on what John Hopkins wrote, with which I largely agree, a small rider -
a jockey, if you will:
State arts funding does not have the interests of the artist or of art
at its centre as its reason. It is rather a symbolic - political and
economic and ethological - allowance that such things might emerge as
artists and arts which if they do may be managed and organised, judged
and branded.
The critical economy appears to be the next major franchise, of the
semantic Web, for example, as copyright on material expression ceases to
stick, given digital dissolution, and ownership of opinion arises,
stratifies and propagates through personalisation of services, through
P2P recommendation. +, like, :> ... However, arts funding provides
pre-eminently for the ecology that supports managers, organisers, and
critical apparati, even if the latter often give the impression of
parasitism. When societies do not allow the critical threshold of
economic freedom to be reached such that a stage of emergence can be
insured, then what is at risk is an ecology or network.
The state in removing itself from the art/arts equation by withdrawing
funding eliminates a hub from this network. This may not destroy the
network but its deleterious effects will ramify throughout it.
The current system of tertiary student loans in New Zealand we know to
cost more to run than the previous system of student allowances. In
fact, this was known before the system was implemented. Likewise,
looking only at economic indexes, cutting state funding for the arts,
above an ascertainable threshold of sufficient funding, costs the state
more than continuing its support.
How is it possible to ascertain the amount of funding that suffices?
Where the existence of significant arts institutions is threatened,
where that significance is given the larger meaning of 'acting as a hub
for the (artistic, social, civic, ethological, economic, political,
critical, and so on) network,' is where the threshold lies.
Theatres and cinemas are clearly hubs, but that the former is also an
artistic hub, bringing the company responsible for the work together in
the same institution as that in which it is shown. Theatre therefore
displays even more hub-like characteristics when has a resident company
and is not simply the venue for visitors.
Much of this discussion seems to have recycled notions of economic
lean-ness or efficiency, whereby the arts in Europe have grown fat, Brad
Brace for one advocating a crash diet and the dynamic individualism of a
lean mean art-making machine. Is an excess of funding than what suffices
in sustaining significant arts institutions adequate justification to
cut state funding?
I would like to live in a society in which such a problem arises.
Justification is usually from the macroeconomic, with all the attendant
ironies that even minor financial institutions are worthy of state
bail-outs. And as they devolve on macroeconomic arguments they have
recourse to the unscientific theories of fashionable economic thinking,
or ideology.
It is this idea that cutting state funding somehow works or creates
benefits that needs to be demolished.
best,
Simon Taylor
www.squarewhiteworld.com
www.brazilcoffee.co.nz
On 09/08/11 03:02, John Hopkins wrote:
Hei Simon, et al... a few glitched musings...
well, I don't think it's the norm, based on my experience, for people
on the spectre list to have deep knowledge from both sides of the
Atlantic, I was based in Northern Europe (IS, FI, NO, DE, NL, LT, LV,
SE, DK, FR, IT) for about 18 of the last 25 years, participating in
many of the events from which spectre arose, with the balance of that
time in the US (Boston, LA, NYC, Colorado, Arizona, Washington DC,
Alaska) and Australia (Sydney, Melb), and I was constantly amazed at
the lack of knowledge of the US when in Europe. Of course 'everyone'
has been to NYC and perhaps California, but neither of those places
are typical by any stretch of the vast pseudo-cultural agglomeration
that is the US. And there are massive and monumental cultural
stereotypes that are frequently invoked among Europeans when framing
the US. I have been to all 50 states, and spent significant time in a
majority of them; both rural, suburban, and urban, observing,
photographing, writing, so I take the allowance to pass along
observations and comparisons whenever possible.
Within Europe, I am better traveled than most Europeans as well, with
time spent in numerous (central but also non-nexus) places across 20
countries.
With that experience, I can state that there has been, on average
'easier' money and easier access to cultural activities in Europe,
along with greater participation (if only as passive consuming
audience) by local populations. One of the reasons I stayed mostly in
Europe was the easier access to funded situations. It has changed
over those two decades, yes, everywhere.
As someone else remarked earlier, the absence of health care is a
critical issue in 'autonomy' in the US ... but, anyone working in the
arts here likely falls below the limit for paying (much if any) taxes...
Maybe it's just a difference between the path the money flows along --
through the state a bit more or through the corporate sector a bit
more... Does this really make a difference in the end? It is the
movement of abstracted social value, following a pathway mandated
cumulatively by the social institution through which it passes:
subsequently re-distributed to certain participants in the social system.
In places like Norway (admittedly unique because of petrodollars),
there is simply no comparison to the US. I have numerous friends who
lived there and elsewhere in the Nordic countries and have survived by
their art alone (though not without complaining about the meager
NOK10k project stipends). They do a bit of optional teaching.
But maybe it is comparing blueberries and mangos: each social system
seeks self-survival, each individual within is motivated to the same,
generally. Each expends what is necessary to maintain viability, then
with what is left-over, both life-time and life-energy, they push
expression of presence outwards towards the Others. Energized
creative output requires an energy source. Each social system has
relatively different access to differing sources, qualities, and
quantities of energy.
In this regard, Europe and the US are different. In some sectors,
there is more sufferation, in others, less. There are the hungry
scattered everywhere. The gorged and vacantly satiated are Legion as
well. But creative flow, while always theoretically available, comes
to where there is a pathway, human-to-human for it to move along.
There are those individuals who, sacrificing an extended life, use the
energies immediately available to them to burn up, brightly Lighting
their immediate surrounds for a short time. Or those who speak in the
still, small voice which eventually moves mountains. What affect
would wealth have on their trajectory? I think impossible to predict
or determine even in retrospect. A faster burn? A longer fade, an
ensuing state of walking death? A bigger NAME?
I ask somewhat sarcastically: Is it possible to have a creativity
without cash?
I answer, channeling Blake: "Where any view of Money exists, Art
cannot be carried on, but War only."
I have not observed elsewise over the years: this retort resonates
through every established cultural institution, through those
struggling to become established cultural institutions, and through a
sizable fraction of the humans who populate those institutions.
Neither cash nor credit are energy sources, they are only proxies
(http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/1199).
You can't eat money.
jh
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