See front file / Communication Science / MA (COMMUNICATION)

Modernist accounts of artistic integrity often required artists to alienate audiences. In some senses, the relationship between artists and audiences never recovered, and arts organizations today struggle to overcome the hostility. The alienation had roots in two applications of Hegelian philosophy. First, modernists viewed bourgeois audiences as needing a new consciousness of their place in history. Second, artists could only bring this consciousness about by posing an antithesis to bourgeois culture, accomplished by abstraction, or removal from established aesthetic norms. In music and painting, abstraction became an important mark of seriousness, while audiences were alienated by it. J. S. Bach’s “Chaconne” for solo violin offers a model for reconciling artist and audience. Bach used a well-established dance form to lead an audience through many levels of abstraction that are both pleasing and challenging. A different account of artistic integrity and a more nuanced view of abstraction can reframe the relationship between artist and audience.

In South Africa, the performing arts have contributed to enhancing national identity and distinctiveness despite coming up against weak legislation, policy and infrastructure to support their growth and proliferation (Fredericks, 2005: 9). Coupled with a decline in both government and consumer support and the contradictory disparity between valuing the arts and the funding of the arts, theatre companies can no longer rely on the comfort of external subsidies and financial support. In order to be economically viable and sustainable to ensure their survival, there is an increasing demand for theatre companies to look to novel ways of increasing audience demand for theatre and improving audience attendance. However, instead of risking artistic integrity and the performance product to satisfy the market, this research suggests that promotion and development of theatre at arts festivals provides a platform to access a wider theatre-going public, which therefore facilitates a change in the market focus toward appreciation of the product (production). It explores leading arguments pertaining to the attendance of arts and cultural events, namely, Peterson and Simkus (1992), later updated by Peterson‟s (2005)„omnivore-univore‟ argument. The argument purports cultural consumption as binary in nature: either significant and diverse or limited, if not absent altogether. Supported by a number of case-studies, including Chan and Goldthorpe (2005) and Montgomery and Robinson (2008) and Snowball et al. (2009), the investigation challenges Bourdieu‟s (1984) theory on cultural distinction as well as the homology and individualisation argument. In determining the factors that influence cultural taste and consumer behaviour, including motivators and inhibitors of attendance and a predominant emphasis on audience risk and information asymmetry, the research was placed in a local context, providing an overview of the socio-economic theatre environment in South Africa. It investigated the nature, structure and impact of local festivals (as events) in changing audience demand and theatre attendance. With specific reference to the South African National Arts Festival (NAF) the research notes the effects of Hauptfleisch‟s „eventification‟ phenomenon on univore attenders and therefore expands the omnivore-univore theory to include a new breed of attender: the “Festivore”. A case study explored the “Festivore” hypothesis through empirical research, surveys and face-to-face qualitative interviews and on-seat questionnaire responses by festival attenders. Personal interviews and communication was also carried out with leading experts in the field. The data was then analysed using SPSS 13 electronic statistical analysis programme to determine the socio-demographics and the factors that affect theatre attendance of existing, as well as potential target, theatre audiences at the National Arts Festival The study concluded that South African theatre attenders are generally omnivorous consumers and that, more importantly, there seems to be a shift towards „festivorous‟ consumption. Furthermore, evidence supports the development and proliferation of festivals as a means not only to support and promote the arts in South Africa but, more importantly, to generate new theatre audiences and entrench theatre attendance into South African culture.

Cette thèse analyse le profil culturel des visiteurs des musées d’art moderne et contemporain en Belgique dans le but de mieux comprendre ce que représente, pour eux, l’expérience muséale. Il s’agit de dépasser une certaine approche courante en sociologie qui limite l’étude des relations publics-musées à la mise à jour du rôle des déterminants socioéconomiques sur la fréquentation. Mon approche part d’un postulat de base selon lequel il faut inscrire la visite muséale dans un rapport plus large à la culture pour appréhender le sens et les usages des musées d’art moderne et contemporain. <p>La récolte des données a eu lieu au cours de deux phases principales :une première quantitative suivie par une seconde qualitative. Le design est séquentiel (en deux étapes successives) et non équivalent puisque la première étape quantitative a plus de poids (terminologie basée sur Leech et Onwuegbuzie). <p>Pour la première phase, a été réalisée une enquête par questionnaires auprès des visiteurs de six musées en Belgique âgés de 15 ans et plus. Au total, 1900 questionnaires ont été récoltés et encodés. A partir de ces données, une analyse en correspondances multiples a été effectuée pour évaluer de quelle manière les différentes dimensions des profils culturels (goûts pour la musique, l’art et la lecture, participation culturelle, loisirs ordinaires, créativité) s’agencent les unes aux autres. Cette méthode a été choisie pour ses qualités inductives et relationnelles. <p>Cette analyse montre que les profils culturels peuvent être perçus comme le résultat de bricolages entre répertoires culturels. Ceux-ci doivent être compris comme des principes qui classifient les goûts et les pratiques et leur donnent sens. Parmi ces répertoires, la distinction culture haute versus culture basse à la Bourdieu conserve une place primordiale mais cohabite avec d’autres, tels que les distinctions omnivores versus univores (Peterson), voraces versus inactifs (Sullivan & Katz-Gerro), culture jeune versus culture classique, goût pour la transgression versus conservatisme. Cette thèse appuie en conséquence l’idée selon laquelle il n’y a eu ni de transformation unidirectionnel des snobs vers les omnivores (thèse de l’omnivorité), ni un effondrement des hiérarchies culturelles (massification et postmodernisme). <p>L’utilisation de ces répertoires est principalement influencée par l’âge, l’éducation (sous diverses formes) et le statut socioprofessionnel (qui met l’accent sur les différences en termes de cultures professionnelles). Les profils culturels s’ancrent dès lors toujours dans des structures sociales, contrairement à ce que pensent certaines théories individualistes plus extrêmes (Bauman), et continuent d’être structurés par des mécanismes de distinction, puisque les répertoires sont socialement valorisés. <p>Une classification hiérarchique ascendante a suivi l’analyse en correspondances multiples pour mettre à jour une typologie qui reflète les principales configurations des profils culturels. Six classes ont été identifiées :les cultivés classiques, les cultivés en retrait, les cultivés progressistes, les hédonistes, les éloignés culturels et les amoureux de l’art. Pour conduire la deuxième phase qualitative, trois personnes par classe ont été interviewées pour approfondir les donnés quantitatives sur leur rapport à la culture, à l’art et au musée. Au regard de cette analyse de discours, il apparaît que les six classes ainsi constituées partagent en leur sein des grilles de lecture similaires du rôle de l’art et de la culture au sein de la société moderne mais aussi du musée et agissent, ce faisant, en « communautés interprétatives » (Fish; Hooper-Greenhill). Comprendre la diversité des profils culturels des visiteurs (tout en prenant en compte l’origine sociale) permet, dès lors, de concevoir la multiplicité des rapports au musée./<p><p>What do we know about art museums’ visitors? This question can appear very trivial. Visitors of art museums seem to belong to educated elite. At least, this is the image that cultural participation surveys rightly spread. Nevertheless, this perspective focuses mainly on the characteristics of the population who do not visit museums, rather than on the characteristics of the museums' visitors. These surveys help indeed to define the sociodemographic particularities of visitors, with regards to the general population but do not investigate a possible diversity within the visitor population. They show that cultural democratization did not really happen but can we really conclude that the audience constitutes a homogeneous mass of snobs defined by a precise relation to the culture?<p>This presentation aims to go beyond this traditional approach in sociology that focuses on sociodemographic criteria and to show how diverse can be the audience. It intends to illustrate that visitors have heterogeneous cultural profiles (described by their tastes, cultural and creative activities, and more ordinary leisure), even if they tend to be similar from a socioeconomic viewpoint, and to evaluate which impact these cultural profiles have on the way of visiting a museum.<p>With the use of a multiple correspondence analysis and an ascending hierarchical classification, six different classes were distinguished among the visitors of six museums of modern and contemporary art in Belgium (N: 1900) according to their cultural profiles. Each cultural profile is considered as a bricolage of different cultural repertoires: low versus high culture (Bourdieu), univores versus omnivores (Peterson), voraces versus non-voraces (Sullivan & Katz-Gerro), classical versus young culture and traditional versus modern values. Instead of observing an unidirectional change from snobs to omnivores, my results suggests indeed that several repertoires interact with one another to structure cultural profiles and to give meaning to them. Finally, with selected interviews among the different six classes, it will be demonstrated that people with an analogous cultural profile tend to share similar interpretations of museums and act as "interpretative communities" (Fish; Hooper-Greenhill). Therefore, the meaning of a museum visit for visitors requires taking into account their cultural profiles.<p> / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished