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Thread: COVID-19 has hit the arts sector like a fricking sledgehammer. And yet, what I've seen in the last 6 months is nothing short of incredible creativity and community care.
It's been amazing to see how Seattle artists and venues outsmart constraints and create beauty and connection in this hellish year. See: the wonderful theater experiments at On the Boards right now: phone performances, drive-ins and 2-person plays. https://crosscut.com/culture/2020/10/seattle-theater-stages-socially-distanced-plays-no-zoom-required
Before I go on: no-one should feel like they have to find beauty or create something when things are objectively shitty (the expectation that artists will always find light in darkness can be esp. toxic) and community care/mutual aid is not enough to keep a whole sector going.
(The answer to this question was and still is: no, it is not enough.) https://crosscut.com/2020/04/coronavirus-has-ravaged-arts-financial-relief-available-it-enough
That said, in the last six months, I think Seattle artists/makers have been paving the way for new models and modes of showing and making art that I think we'll see people across the US (and perhaps world) emulating in the coming months and perhaps year(s). A few other examples:
Pop-up dance performances designed to be more like a dance procession to make sure the audience doesn’t congregate: https://crosscut.com/culture/2020/08/seattle-parks-become-stages-pop-dance-performances
A drive-in dance performance meets scavenger hunt: https://crosscut.com/2020/04/seattle-drive-dance-event-part-scavenger-hunt-part-performance
Seattle photographers getting close to people from behind their cameras, documenting the strange days of lockdown: https://crosscut.com/2020/04/seattle-photographers-trade-zoom-calls-zoom-lens
A visual art journal asking people to review the art in their own homes while galleries/museums were still closed: https://crosscut.com/2020/05/new-northwest-arts-journal-wants-know-whats-your-walls
I'll add to this thread as I cover more interesting experiments in the next couple of weeks and months at @Crosscut, but if you have heard or written about anything interesting in this vein: drop it here so others can find it!
