critical response process︎︎︎
Role 1: Artist/Maker
Offers a work-in-progress for review and feels prepared to question that work in a dialogue with other people.
Role 2: Responder
Engages in dialogue with the artist, with a commitment to the artist’s intent to make excellent work.
Role 3: Facilitator
Initiates each step, keeps the process on track, and works to help the artist and responders use the process to frame useful questions and responses.
Step 1. Statements of Meaning
Responders state what was meaningful, evocative, interesting, exciting, and/or striking in the work they have just witnessed.
Step 2. Artist as Questioner
The artist asks questions about the work. In answering, responders stay on topic with the question and may express opinions in direct response to the artist’s questions.
Step 3. Neutral Questions
Responders ask neutral questions about the work, and the artist responds. Questions are neutral when they do not have an opinion couched in them. This step is one of the most fundamental, challenging, and misunderstood steps of Critical Response Process.
Step 4. Opinion Time
Responders state opinions, given permission from the artist; the artist has the option to say no.
Through the supportive structure of its four core steps, Critical Response Process combines the power of questions with the focus and challenge of informed dialogue. The Process offers makers an active role in the critique of their own work. It gives makers a way to rehearse the connections they seek when art meets it audience or a product meets its purpose.
Critical Response Process instills ways of thinking, communicating and being that enhance all kinds of human interactions, from coaching to community dialogue, from artistic collaboration to family conversations.
In use for over 25 years, Critical Response Process has been embraced by art makers, educators, scientists, and theater companies, dance departments, orchestras, laboratories, conservatories, museums, universities, corporations, and kindergartens.
Offers a work-in-progress for review and feels prepared to question that work in a dialogue with other people.
Role 2: Responder
Engages in dialogue with the artist, with a commitment to the artist’s intent to make excellent work.
Role 3: Facilitator
Initiates each step, keeps the process on track, and works to help the artist and responders use the process to frame useful questions and responses.
Step 1. Statements of Meaning
Responders state what was meaningful, evocative, interesting, exciting, and/or striking in the work they have just witnessed.
Step 2. Artist as Questioner
The artist asks questions about the work. In answering, responders stay on topic with the question and may express opinions in direct response to the artist’s questions.
Step 3. Neutral Questions
Responders ask neutral questions about the work, and the artist responds. Questions are neutral when they do not have an opinion couched in them. This step is one of the most fundamental, challenging, and misunderstood steps of Critical Response Process.
Step 4. Opinion Time
Responders state opinions, given permission from the artist; the artist has the option to say no.
Through the supportive structure of its four core steps, Critical Response Process combines the power of questions with the focus and challenge of informed dialogue. The Process offers makers an active role in the critique of their own work. It gives makers a way to rehearse the connections they seek when art meets it audience or a product meets its purpose.
Critical Response Process instills ways of thinking, communicating and being that enhance all kinds of human interactions, from coaching to community dialogue, from artistic collaboration to family conversations.
In use for over 25 years, Critical Response Process has been embraced by art makers, educators, scientists, and theater companies, dance departments, orchestras, laboratories, conservatories, museums, universities, corporations, and kindergartens.
︎︎︎from Liz Lerman
Welcome to mapping collaboration, a toolbox for workshopping and creating across disciplines...
In spite of a long history of interdisciplinary creation, from our earliest recorded arts to our present moment, artistic pedagogy has created divisions between disciplines. This has left artists in a "post-Babel" condition where we don't share the same language and definitions. It’s also encouraged artists to develop practices for devising, creating and composing work that are distinct to their disciplines.
In spite of a long history of interdisciplinary creation, from our earliest recorded arts to our present moment, artistic pedagogy has created divisions between disciplines. This has left artists in a "post-Babel" condition where we don't share the same language and definitions. It’s also encouraged artists to develop practices for devising, creating and composing work that are distinct to their disciplines.
The inspiration for this project came from faculty and students at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts where BFA, MFA and PhD programs in Dance, Theatre Production and Design, Visual Art, Film, and Music and Sound all work together in studio settings and playfully experiment with processes of art-making.
We wanted to create a database of projects, assignments and theory that we collect inside the studio and from research happening in other places. We are curious about how we collaborate and how structures reoccur, translate and deviate from one discipline to another.
Composition is central to these processes and offers a base for our approaches and experiments. We are excited about what our students are doing and inspired by the new languages in contemporary art and performance we continue to see develop.
︎︎︎select a category above to build assignments, learn more about how artists process ideas across disciplines and to create a collaborative process of your own
︎︎︎these tools are collected and used in workshops and classes; some are resources from artists; some are quotes about art-making and how bodies think and listen; others are ideas to expand and disrupt your own training and processes.
︎︎︎Each idea is intentially short- and not meant to be executed as written, but to be adapted to your own practice and specific project/context. Some may be taken in parts or combined with others to spark new ways of training and making together.
︎︎︎submit your own ideas and tools so we can keep building this site!
︎︎︎select a category above to build assignments, learn more about how artists process ideas across disciplines and to create a collaborative process of your own
︎︎︎these tools are collected and used in workshops and classes; some are resources from artists; some are quotes about art-making and how bodies think and listen; others are ideas to expand and disrupt your own training and processes.
︎︎︎Each idea is intentially short- and not meant to be executed as written, but to be adapted to your own practice and specific project/context. Some may be taken in parts or combined with others to spark new ways of training and making together.
︎︎︎submit your own ideas and tools so we can keep building this site!
