Link to full podcast: https://soundcloud.com/heelhang/the-artists-circle-gate-keeping
"The Internet has really democratized ideas. There are no real gatekeepers any more, because if you have a great idea, and you put it online, people will find it."
-Justin Halpern
Prompt:
Gate Keeping is a topic that comes up a LOT in conversations around performance art. I have some big opinions about this myself, but I’m mostly interested in what everyone else has encountered around this topic. Have you felt other artists/teachers gate keeping certain skills or ideas, opportunities or other things? Do you? Why?
My Answer:
As a life long artist, I’ve dealt with gate keeping over and over and over again. But where it comes up most often for me now is in teachers/performers feeling that they OWN ideas. Maybe it’s a set up, a skill, a variation… certainly, performance artists own entire choreographies or even sequences (I’d argue these are akin to finished paintings but ideas are just brush strokes) but where do we draw that line?
I’ve always felt that as soon as you understand an idea, it belongs to you. While you are learning it you are borrowing that idea from someone else.
As a visual artist, this rarely came up for me… this “stealing ideas” concept… we have a word in visual art for stealing… plagiarism. It's only considered plagiarism if you blatantly rip off a particular work and call it your own. A variety of visual art forms are based around re-appropriating ideas or exact works.
Further, I recall from an “Art and the Law” class that there is actually a technical percentage you are allowed to copy before it’s considered theft.
I don’t feel like I gate keep anything, in fact, I feel more like a reverse gate keeper… if I discover something I like, I practically FORCE other people to try it.
Thoughts and Actions:
Gate Keeping is the activity of controlling, and usually limiting, general access to something.
Gate Keeping usually arises out of a sense of insecurity. I have a personal experience where a teacher refused to teach me a skill I asked about because they “knew I would be able to do it”. So they were gatekeeping the skill to make sure they were the only one who would have it.
So lets circle back to our quote… I feel that when you put something “online” you are releasing it into the public’s hands. You no longer have control over who sees it or what they do with it. I know many artists who have a strong aversion to this practice. If you choose to share your work, you can’t be upset if you start to see it proliferate and evolve.
I always feel like, it was never mine anyways. I have at one time borrowed every building block I’ve ever explored from someone else. I am just a vessel that allows the work to evolve and move onto the next artist. Not only that, but I also feel that every time I let an idea go into the wild, it allows space for a new idea to form. It’s a constant state of flow.
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