The Brand is Itself a Platform

“In the essay ?The Poetics of the Open Work,? Umberto Eco details a postmodern phenomenon wherein performers are allowed judgment in the performance of a work. Rather than acting as merely talented automatons, the performers are ?allowed? by the composer to change the fundamental material of the work as they perform it; they become the work. The usual power dynamic between composer and performer is changed. By inviting the performer into the process of composition, the composer becomes something closer to a platformist. What remains unchanged in this equation is the position of the audience, whom Eco calls that ?addressee?bound to enter into an interplay of stimulus and response.? Participatory art brings the audience into the work, but might not address the position of the venue in how the work is conceived, crafted, and disseminated. In the art of platforming, composer, artist, and addressee determine the foundation and full realization of the work, changing the definition or specific role of each in the process. Traditional institutional power dynamics are upended and a multivalent balance is struck between each element in the equation of culture: the venue, the presented, and the audience.” From A General Theory of Platforming by Nicholas Frank, NYFA Current.