Opening Welcome Speech by Robyn Archer

Thanks Ethel, and welcome all to ISPA New York 2007.

Most of us in ISPA spend our lives putting artists together with audiences – finding audiences for artists we love and respect. WE do this as agents, publicists, producers, presenters, theatre managers, programmers, festival directors, funders, as artists ourselves and as those such as theatre designers, architects and acousticians who work to improve the physical relationship between artists and their audiences.

Just as there was a Secession in Vienna one hundred years ago, in the first decade following the fin-de-siecle, one which led to profound artistic change departing from the 19th century and blazing a path for Modernism boldly to follow, so it may be that in one hundred years time, cultural commentators will look back on this decade, the ‘noughties’ of the 21st century and see that history was repeating itself.

While there is no shortage of artists making work in familiar forms (theatre, opera, concert platform music, ballet, drama and literature etc) just as they were one hundred years ago, there is clear evidence of, firstly, a burgeoning wave of artists who make their art in a more fluid form – skipping between genres and  using the hardware/software, approaches, ideas and language borne of constantly evolving new technologies.

Hard to categorise, yet still intent on the pursuit of excellence, these artists need us to try not to squeeze them into our 20 century boxes (whether they be literally venues or metaphorically funding mechanisms, subscription series or philosophies of art) but to respond to new ways and forms in the arts and to allow the form of our support to follow the function of their work. We need to change organically in response to these new forms, new constructs and a new environment.

That environment also includes, secondly, new audiences – limited not only to the young but including any of those who have expressed a love of the arts yet  seem to be accessing them in much more fluid ways; ways which are less predictable and less conveniently ‘boxed off’ than before.

The younger members of this ever-expanding audiences, we are told, rarely read newspapers, listen to radio or watch TV, are unaware of art critics, do not buy subscription series or even any ticket in advance. They like theatre and opera, rap, books, visual art, film, dance, music of all kinds (as their ipod mixes tend to reveal), architecture and design, but they tend to make their choices more spontaneously, and in a vastly expanding world of choice, they are just as likely to wear art (clothes, jewellery), download music, go to a gallery opening followed by a visit to a new bar or restaurant with cool new design, than go to the theatre. And in all this they will be advised by their close peers as to what is worth their time and hard-earned cash to experience. Blogs not critics, an SMS text message, not an expensive ad in the New York Times, are what will get that consumer to an artists they think they may enjoy.

Of course, 20th century vestiges are still strong for the moment, but we would be mistaken to think we can just turn our backs on these changes.

A friend here in New York, working in film and video for children remarked yesterday that the major Record Companies had taken on the small fry – and lost, comprehensively. Young musicians no longer need their studios or their contracts. Garage band software allows a 15 year old New Yorker to record her tune in her bedroom, email  the file to Bulgaria for backing vocals, Scotland for a bit of bagpipe and then log to Japan for an animated clip – and bingo ! Just get it out there to anyone who will watch and listen.

Yesterday, for the first time ever in Britain, a song from a previously unrecorded and still unsigned three-piece band bumped into the top 40 [it subsequently went to number one]. Top 40 constructs everywhere are having to change their rules, allowing in music that you can only download and at the same time admitting that certain songs recorded 40 years ago are still outselling new ones. This change in the rules will in turn have a profound change on the multi-billion dollar international recording industry .  [As I was driven to JFK after the congress my taxi driver informed me that Tower Records downtown had closed its doors.]

Don’t imagine that the same won’t happen to us sooner or later.

While the notion, constructs, rhetoric and implementation of political democracy become ever more suspect of the effects of hypocrisy, double-speak, apathy, exclusion and downright lies, a cultural democracy is gathering enormous strength.

All this and more is what we are here to consider at ISPA this year. There will be few answers but I hope a greater awareness of the changing environment we are all working in.

Thankyou to Jazz at Lincoln Centre staff and crew; to Marty and Johann for allowing me to offer up some of the initial ideas for this theme. We have been fluid in our operation this time and I haven’t been a chair or co-chair as in past years. Thank you Johann for working so hard to bring the ideas into shape.
Thanks also to John Fernandez and our members, Cathy Barbash, Nicole Borelli, Elizabeth Bradley, Mike Ross, Paul King and Walter Jaffe.

I’m delighted to say that we have a terrific line-up of artists to oil our mechanism – Ethel, Daniel Bernard Romain, DJ Scientific, Joanna McGregor, Guy Klucevsek, Cristina Pato and Mikel Rouse, as well as those presenting pitches which largely reflect the new fluidity.  Over the next few days we will hear from Joseph Polisi, Sara Billman, Philip Bither, David Fraher, Rene Barsolo, Vallejo Gantner, Rika Iino, Thomas Kriegsmann, Maurean Reagan, Deborah Rossi, Mark Russell, Sarah Wilson and Jerry Yoshitomi – all of whom are here to prod and provoke us in our examination of the theme.
And we have an expert panel of b-s detectors. Just in case we get carried away with too much middle-aged merriment, or as Warren Beatty reflected on last night at the Golden Globes ‘the pleasure of the sound of our own voices’, a group of young observers have bravely agreed to attend the congress, to accompany us to shows, come to the pitch session and feed back to us at the end of the congress.

Thanks to Cathy Barbash for wrangling this delightful herd and I’d like to introduce you to them now….
Please feel free to talk to our observers throughout the congress, and get a different view of what’s being said and done.

Alas the fluidity of my own career means that I can’t stay to the end of the congress. I must drip off to London where I have a concert to give. But I’m sure I’ll be told all abouthow this all unfolds.

Let’s have a great time together, and to kick things off, an artist who embodies every aspect of the fluid principle. Friends and colleagues, please welcome Daniel Bernard Roumain.