Concert or Video: A Critical Review

The goal of this writing is to demonstrate your ability to make connections between the concepts in our course and the work you are reviewing.  It is important you clearly indicate these connections and their importance. 

Following the event, you will compose your reaction to the work using the considerations for critical feedback below.  You need not address all twenty questions, but you will be expected to write clearly, using your own voice, and present a coherent description (likely involving some comparison and contrast among works shown in the program), substantiating your point of view with reference to personal experience, this course and outside sources. Two-three typed pages to develop your ideas in depth.

Some Considerations for Critical Feedback

The following questions were developed by Linda Burnham, Founder of High Performance Magazine, Co-Director of Art in the Public Interest, Saxaphaw, NC. 

  1. What was the piece about?
  2. Who is it coming from—out of what community?
  3. What is the artist trying to do?  Teach?  Tell a story?  Create a feeling?  Change your mind?  Change your vision?
  4. At what point did you realize that?  Should that have come earlier?
  5. How did the structure of the piece reveal itself to you? 
  6. Was the form suitable for the content?
  7. What part did language, visual elements, sound elements play in the piece, and how did they communicate?
  8. Was the artist in control of the medium?
  9. Did the artist push the subject matter or rely on available stereotypes and media clichés?
  10. Was the piece lazy?
  11. Where did the artist go in deep and take a chance?
  12. Did the artist try to take cliché and stereotypes and turn them inside out?
  13. Whose experience informs this piece—the artist’s own?
  14. Did the artist attempt to make art outside of the artist’s culture?
  15. Did the artist show us workable ways to draw on the experience of others?
  16. What cultural symbols were used, and how were they treated—thoughtfully or casually?
  17. Were they loaded symbols—highly significant to one or more cultures?
  18. Did you learn something about the world that you did not know before?
  19. Did it show us how we can share each other’s experiences without losing individual identities and making a bland mush of the culture?  How?
  20. If you go away from this piece with just one image, what will it be and how will you feel about holding it?