Maybe someone should get everyone together in a General Assembly and work through the issues using non-hierarchical consensus-based decision-making processes.

If you don't like a show - or a specific artist - just don't go see them.

How hard is that?

It's like Laurie Anderson - I love her stuff, but others might not.

@ 2. It's one thing if you pay to go into a theater to see something. It's another if you just do it out on the street.

From a legal perspective, that changes the game.

Not so easily done in this instance Will, since, due to the location of the performance quite literally anyone could have encountered it without knowing beforehand what would be presented, and which, if I understand the gist of Brendan's post correctly, was precisely one of the concerns Matt raised with Spectrum - or thought he had, at any rate - regarding the graphic nature of the piece.

@2

It's been a long, long time since Laurie Anderson did the kind of performance art that people don't "go see" so much as "inadvertently walk through on the way home from work."

Hopefully, there's another venue/organization in town which will host/produce this work. As often is the case, by trying to appease "everyone", the art which is presented is often bland, un-challenging, and removed from any real social impact or discourse. Not as a critique of Storefronts, which is a wonderful program, but there is an enormous loss to the public when an engaging work is removed from the public arena.

@6

I love the implication there that Art is shit unless it's spicy, challenging, socially impactful, or discoursetational. Or that the public is a big huge loser when public art is broadly appealing to the community it inhabits, instead of "engaging."

@7:

If the art doesn't engage the public (i.e. the viewer) in SOME manner, then really, what's the point?

@8

Are you seriously asking me "what is the point of Art?"

@7, yes, let us celebrate the un-spicy (bland), un-challenging, un-socially impactful work which doesn't produce any discourse.

@10

I like Fuck You Art, personally. You know, art that tells me I'm an idiot, or that I've got problematic ideas about what Art ought to be, or that tells me to eat my vegetables because there are starving children in Africa. I go out and experience plenty of Fuck You Art on my own, and I like it or learn from it, often as not.

What I don't do is subscribe to the shitty idea that Art isn't any good unless it's Fuck You Art, nor am I the kind of asshole who insists that a politically and ethnically diverse community ought to be subjected to Fuck You Art in preference to art that's "merely" broadly appealing.

Robotslave, there's a big shiny new building at Seattle Center that is chock full of "Art" that's gyaranteed not to offend or enlighten you. Go check it out!

@12

Chihuly is shit, Dr. Awesome.

Being broadly appealing doesn't automatically make art good any more than it automatically makes it shit.

My argument is that broadly appealing art should not be rejected in preference to Fuck You Art for publicly funded work displayed or performed in public, culturally diverse spaces. And the new Museum of Glass Sperms is neither publicly funded, nor freely accessible to the public, now is it?

What we've got here at SLOG is a few people who seem to think public art is some sort of government-funded mental-nutrition program. Not only is that silly, it's also pretty damned condescending, if you stop and think about it for a couple seconds.