Amen Samantha Katz Her husband is an architect Alan Buckman (Co-owners of 1:1 Gallery), they didn’t necessarily intend to create an arts festival. What the duo wanted to do was highlight New Orleans’ lesser-known cultural output — the culture you find when you look beyond “boobs and beads and Bourbon Street,” as she puts it. The result was “Becoming Together,” a multi-day event that unfolded at various venues earlier this year. What set the weekend apart from the typical arts festival was not its scope, which was certainly small, or its scope, which included painting, sculpture, live performance, design, sound and food, but its refusal to separate audience from artist. Katz told me that it was not a body of work to be passively absorbed, but rather a distributed work in its own right in which both viewers and the city became co-authors.
Drawing on New Orleans’ deep traditions of improvisation and festivals, Becoming Together has assembled a roster of more than 40 local artists specializing in visual arts, performance and culinary practice, all of whom had a hand in developing a program that traveled across iconic New Orleans locations, including Studio 633, Kingsway Palace, Toulouse Theater, and the Unholy Church at the Peter & Paul Hotel. Katz’s role was primarily that of facilitator: “All we did was create the panel, but they showed up with such expression, authenticity and creativity,” and each location also had a role in shaping the weekend. Each day had its own dress code and thematic lens, through which participants – all invited to this edition of Becoming Together – could express themselves, contribute or weave themselves into the fabric of the festival.
The Observer spoke with Katz about why models of cultural engagement that favor sharing over viewing seem more urgent, what it will take to make space for collaborators across five different programs, and whether Becoming Together can become an annual event in New Orleans or something adapted to other cities.
For those who weren’t there, how would you describe the reality of “getting together”?
It was a three-day, three-night arts festival that was a living love letter to the city of New Orleans. Each program, five in number, focused on a different medium. The first night was a visual arts exhibition. Day 2 was a cooking pop-up. The second night was a five-act DJ lineup at the historic Toulouse Theater, which has a history of hosting every famous act you can think of, from Lady Gaga to Charli XCX to the Wilson Brothers. We really wanted to focus on the darker sides of New Orleans culture, so we called it “Unholy Disco.” Then on the third day, Sunday, there was a second-line show with a local brass band, because jazz is obviously such an integral part of New Orleans culture. There is a 300-year-old tradition of parades at Mardi Gras, and each one usually has its own theme. We created a new concept called “Krewe Do You,” which turns this tradition on its head and encourages people to emerge as their most embodied and reflective selves.
So it was definitely more participatory than your usual festival. In your opinion, what is the driver behind the shift we are all seeing, both outside and within the institutional sphere, towards participation rather than spectatorship in the arts? Do you see this? Where is artistic consumption or cultural consumption headed?
This falls under the “Beyond the Event Model”. It’s not a festival, it’s not an art fair. It was a distributed and participatory act in which guests were dressed in full costume, leaning into the integral cultural DNA of the city itself, whether they were getting up and sharing their work on the performative, musical or choreographic aspect. They really become part of this broader fabric. We were interested in what happens when you completely eliminate the gap between audience and artist and allow that social fabric to become the mediator. And I think the second part is the artists as co-authors. We don’t program artists into slot machines, we invite them to shape the experience itself. There is a traditional nature of the art world, a lot of work is available online, and there is a lot of sterilization through traditional gallery and fair models. There is a need and thirst for this type of participatory work.
It has gone beyond the typical art plus food model to include architecture, choreography, music and even tarot. How did you think about this scope?
I think this is where New Orleans comes into the picture. The city served as the mediator. New Orleans itself is a co-author, and because the city understands performance, procession, and collective expression, it felt wrong for us to extract or exclude any one medium. What we were able to do was segmentation. In three days with five programs, we created a structure within that broad canvas. In Krewe Do You alone we had 12 different participants covering poetry, song, meditation, vocal chanting, piano and dance. We needed to create a container that allowed for all kinds of expression, but with enough structure to allow it to come to life in a way that felt digestible.
How did you deal with coordinating this number of artists and disciplines in one frame? Or in other words what I did to check the artists Were they confined to any restrictions you imposed?
I have a 20 year history in formatting. I was working with Art Basel Miami from 2007 onwards, and was one of the founders and co-founders of Bushwick Open Studios, which ran for 17 years. My husband Alan, who is co-owner of the gallery, is an architect. He teaches at Tulane University and owns his own architectural practice. The way our minds and processes work is that we think about experience the way an architect thinks about space and the way a museum curator thinks about narrative. This made it very easy for us to create a process and workflow. And then with each of the artists, all I did was create the painting, but they came out with such expression and originality and creativity in ways we didn’t expect.
How long did it take to put together, and would you do it again?
Nine months. This was a self-funded endeavor and felt like a labor of love and a gift to our city. I think if we were to pursue this on an annual basis, we would need sponsorship, which is a conversation for another day, but it’s not out of the picture. In the meantime, since we have a physical gallery space, we will continue to host monthly pop-ups, and each month we try to focus on a different medium, all in the name of showcasing emerging contemporary local works.
Let’s talk about “active participation,” a term that has perhaps been overused in the art world. What does this mean in the context of “Being Together,” and why was it important for you to engage people in a participatory way?
From the first invitation to the closing ceremony, there were many touchpoints as we invited guests and participants to learn about different fashion moments. Every day and every program had a different theme. The Visual Arts Show had a theme called Tone on Tone, where we asked guests to come head to toe in monochrome, in one color of their choice. On day two, Avant Garden, the culinary pop-up at Kingsway Palace, was surrealist-themed. That evening, The Unholy Disco’s theme was Monster Mash. And then during Krewe D0 You, we really wanted people to come across as more self-expressive, so the theme was elevated to feel free to express yourself in robes and pajamas in a way that makes you feel comfortable and intimate and warm but still expressive. We also had a lot of impromptu musical moments, with people bringing their own instruments. We had a local costume designer, Margaret Shea, who had an entire fashion moment consisting of two racks where guests could play dress-up. We had friends who were local tarot readers who showed up and did readings for all the guests.
Some might say that all this framing can distract from the visual art that was also part of “getting together.” How do you respond to that?
What we did to solve that was to extend the visual arts exhibition, which opened on the first night, for a week outside the festival container. We wanted each of the six visual artists who were part of this exhibition to have their moment in the sun, an economic opportunity and a marketing opportunity to share their work locally and with wider audiences. Food is fleeting, as is music, so fortunately we didn’t have any kickbacks on the cooking or performance aspects. But in terms of visual art, and wanting to take that seriously, we worked with the artists, and explained the duration of the show. They have already acquired and purchased it and are very open to continued cooperation.
What makes the “Being Together” model unique?
We talked about the city as a backdrop, and we talked about the post-event model. There is also the presence of a long-standing curator and architect as focal points for thinking about the broader architecture and reworking paradigmatic formats. But one thing we haven’t talked about much is art as social infrastructure. This seemed like an experiment in rethinking what an exhibition or gathering is, and I hope it will inspire people to explore and expand their creative outlets in a similar way.
I think it’s worth noting that Becoming Together was an invitation-only event, not a ticketed festival. How did you think about who was in the room?
It was by invitation only, with about 75 percent of New Orleans locals in attendance, most of whom were people we knew through the art world, guests of the visual artists themselves, or people in our broader community. The reason we wanted to focus about 75 percent of the invitations to local New Orleans residents is because we want them to have a platform to share their story. The city has been very good to us, and if you threw a rock in any direction you would hit the most talented person you have ever met. These people deserve to bear witness. New Orleans, in my experience, gets a bad reputation for being a party city, all tits and beads and Bourbon Street. We didn’t even go to Bourbon Street. There’s a strong creative community here, and we really wanted some of our greatest art-supporting friends to get involved in this and see the city through our curatorial lenses in a way that would rewrite that narrative.
Can you see it expanding, perhaps becoming a ticketed event, or traveling to other cities?
I actually produced a TV show, just one season, that focused on 10 cities across the United States where I documented each one. I focused on telling the story of these cities, each of which has a different cultural DNA. I focused on New Orleans for the pilot, then Los Angeles, Austin, Nashville, etc. I think this falls very much in the same vein, as every first and second tier city across the United States and beyond has a story to tell. As much as we can continue to put this out there in a way that takes advantage of local creators and gives them credit, that’s definitely something we’d like to do. To whatever extent I can help support or inspire other cities or communities to create platforms for nearby artists, or their own culture, to share their work, I support that 100%. People who participated in Becoming Together didn’t just attend or watch the work. They have become part of it, and every person in the world, in their communities, has the opportunity to do the same.
More interviews
