Ben Street emphasised the relevance of mediation - which he believes is the most appropriate way of discussing contemporary art: "...not to engage in a conversational way with art is to misunderstand its place art historically since most of contemporary art is built on a dialogue.”

Streetexplains how mediation is also important for works of the past and outlined his experience on writing audio-guide scripts for the Tate Modern. He discovered that he must connect each sentence to the art object so that the viewer doesn’t look away. "Every piece of information must bring you closer to the object, shorten the gap between you and the art work."

  Ben Street (Art Historian, Mediator and writer, UK)

Participation rather than passive viewer 

Sophia Kudriatseva emphasised the important levels of interactivity that makes up a mediated tour. She also emphasised that being a good mediator took serious training and that it was very hard to introduce any new methods to the historic Museum context. She explained how inspired she had become with the methodology of mediation on the realisation that it was what was needed  -  a method that could be merged with the existing classical education of many guides.

Sophia Kudriavceva (Head of Youth Education for the Hermitage Museum, Russia)

Ben Street is also mindful to the fact that people also have an immediate reaction to art – which mediation shouldn’t crush, "there needs to be a balance where mediation simply adds extra layers to the viewers’ own interpretation."

Now some questions from the dialogue’s audience: 

Q. What is the ideal mediated experience?

Ben Street elaborated further on how mediation tries to engender a new way of looking, a new way to experience art – agreeing with Boyko that only once there is a public which is prepared to engage in this open creative way, can they have an ideal experience with mediation. The ideal mediator must become ‘the third wall, hiding so as to allow the group to explore the themes with each other.’

  Q. How can an artwork can be mediated by someone other than the artist - how can mediation possibly be a part of the art piece with the mediator as co-author of the art?

“Since Duchamp, the art happens between the object and the viewer, Duchamp brought mediation into the very act of creation. As such mediation is embedded into the artistic practice.

Keiko suggested that in Installation art mediation was not necessary - believing that in such art the focus was on the experience of the installation itself - and that was enough. 

Marcel Duchamp, 'The Fountain' 1917

Ben Street agreed, linking the idea back to Duchamp – “the very genre of installation art comes out of the Duchampian tradition – with mediation being the raison d’être of the work – therefore the experience itself replaces the mediation.”

Thomas Hirschhorn 'ABSCHLAG' 2014

The fact that many of the projects in MANIFESTA 10 are new commissions and projects - suggests even more that the art might need mediation.

The artist’s work as being able to speak for itself was iterated by a quote by Barbara Hepworth “if I could talk about art it would be great - but it wouldn’t be in the world of art.” In this case it seems the mediator is necessary to make observations and points of discussion in order that people can look at the work in a critical way and allow it to speak for itself.  

Q. What’s the perfect mediation- have you experienced perfect mediation?

“I would have to talk about myself - I was with some students in front of a Matisse and having been initially sceptical about him, my students' questioning and discussion totally opened Matisse up to me.” Alexis Boyco

"The perfect mediation is a great act of improvisation - everything depends upon the audience - it is improvisatory – something that you cannot predict – it does not necessarily have to include art historical information, you need the audience to have felt the new work incredibly well so that they ask questions and feel close to it.” Ben Street

Q. Can you point out 3 main differences between the mediator and tour guide and/or 3 pieces of advise on how not to become an interpreter?

“The mediator must be responsive to what the group is doing in the present moment, they must understand the surrounding people, it’s about emotional intelligence, they must be incredibly alert. This differs from a guided tour the information tends to stay the same regardless of who you’re with."

"A piece of advice is about hierarchy - there should be no hierarchy of you as the mediator – it is a two way conversation, you are not simply imparting knowledge to another.” Ben Street

The question remains for the Russian panellists as to whether the Hermitage’s hierarchical and guiding traditions can be successfully changed, and indeed whether the museum employees would be ready for this.

Commenting after the Dialogue Sepake Angiama, Head of Education for Manifesta:

"I was really struck by the differences in approaches to engaging the public with contemporary art in Russia. The methodology for approaching artwork at the Hermitage has seemingly not changed for the last fifty years. Sophia Kudriavceva posed an extremely pertinent question 'How do you create innovation in one of the world's largest museums?' The Director of the Hermitage Professor Mikhail Piotrovsky has identified that Manifesta, coming from the outside but working within the institution may create the possibility for change"