Sydney's Gloom Festival: Thanks to the dead

Friday, May 29, 2009

Thanks to the dead

A huge thank you to the 6 hardy souls, who braved the rain and the confusion surrounding the "unofficial" Gloom festival. We lay on the floor, with artists on our forehead and got the attention of many curious people, Police did ask us to stand, so we stood still for some time, talking to people about the reasons for being there and the issues we were trying to address. Hope to see people tonight at Bill and George for Gloom conversation.
cheers
Jeff

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The Curse and Cure of the City- The Artist

The NSW government through Events NSW is producing a new Festival- Vivid Sydney. This Festival is hypocritical in that the NSW Government through Events NSW is celebrating how wonderfully creative Sydney is and at the same time the NSW Government through Arts NSW is increasingly not supporting the Arts, especially the small to medium independent sector and that sector is really struggling.

The small to medium independent sector is vital to the arts culture of Sydney. It breeds innovation and is the cultural undergrowth that sustains and nourishes the arts sector as a whole. How can you celebrate something you don't support at a grassroots level? The spin-doctors at Event NSW can talk up how wonderfully creative Sydney is but their rhetoric is clearly transparent hype; that arts prosper despite not because of the NSW government.

The NSW Government has summarily lumped the arts in with design, fashion, advertising, architecture, television, film and publishing and branded it “creative industries”. This cannot deflect from the Government’s responsibilities towards each of these individual industries or hide, in this convenient amalgam, its failures in the arts sector behind successes in other more commercial industries.

The labelling of all these industries as “creative” diminishes the word creative beyond its’ meaning and so renders it banal. That is not to say practices in these other industries do not involve creativity, they do. There is a long tradition of philosophical discussion on the definition and distinction, of what is the difference between art and other utilitarian industries? That is to say that some of the above industries do involve some degree of art and some art practices do involve commercialisation.Yet I would still maintain that an important distinction needs to be made and that we should avoid any easy merging or conflation of art with other practices. T My answer cannot be complete within the small confines of this article. However to me, within the arts there is a greater imperative that transcends any economic rationality or the everyday and the utility function. This imperative calls for quite a different approachitarian, beyond any economic rationality.
To me to be an artists means t, one that tries to contend the darkness, the horror. We can laugh at that cliché and think of Marlon Brando character Colonel Kurtz in the movie Apocalypse Now: “Oh the horror” but artists do contend and andtry to grapple with the disquiet of thewithin the human condition.The other industries might dip their toes into this abyss from time to time for fashion or monetary gain but artist, tend towards the irresponsible leap and dive head first into this abyss. That is the difference.

Plato’s suggests that if a wandering poet (artist) should arrive at the gates of a city that s/he should be turned away and the gates be kept shut. This was out of fear of “contamination”, that this artist, this provocateur might instigate discontent amongst the population, which would lead to disquiet and break the harmony and solidarity of the community. Artists are trouble, they are difficult because they don’t readily fit in, conform and settle for the commonplace but at their best they do provide critique, perspective, irony, ethical sensitivity and spice.

There is always a tension between the respectable legitimisation of the artist and artist keeping their sense of irresponsible illegitimacy. The basis of this tension is economic. Artists have to survive economically in a society that it often critiques. How much can artists bite the hand that feeds them? But the artist’s role is often seen as saboteur of society. Artist’s aim is often alienation of its audiences; an act of defiance that at once marks their individual freedom and announces the limits of societies capacities of inclusion, acceptance and understanding.

The past decade or more has seen an increasing professionalisation of the arts and educational institutions and practices in Australia. We see economic imperatives and bottom lines increasingly driving artistic decision-making; Artistic planning and decisions made by boards and producers rather than artistic directors and artists. Artists are asked to take on this process of accountability and legitimisation, a business paradigm as if it somehow makes for sustainability. Why is it that artists must model themselves on business? If we look at the world today and see the mess the business world has got us into perhaps the business world should be modeling itself on an artistic paradigm? Perhaps then the world might be a more sensitive and ethical place?

This underlies a greater cultural problem in the arts in Australia, of the overly paternalistic attitude towards artists. Artists cannot be trusted: to self manage, to self-assess, make their own decisions, to run their own spaces and create their own festivals. This has created an overly top-heavy arts cultural beast, where funding is centered on the top - in management, or over-management, and little trickles down. By the time funding reaches the artists there is not much left.

I am reminded of the Faulty Towers line “this hotel would run perfectly if it weren’t for the customers!”

Yes, Artistic Institutions and companies, according to bureaucrats, would run perfectly if it wasn’t for artists! Bureaucrats would prefer to run their institutions without artists or have a ready-made product shipped in from elsewhere and not be involved in the messy, risky, chaotic nature of the creative process.

Marcus Westbury, in Griffith Review20 states the ideals for creative spaces in the city:
"Artists need infrastructure that is fluid. They need places that are adaptable, accessible, breakable, spontaneous, flexible and capable of evolving quickly with their needs."

Lack of affordable space and lack of space that is accessible and amenable, that is available to artists in a supportive way is a real problem in Sydney. Carriageworks was set up to try and address the lack of accessible space. Especially for the small to medium independent arts sector, but Carriageworks has fallen into the same cultural paradigm and has become increasingly over protective, inaccessible, expensive and not very flexible at all.

Sydney, according to architect Philip Cox “lacks attractive urban spaces”. Spaces that can inspire us or at least that give way to artists to re-invent and imagine in a different light. Independent art practice is virtually impossible in Sydney today. This is due to an over protective and prohibitive conditions that make such work financially unviable. Right now, this sector is facing an unprecedented crisis. Not only from diminishing State government funding, but also severe rent hikes leading to an exodus of artists from the city. The is compounded by the strangulating risk averse culture in Sydney due to the growing shadow of public liability insurance issues, overly zealous OHAS practices that do not make for safer work places but for dead spaces, devoid of artists and people in general, rendering cities banal and devoid of life.

This distinct lack of imagination and creativity in Sydney is due to State Government back sliding on arts agendas, its’ pandering to developers and its’ distinct lack of vision. Why can’t we provide Sydney and its children vibrant cultural experiences and opportunities to build a new 21st century arts industry, get skills to participate, gets jobs in the arts and be competitive on the world stage?

Perhaps empower the artist, instead of business models for artists, lets create arts models for business and government. Maybe then we might have a society that has a more ethical aesthetic value rather than no values at all except the bottom line.

The dreamer whose dreams are non-utilitarian has no place in this world. Whatever does not lend itself to being bought and sold, whether in the realm of things, ideas, principles, dreams or hopes, is debarred. In this world the poet is anathema, the thinker a fool, the artist an escapist, the man of vision a criminal. Henry Miller 1945 The Air-Conditioned Nightmare.

Sydney's Gloom Festival

Friday, May 29, 2009

Thanks to the dead

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The Curse and Cure of the City- The Artist