home about media GLAZ Film – Dramaturgie – Ästhetik Why Audience is not the measurement – by Kerstin Stutterheim Why I think that talking about the audience as a measurement or an aim is a mistake when it comes to writing and directing film or time-based media? As a filmmaker as well as an academic myself, I often come across the demand to think about the audience before and while making a film or writing or conceptualizing art work. This always irritates me. Having been educated in a faculty of philosophy and in one of the oldest and most established, but at the same time most modern, theatres, my first answer always is that it is against the tradition. This is a very academic answer. From my academic and artistic education, my infinite reading, my excitement about great art – theatre, painting, performance, writing – I am deeply convinced that all great artists are in dialog with their audience in dealing with tradition and everyday life at the same time. No one starts a work outside of life and reality. There is no ‘Kasper-Hauser’-Artist. Perhaps sometimes the writer/director/artist comes from a different social group or environment than the decider or judge, but that doesn’t mean the artist is from outer space. Starting to write or direct or perform takes place in communication with existing work. That means to get to know, to test and to challenge what the basic elements are that one has to respect. To respect means to think about what is basic and what can be changed and how, to be modified, to be tested or to be ignored, played with. Tradition gives a basic understanding and—to follow Kahneman’s concept of human thinking—it gives within the reception an impression of familiarity, cognitive ease. [i] On that basis starting to try something new, different, surprisingly gives the ‘fast thinking’ a kick, the moment the associative system is invited to connect embodies knowledge and curiosity and to experience something new. [ii] This fulfils thinking about audience, but more in an abstract or academic way. But this is not what—most often—the demand of thinking about the audience means when it comes to commissioning, film founding or production, teaching film & TV production etc. Will the audience understand and like this? Will they pay for it? Will they keep watching it? The last question includes money and a calculated economic success as well. There is no such thing as THE audience. There is not one audience, everyone feeling the same or demanding the same story, aesthetic, style, whatever. Would you, my reader, choose the same book or the same story or the same style every day? Would you dress every day in the same colours? Or can GLAZ » Why Audience is not the measurement – by Kerstin Stutt... http://www.kino-glaz.de/archives/1585 1 von 8 15.01.17 15:36