[-empyre-] Art Funding and Politics

[simon]

Dear <<empyreans>>,

On 09/11/11 19:34, NeMe wrote:
> Despite rapid developments in new media and technology, the majority
> of the voting public's understanding of the arts sector still remains ...
this is presumptuous.

to consider the arts a sector is already dealing in the given. We are 
talking economic sector. But not necessarily market-defined economic 
sector with values set by the market, even as speculative continua. Are we?

then the weightiness of "understanding" ... is what is at stake the 
understanding of the economic? As Guattari says, it's not just about who 
holds the purse-strings or what the household can afford but also about 
inclusion, what running a household without preconceived ideas can include.

many people in the arts were delighted when the greens successfully gave 
numerical values to green resources. Ecological ideology proved a 
leveraging tech. The thought was, If the greens can do this with 
vegetable and animal ecologies why shouldn't it be done with cultural 
and artistic ecologies? Again, Guattari takes up on this thought, 
stating that other ecologies than those conceived as natural and 
non-human ought to be considered as having values that are normally 
ignored in economic formalisations.

but then there is this other idea about voting. Do referenda exist 
whereby citizens vote to include arts and arts institutions in the 
common economy? What I mean is that in my experience the notion of 
common denominator goes with economic reductionism in divesting citizens 
of their rights to decide, the latter having become the former's shorthand.

one of the ways to escape the prevalent economic discourse is to speak 
the language of the arts. And reciprocally one of the ways the arts are 
disinvested is the demand that they express themselves in the language 
of funding bodies, prey to wave upon wave of politically expedient 
received pronunciations (RPs) or pronouncements, lips-service.
>   this
> historical model of elevated expectation and positioning of culture
> still informs much political rhetoric regarding cultural policy.
I don't think so. But to each her own. I have had longer to get used to 
market-led policies and the decomposition of the "arts sector," 
symptomatic of which in New Zealand has been the extermination of its 
institutions, to the point when now the funding bodies or body retain 
the memory of so many ghost limbs. Having become the ONLY successful 
titular arts institution.
> Although no longer apt, its firmly ingrained residue does obfuscate
> rational arguments
Rational would be to co-opt the discourse alluded to above. Like the 
greens. Rationalisation of the arts sector follows from it being 
regarded (or negated) as an economic sector.
> complexities of the
> contemporary.
reminds me of the pragmatic memories of institutions. Theatre workshops 
and wardrobes capable of holding materials which unlike in a museum are 
available for redeployment. Actual archives.
>
> "What kind of economy and, thus, what kind of art?" and "what kind of
> art and, thus, what kind of economy?"
What kind of art? By what art? ... not buy art why?
>   a more appropriate action and functioning representation.
this depresses me. Own action, risk, and act against representation!
>   is it not the State's responsibility to
> sustain it?
collective life is in question. Where society famously, Margaret 
Thatcher, ceases to exist.

I am writing post 1984, the year reforms swept through New Zealand's 
funding and arts advocacy practices ... there it goes, ready to make a 
clean sweep of everything of value!

Inspired by Milton Friedman under the aegis of the Labour Party (!) - 
the genesis of which lay with the labour movement, unionism and early 
socialism - the 1984 revolution involved the sort of break that does, 
against what an early contributor to this discussion had to day, produce 
victims. Before 1984, for example, 7 state-funded community theatres; 
after, not a single one with an existing company contracted according to 
anything like industrial standards. (This last despite the efforts - 
misplaced - in this regard by Equity, the performing arts union, having 
'joined' with the Australian union to stand united against the State? 
no, against Peter Jackson!)


Best,

Simon Taylor

www.squarewhiteworld.com
www.brazilcoffee.co.nz