When I expressed frustration last week with VoCA’s early report from the Canadian Journalism Foundation’s digital criticism panel, I closed with a vague hope that fellow art critic and blogger Leah Sandals would be able to provide a more thorough picture of what, at first glance, seemed like utterly dismal goings-on between seemingly ill-equipped panelists.

As it happens, she’s done three better than that. In addition to pointing out the panel’s failure to consider digital possibilities for traditional news reportage (and she does have some good suggestions), Sandals links to three other reports from folks attending the panel (as well as the afore-mentioned VoCA report) which collectively provide a more complete but not necessarily uplifting record of the event (and I can’t help but note how such a fluid comparison of viewpoints simply doesn’t occur in the lauded media of print and television).

Mira Saraf at J-Source provides a fairly neutral retelling of the discussion with examples drawn largely from film criticism to shore up the disadvantages of both traditional and digital media, from the former’s increasing dependence on box-office results and celebrity gossip to the equally arbitrary vox populi of the blogosphere.

Mondoville’s take on the panel doesn’t shy away from pointing out the entrenched bias of the speakers as well as moderator Bronwyn Drainie, who openly declared herself not to be an “internet person.” Perhaps most symptomatic of all, “neither [panelists Kamal Al-Solaylee or Kate Taylor] seems eager to shake off the sovereignty of the newspaper, even if the arts criticism is increasingly an afterthought in the broadsheet paradigm.” Indeed, it’s the very scarcity of art criticism in so-called “legacy” media that makes a well-considered means of producing arts criticism for the digital sphere so urgently necessary.

The Mondoville report is quoted in Rea McNamara’s recap at Socialite, who takes the cake for mustering the sort of scathing disdain that I suspect would have been my own response to the lack of forward mobility in this so-called discussion. The frustration in these observations is so palpable that it merits quoting in full:

“Ms. Taylor — who was in fine fighting form by suggesting that legacy media’s answer to ‘generational renewal’ was to you know, push more controversial critics onto readership & like, continue to ignore that Halifax art gallery for Toronto & Vancouver cuz that’s where the economic development is, even though she was v. locallocallocal — answered my Q with the answer that anybody sitting behind a desk will tell you: ‘who will have the time?’

“Meaning, ‘who will have the time?’ to do what @ebertchicago does? To actually go beyond watching the thing/writing the thing job description and you know, empower commenters as sparring partners? To push the print thumbs up/thumbs down into something far more appropriate for the online form, and to moderate that conversation into something that’s better then you know, spambots or unavailable pages. But again, ‘who has the time?’”

What is so deeply frustrating about the failure of this conversation is the myopia that seems to plague its purpose - for one thing, the inability to recognize that the authority of a critic’s voice is not tied to their “legacy” medium, but to their prolific presence in the public sphere, which is itself transforming through digital media. As more people stop watching network television and buying newspapers (as is already happening), they will seek out a critical voice elsewhere. That voice may not be tied to a particular institution of “legacy” media, but by connecting the local experience of the critic to a readership that can fluidly cross borders, a different sort of authority might well emerge - is, in fact, already emerging. I may not be able to afford a trip to New York City anytime soon, but I was able to glean a more thorough and timely understanding of Tino Sehgal’s recent work at the Guggenheim through the lens of multiple NY-based bloggers than I would have done waiting for the next issue of Artforum to hit the stands.

The reverse also holds true - if Canadian art wants to be known in NYC, or elsewhere for that matter, its representation in digital media must be both prolific and intelligent. A conversation on how that is best done remains well overdue.

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