2/25, The producer and the performer

Marcel Duchamp confused for the world the concept of worthiness of art. Vito Acconci furthered the discussion by confusing the spaces in which art was exhibited. The four films viewed in succession on Monday 25 February, especially Tree, ask the question of authorship and artist's participation. The Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher site Learning to love you more, begs to ask the questions: "who is the artist? what is the art?"

In Tree the performer is a part of the landscape that is being filmed. The tree dances whenever there is wind, by holding the camera, swinging it gently, surveying the landscape as only a member of that landscape can, the tree is offering its unique perspective through the camera as provided by Chris Welsby, author. Despite the performance of a tree dancing in the wind regardless, Welsby, less writer or director, stepped into the role of producer to make the technical elements coincide with the performance. Welsby enabled the film with out writing, directing or even operating the camera.

However, July and Fletcher have put their names to the website www.learningtoloveyoumore.com which is maintained by a third party, and all of the content is provided by users, consumers, those who do not identify as artists. All of the art is created off of prompts issued to the users by the cite. Whether July and Fletcher personally come up with the assignments is unclear, however, they certainly put all of the pieces in place on line for this "consumer created art" to be created and displayed. If July and Fletcher we're viewed as the "authors" of this site, it would be easy to fault them for being exploitative. However, they choose not to inflect the project with any possible interpretations. They simply provide the venue and prompts, each of the participants is so by his or her own will. The project is produced by the artists, the art is made by what would traditionally be called the audience.