[-empyre-] Fwd: Art Funding and Politics

[denise robinson]

Simon, re below i think your points are relevant, specifically re  
language.

You may have all seen Judith Butler words/performance - now running on  
youtube - during the current wall street protests
The need to re-set the language of the debate/by taking its rhetoric  
seriously,  to  take a position of refusal through speech, through  
'public speech'  -  this forum is a attempt support another kind of   
'public speech'.
People have asked, so what are the demands? What are the demands all  
of these people are making? Either they say there are no demands and  
that leaves your critics confused, or they say that the demands for  
social equality and economic justice are impossible demands. And the  
impossible demands, they say, are just not practical. If hope is an  
impossible demand, then we demand the impossible — that the right to  
shelter, food and employment are impossible demands, then we demand  
the impossible. If it is impossible to demand that those who profit  
from the recession redistribute their wealth and cease their greed,  
then yes, we demand the impossible
.
It seems that there is a discussion to be had on how these cuts are  
affecting the imagining of a possible futures and it follows, our past  
and how we refuse this.
Artists, writers etc are clearly also embedded within these protests  
re global capital and its current disaste
I refer again to the post from from  Isak Berbic re the closure and  
subsequent occupation of The Art Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina  
“UGBiH”

I guess its how to respond given that these cuts occur within the same  
rationalising dynamic as all 'cuts' in the past, but  that now we are  
within another context where the stakes are high -a heightened dynamic  
of global capitalism.
I think of carnival as practices in the context of anthropology's  
practice of fieldwork - in the city

very rushed for now
Denise


Begin forwarded message:

> From: simon <swht at clear.net.nz>
> Date: 9 November 2011 07:59:59 GMT
> To: <admin at neme.org>, soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au 
> >
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Art Funding and Politics
> Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>
> 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
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre

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