The landscape of mainstream cultural criticism has changed dramatically in recent years. With the rise of the internet and related new media and forms (blogs, tweets, and other self-publishing), it is a commonplace to assert that ‘everyone’s a critic. To some extent that’s true and innovative forms of cultural, critical engagement can meaningfully take their place alongside more traditional print and broadcast forms.
Criticism now, led by Professor Andrew O’Hagan and Professor Mark Turner, sought to interrogate the nature of cultural criticism in the present day. On the one hand there is a thriving, if predictably unchallenging, ‘review culture’ which drives the arts pages of the mainstream press. On the other hand, there are increasing numbers of blogs and other forms in which opinions get expressed. What may be lacking, however, is a more considered forum for interrogating culture more extensively based on different kinds of engagement with institutions and their performances/exhibitions. At the same time that there is a kind of democratising of criticism across media, there is arguably a narrowing of meaningful dialogue, debate and cultural encounter.
The project sought to place within institutions a ‘writer in residence’, who became familiar with all aspects of a production or exhibition, from development through to delivery. The idea was to embed a writer (importantly not a conventional reviewer or similar, and not a specialist in the art form), with the curiosity to want to learn more about the work of the institution and the desire to communicate his/her ideas through critical engagement and expression. The project relied on building medium to long-term relationships with institutions, building trust and dialogue in ways that are often not present in how criticism is understood.
Some of the project’s key questions were:
- How might we engage with the material/institution/art form differently and critically in order to open up discussion?
- How can we engage expanded forms of knowledge in criticism rather than limit it to contracted expressions of mere opinion?
- How might we begin to think about what is important for a renewed form of cultural criticism?
Dr Augustus Casely-Hayford
In the interest of opening up meaningful dialogue, debate and cultural encounter, Criticism now placed a ‘writer in residence’, Dr Augustus Casely-Hayford, at the Young Vic. Augustus worked on two productions presented at the Young Vic in 2014 – A season in the congo and The secret agent, becoming familiar with all aspects of the production. The idea was to explore the ways a deeper knowledge of any given performance might produce a different kind of critical response.
The reports on the two projects written by Augustus can be found below:
A season in the congo
The secret agent
Students from King’s College London were also involved in a series of sessions aimed at discussing the tools of cultural criticism, using these with tools to review The secret agent and reflecting on the importance of good criticism.
Dr Ruth Padel
A second ‘writer in residence’ project with Ruth Padel took place with the Royal Opera House during spring 2014, exploring various productions and interpretations of Faust. Ruth watched rehearsals for three Faust operas whereby she blogged about each rehearsal and wrote on Twitter about what she had experienced hoping these online platforms would bring new readers and listeners to think about opera not as 'museum art' but living art.
She wrote pieces in the Royal Opera House programmes so audiences could see behind the scenes and she accompanied KIng's students from the Departments of Music, Drama and English to select dress rehearsals, subsequently holding a seminar to allow the students to discus how they felt about the opera rehearsals. The seminar was successful in bringing in different expertises to the discussing of opera. It showed that though opera has its own knowledge, language, and sophistication, it is possible for acute open minds with no background knowledge of its traditions to critique it.
Ruth's full report can be found here.
In addition, Criticism now supported a project with the Mahogany Opera Group, who were seeking to test ways of incorporating ‘feedback’ into their own artistic practice during the development of projects. They held six workshops with incorporated feedback sessions That posed an interesting question and challenge: is ‘criticism’ only something that comes at the end of process? Is it always about outcome/output? The team sought to explore the ways ‘criticism’ might be a feature in the development of artistic works.
In January 2014 the Mahogany Opera Group presented Various stages - a three-week R&D festival of new opera projects that are in various stages of development - in collaboration with King's and Guildhall School of Music & Drama. The team were keen to develop feedback on the work-in-progress through a series of 'call and response' sessions by incorporating Liz Lerman’s 'Critical Response Process' (CRP) as a way of gathering feedback on the work.
The Mahogany Opera Group held six workshops on new opera projects that were observed by a group of responders of between 6-20 people. Part of this group was made up of a core group of responders who attended all six sessions and contributed towards an evaluation discussion at the end. This group included two King’s PhD students who were engaged to comment on the process. The other responders were partners, funders and other associates of the Mahogany Opera Group.
Following the observation of the workshops a facilitated discussion took place between the artists and the responders which followed Lerman’s four-step CRP method. It created some very interesting discussions, some of which were of great benefit to the continuing development of the opera projects and the way in which we workshop new pieces. The work developed during the workshops was then presented at the Mahogany Opera Group launch event hosted at King's.
Read Kate Symondson's full report on the workshops here.
Andrew is currently a Creative Writing Fellow in the Department of English at King's. He is an accomplished novelist and non-fiction writer, and a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and the New York Times. Our Fathers (1999), his first novel, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction and the Whitbread First Novel Award.
In 2013 he was awarded £1,000 as one of the five runners-up for The William Hazlitt Inaugural Essay Prize. In his essay, Light Entertainment, O’Hagan investigates the specific cultural and social conditions that helped to facilitate and conceal the crimes that have since led to Operation Yewtree. He considers a number of factors - from the public’s deification of the biggest television personalities of the 1960s and 1970s, to the laissez-faire attitude of the BBC, in particular – to illustrate how it has been possible for culprits to escape punishment for so long.
Mark joined King's in 2000 and is a Professor of Nineteenth & Twentieth-Century Literature in the Department of English. His two primary areas of research interest are the relationship between literature, media and culture since the 19th century, and Anglo-American queer studies. He has published widely on various aspects of literature, journalism, photography, film, painting and popular culture.
He co-edited, with John Stokes, a major edition of Oscar Wilde’s journalism for Oxford University Press that was published in 2013 and in 2011 completed one article on Derek Jarman and London in the 1980s and another on the idea of ‘zigzagging’ in the modern city. He is also actively engaged with colleagues working in the 19th century, in the queer studies research group Queer@King’s and in the 'Shows of London' group.
Augustus is a Curator and cultural historian and Executive Director, Arts Strategy, of Arts Council England.
He has directed and produced arts programmes for the BBC and Channel 4 and is a member of Tate Britain's Council and a Clore Fellow. Gus has lectured at the Royal College of Art, Sothebyуs Institute of Art and Goldsmiths College. He gained a PhD in African History from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University.
Ruth Padel FRSL is an award-winning poet, scholar, novelist, critic and former Chair of the Poetry Society, closely connected to music, to wildlife conservation, to crossovers between science and art, to India and to Greece. Born in London, she began as a classicist, teaching and writing on ancient Greek tragedy ( In and Out of the Mind, 1992 and Whom Gods Destroy, 1995) and has lived extensively in Crete.
She is currently a Poetry Fellow in the Department of English at King's.
The Royal Opera House aims to enrich people’s lives through opera and ballet. Home to two of the world’s great artistic companies – The Royal Opera and The Royal Ballet, performing with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House – they seek to be always accessible and engaging, to develop audiences across the UK and to break new ground in the presentation of lyric theatre.
The Young Vic is a theatre on the Cut, located near the South Bank in London. David Lan has been the theatre's artistic director since 2000. Its philosophy is to "produce great plays for great audiences now and in the future".
The Mahogany Opera Group creates new opera in new ways, in different spaces and places throughout the UK and internationally. Each of their distinct projects aims to stretch the boundaries of what opera can be and who it is for.
Mahogany is a resident company at King’s College London and Watford Palace Theatre and works in collaboration with a wide range of venues, performing ensembles and non-arts partners.
The film reviews the aims and scope of the project, describes the collaboration between academics and cultural sector practitioners, and presents some findings and recommendations for future working.