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Abstract
The term ‘audience development’ addresses current dilemmas in publicly funded arts institutions. It is increasingly deployed in cultural policies and institutional practices in the Nordic countries, and the article provides a critical discussion of the term. The article argues that the discourse developing around audience development takes an organizational and institutionalized approach to performance culture that risks reducing dilemmas in performing arts institutions to a question of either marketing or social distinction. It overlooks a substantial body of knowledge of performance as a complex social and aesthetic phenomenon that it is necessary to acknowledge in order to properly engage with the challenges and potentials of the performing arts and their institutions. Three key logics from performance research are introduced to complement the audience development discourse with more nuanced language on how performance matters.
Acknowledgements
This article was first presented as a paper at the 6th Nordic Conference on Cultural Policy Research. I would like to thank Louise Ejgod Hansen and Egil Bjørnsen for interesting discussions and helpful comments.
Notes
1. For example, Theatron.eu and new.aud.eu, funded by European Cultural Foundation and Teaterdialog.eu and Music Experience Design (www.cmec.mah.se) funded by the European Regional Developing Fund.
3. Also discussed convincingly in terms of cultural leadership (Wennes Citation2002, Møller Citation2012).
4. As Wilmar Sauter notes in a review of Nordic Theatre studies: ‘Although performance analysis has expanded rapidly, studies of the audience’s response to performances are rare. Reception research was well established in the 1980s, but only recently has a renewed curiosity about the spectator’s “real” experience been noticeable, both internationally and in the Nordic countries’ (Citation2009, pp. 71–72).
5. http://norskpublikumsutvikling.no/about-2/ (Author’s translation).
6. http://norskpublikumsutvikling.no/2012/10/videreforing-og-fornying/ (Author’s translation).
9. Historical and contemporary debates about public service television (e.g. Søndergaard Citation1994, Lindelof Citation2007) also serve as illustrative parallels to the audience development discourse.
10. For a detailed case study on how such notions of the imperfect audience haunt the practice of theatre institutions see Lindelof and Sjöberg (Citation2013).
11. A point also addressed in relation to the rise of experience economy, as many art experiences are ‘(semi) public goods with substantial public funding, and it makes little sense to set economic growth as the target in industries with substantial public funding’ (Bille Citation2012, p. 97).
12. Hermele (Citation2006) shows how the label ‘artistic quality’ implicitly functions as gatekeeper to reject cultural diversity and equal rights in two major Swedish theatres.
13. For a comparison of cultural policy in the Nordic countries see Duelund (Citation2003).
14. I adhere to ‘performance research’ as a label that encompasses the various, global and regional contributions to ‘performance studies’, a term that more specifically addresses the US-centred ‘broad spectrum approach’ of Schechnerian performance studies (McKenzie and Rom Citation2009, p. 2).
15. Butsch also – in a note – suggests processes of audiencing as a better way to discuss audiences (Citation2008, p. 24, 145).
16. Embodied action does not conflate with the assertation of liveness (Auslander Citation1999), discussed by Fischer-Lichte (Citation2008) and Barker (Citation2013). Shusterman (Citation2008) speaks of ‘somaesthetics’ to enrich our understanding of bodily experiences without reducing it by textualizing the body as e.g. gender or race. Reason and Reynolds (Citation2010) investigate audience experiences of dance through the prism of empathy and kinaesthesia.