…IN
A TIME OF DEEP-FREEZE
by
Roberto Bedoya
Washington, DC - Winter 2003: cold days; a pending war; a
tanking economy; Trent Lott; reality TV; instant messaging;
orange alert: poets and the white house; rebuild/renew; and
the list goes on. Where are artists in this mix of these conditions?
Where are artists in the debates between needs and value?
In the dynamics between artists and administrators, culture
and policy, who leads in this entanglement of methods and
discourses, in a time of deep-freeze?
It is the deep-freeze of conservative political ideology,
of the homogenizing effects of markets (- can you tell the
difference between the gap, banana republic, or j crew?) and
the bureaucratic needs necessary for the privatization of
the public sphere. For the artists’ community, those
critical artistic questions that imagine what we don’t
know are not immune from the deep freeze. Yet this is not
an essay per-se, about the deep-freeze, instead it will chart
some of the challenges that artists and their support systems
face in this environment.
To implicate myself in this commentary, my work in the arts
has been as an advocate for artists, primarily those associated
with the experimental arts community. I also work on policy
issues related to the support system for artists with a focus
on artist-centered and ethnically-specific cultural practices.
It is my recent work in the nascent field of cultural policy
that I have been asked to reflect upon, on the one hand to
demystify this world of activities and on the other to reflect
on the paradoxical relationship between artists and administrators,
culture and policy.
To take stock of where artists and their support systems are
now it is important to look back at our recent history. During
the 1990’s cultural war, which the Finley vs. NEA lawsuit
exemplifies, I was part of many efforts to defend the free
expression of artists and the value of art that makes a claim
upon society which asks for social, ethical and aesthetics
readjustments. As the lawsuit moved through the courts, the
cultural war battles escalated. The right-wing censorial machinery
attacked artists, arts organizations, multiculturalism, and
manufactured a panic saying there’s a crisis in our
culture (primarily based on their fear of difference). In
1998, the US Supreme Court ruled against Finley et. al., stating
that the “decency and respect” of the NEA authorizing
legislation was constitutional. Artists’ advocates
argued that the “decency and respect” language
was having a chilling effect upon artists and their support
systems - as evident in the restructuring of the NEA
and the ripple effect it had upon private foundation and local
public monies. The NEA, it’s legal consul, and the Supreme
Court refused to define “decency and respect”
instead they let it operate in that vague yet authoritarian
space of “you know what I mean, so behave”.
Subsequently, “decency and respect” functions
as a way to control, manage, and authorize forms of artistic
speech. In this period of assault on the arts, I also watched
many of my peers in the artistic community shift in the language
they used to defend the cultural sector. It was less and less
about artists and creativity and more about art and public
purposes, less about freedom of expression and more about
policy –cultural and public policies. In part, this
shift is due to the limits of the artists' community's defense
of freedom of expression. That the value of art lies in the
ways its visions enrich society and are essential to the public
good, was an argument limited by its inability to produce
factual evidence of art's value.
It
is important to understand this background, not so much to
revisit cultural war battles but to see it as a benchmark
moment that marked a significant turn in how artists are supported
and viewed. Today it is not so much the chilling effect,
associated with freedom of expression, but a deep freeze of
human rights, as global politics test governments and freedoms.
In this climate the needs of markets, the rules of governments,
or the rising propaganda machine of states are testing the
expression of artists.
Against
the backdrop of such conditions, come forth the recent investment
of resources and development in the field of US cultural policy
by foundations, academics, the leadership of national art
service organizations and public policy think-tanks. To give
a face to US cultural policy is difficult because it operates
as a system of arrangements that effects the distribution
of cultural resources and the articulation of cultural value,
rather than a singular agency like a Minister of Culture evident
in many other nations. US cultural policy is an arrangement
that includes foundations, patrons, artists, non-profit arts
organizations, for profit galleries/theaters, the entertainment
industry, local and state arts council, the NEA, the informal
networks of square-dancers, Native-American basket-weavers,
or amateur community theater companies. All of the aforementioned
groups and many more create policy by their choices —
choices related to their needs and values.
Cultural
policy is a form of administration. At times it is overt and
easy to understand for example a curatorial policy to present
new works, or an organization’s policy to pay artists
a fee for exhibiting their work. Other times it can be muddled
and a source of conflict, for example in the debates about
art’s public purposes and how to support it vis-à-vis,
arts education, support for individual artists, or strengthening
cultural infrastructure programs, each having its own argument
of persuasion which may oppose curriculum policies, policies
about public monies, or urban planning. Currently, there is
a contentious debate affecting artists, over the meaning of
copyright and intellectual property as it relates to “public
purposes” and to concepts of what is common and what
is owned. As the artists’ community struggles over the
issue of property rights and the question of “whose
property”, there is still the question of “whose
culture”.
I
use the word culture here broadly, not so much culture as
in “objects,” but culture as in “ways.”
As an advocate I am engaged with the “ways” of
artists and the “ways” artistic questions circulate
and have impact. It would be easy to reflect upon the mystery
of the muse and focus the discussion on “ways”
of creativity, but the “ways” of administration
are also of importance. The relationship between poiesis and praxis, that is the “bringing into being” and
the “doing” of art with its effects upon publics,
is a bewitching complex relationship that affects the livelihood
of artists, the meanings of art, and the work of cultural
advocacy.
The philosopher Theodor Adorno, in writing on the paradoxical
relationship between culture and administration, says “culture
suffers damage when it is planned and administrated; when
it is left to itself, however, everything culture threatens
not only to lose its possibilities of effect, but its very
existence as well.”
He goes onto discuss how culture is perpetually threatened,
and not just by administrative concerns and ambitions, such
as outcome-based evaluation, information-management systems,
scenario planning. Culture is threatened by culture itself
with its fluid, irrational, instinctual processes and its
potential for radical change that challenges administrative
systems that sustain and support artists and art.
The
question at the beginning of this essay, … between
artists and administrators, culture and policy, who leads
in this entanglement … in a time of deep-freeze? is one artist intermediaries wrestle with.
Artists intermediaries are those go-betweens who affect how
artists are supported, art finds its audience or an organization
honors its mission. Artists can be their own intermediaries
but more often than not administrators do the bulk of this
labor. Working in the field of artists-centered cultural practices,
I’ve witness how artists and the mechanisms that empower
talent are privileged, which asks for flexible administrative
system that can address the evolving needs of artists for
space, information, validation and exposures. Yet the
tension between artists and administrators become exasperated
in the dialogues around artists needs and values. In the growing
privatization of culture, how and by whom, is artistic value
defined—is it economic, aesthetic or ethical value?
What administrative system best support artists’ needs
and value—the evolving manifestations of artists-centered
organizations or some form of networked node administrative
system that can create synergies suitable for the growing
complexity of our society. In the midst of this dynamic is
the call of responsibility and accountability that artists
and administrators must acknowledge as they proceed and cultural
policy initiatives must recognize in their aims.
There are numerous cultural policy efforts afoot to
measure the cultural world through -surveys, mapping projects,
or instrumental portrait of cultural participation. Measuring
the world, so as to enhance management is an administrative
ambition that can simultaneously engender and forecloses the
potentialities of art. It will produce a better understanding
of the sociology of art, of the practices and institutions
that engender artistic production, which is a knowledge that
can be used to improve the support system for artists. However,
my concern is that it may also produce efforts that foreclose
artistic exploration. Measuring the world is very different
than composing the world - artists compose the world, it is
the speech of imagination. What are the policies for composing
the world?
The deep freeze is bearing down on the cultural sector compounding
its weak and stressed fault-lines. For artists-centered organizations,
beyond the weakness of being under-capitalized, (as
to why this is the case is another essay) there is the ideology
of empowerment, whether it be talent or communities that are
being tested. The paradoxical relationship between culture
and administration, artists and administrators is not going
to vanish in this freeze, quite the contrary. There
is an urgency asking that cultural administrative systems
address the growing pragmatic needs of artists in innovative
ways. There is also need to maintain the platform for the
“bringing into being” the value of poiesis.
The poet Charles Olson
says, "What does not change / is the will to change”
- this will to change needs to be amplified as actions that
can thaw the freeze. It lies in arts abilities to speak truth
to power, in the support of an artistic counter-norm whose
explorations push, challenge and reimagine the plural. It
lies in arts capacity to advocate for the unbearable—not
as a destination, or end-game, but necessary irritant. The
unbearable that artist wrestle with as they proceed to make
meaning, make art, as they compose a world that is different
than our current givens.
Theodor Adorno, Culture and Administration
in The Culture Industry (Routledge
Press, 1991) p.108
Roberto Bedoya is a writer, cultural advocate and arts consultant.
He is the former
director of the National Association
of Artists' Organizations (NAAO) a national service organization
for artists-centered organizations. Currently, he is
an arts consultant who's recent projects include: The New
York Foundation for the Arts,
Cultural Blueprint Project; New York
City Arts Coalition and Lower Manhattan
Cultural Council, Creative Downtown Project;
and The Urban Institute's
Investing in Creativity: A Study of the Support Structure
for US Artists. |