Friday, June 30, 2006

ConWorks Homeless:

Knowing that ConWorks is moving dredges up a more difficult question: Is ConWorks worth moving? It seems more like a glorified rental hall than an arts center these days—it lost something when Shiffler left and lost almost everything when Richter left and hasn’t made much of an artistic impression since. A few names have moved through the building, doing performances and art shows, during new artistic director Corey Pearlstein’s tenure—cult names (Negativland, Guillermo Gómez-Peña), local names (Joe Von Appen, Degenerate Art Ensemble), local big names (Trimpin), and local bigger names (Gary Hill)—but they’ve passed through like phantoms, leaving no sense of artistic cohesion or weight. The programming has felt more like a grab bag of phoned-in favors than a multidisciplinary mission. I don’t hear people talking about ConWorks anymore. It’s almost like it’s already gone.