[-empyre-] Art Funding and Politics

Fri Nov 18 07:05:45 EST 2011

Dear Simon, 
(and Denise, and other <<empyreans>>), 

your argument is impressively detailed and articulate, and I confess I like very much the reference to Guattari and the way you "explode" the economic argument quasi "from the inside". It is quite an arduous task. Here I would like to take a sidewise strategy and ask: Do we expect of science or education to be sold like a commodity? (That may in fact be the case, if we look at private universities, technological lobbyists, patenting etc., but it is not such an established discourse, or discussion topic, as with art, I think ... ). Why do we spend time arguing about art in economic and commodity terms than we do of education? And yet another related question: Is this type of discourse and analysis may be more developed in the field of visual arts, coming from the market of galleries, museums and private collections, and are perhaps other narratives or discourse models possible or at work in the performing arts and in literature? By this I mean to join in this: 

> 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?

I believe that the problem is that you (SImon) as well as Denise are trying to build an argument that is outside of economic terms, you are trying to say, to put it simply, money is not all that matters. That is what it comes down to, plain and simple. One often hears in derogatory or cynical and disillusioned tones such terms as "money has replaced God" in capitalist society. The difficulty of constructing an alternative value system in this our world, which we witness in the present discussion, confirms that this view, simple or simplistic as it may sound, possesses perhaps more than a grain of truth. The difficulty of this situation is compounded by the apparent contradiction of saying that "money is not all that matters", in a discussion about Funding in the Arts. One cannot escape this conundrum unless one develops a more differentiated and detailed analysis, avoiding the simple polarity of money vs art (material vs. spiritual wealth etc). As Yiannis Colakides wrote on November 6th: "the equation of art and economics is not complete without the political variable.". I would say that there are also other variables, some of them possibly difficult describe, and also that there are other fields that have already been facing the money vs. value polarity, such as for example the field of Free and Open Software, Creative Commons and others. Eben Moglen, professor of law and legal history at Columbia University, long‐time counsel for Free Software Foundation, and founder of Software Freedom Law Center has outlined this very well in his speech at the Plone/Python conference of 2006 entitled "Software and Community in the Early 21st Century". 

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=323408615461416679
Transcript here: 
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Software_and_Community_in_the_Early_21st_Century

Mr. Moglen talks convincingly about the feasibility, power and value of making intellectual work available for free, pitting his argument on a grand scale against some of the most down to earth hard historical economic realities, such as the  European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) under Jean Monnet and the industrial age proper. He starts with the sentences "I want to talk about the piece of our common lives that Paul is pointing at, these rules, these methods of living together around software, and I want to try and explain what I think their larger moral and economic meaning is.
It is both a moral and an economic analysis – it has to be. It began as a moral question, it remains a moral question, but it becomes along the way also a window into the economic organization of human society in the 21st century." And in the context of the present discussion I can now understand retrospectively why this speech captivated me so much back in 2007: Because it set out right at the beginning by attacking the problem exactly at the core which I am pointing at in the present discussion. In Moglen's speech, software is the prototype of cultural, spiritual product that is of crucial value for society but is adverse to being "commoditized" (Moglen's term). His is an example of an argument that could serve as model for similar analogies in the arts and other parallel fields. 

And again in retrospect, Moglens speech back in October 27th 2006 is almost prophetically relevant now, in the face of a collapsing economic order. We need not only good analysts, we also need people with a healthy vision, strength and confidence, so as to pull through these times and work to build what comes next. And I am not just referring to Moglen here, but to people that are in the present discussion; I am asking us to realise that within this agony the collective intellectual work that we are doing can prove to be quite significant for the times to come. 

For today, therefore, I leave you with this a little upbeat thought. 

Ioannis Zannos

Corfu

On 9 Nov 2011, at 09:59, simon wrote:

> 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
> _______________________________________________
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> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
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