[spectre] The artist as administrator

[Andreas Broeckmann]

Date:         Thu, 27 May 2004 23:33:39 +0100
From: anya lewin <anya.lewin at BTINTERNET.COM>
Subject: The artist as administrator
To: NEW-MEDIA-CURATING at JISCMAIL.AC.UK



Dear Crumb,

This not exactly about new media curating but is about arts administration
which relates  . . . I hope you don't mind that I send this to the list.

Anya

I am forwarding a letter from my friend Redas Dirzys. He is an artist and
the head of an art school for 12 to 18 year olds in Lithuania. The school is
now under threat of closure under the false pretence of reorganization.

In April of 2003 Steven Eastwood and I visited the school for 5 days. It was
an amazing experience and resulted in a 27 minute film called Different
Systems of Chaos. I have made a website where people can download the film
(its in 3 parts but you still need a fast connection) in case you are
interested in getting more of a feeling for the school. The address is
http://www.yesandnu.com/Alytus.html.

Sincerely,
anya

Here is the letter from Redas:

Dear People of the World,

My name is Redas Dirzys and I am an artist, and the head of the Art School
in the small town of Alytus of the small country Lithuania. First, I want to
announce worldwide more than just the fact of attempts of the local
authorities to close the art school. The major thing I want to call your
attention to is the license, arrogance and cynicism of the functionaries,
that you're noticing around yourself too, and the mechanisms they are using
to highlight their power. This is not a fear of losing my job; please don't
treat it as a desperate attempt to ask for a support of the school.

The story is very simple: local authorities decided to close perfectly
functioning schools for visual arts and for musical education and to join
them to the training school for folk crafts. The whole unit they decided to
call the Artistic Training Center. The basic thing of the whole
reorganization is the appearance of the classical bureaucratic pyramid,  all
under this mechanically made unit, with the main task properly to properly
administrate these bastard artists.

The official motivations for this step is: better coordination of the joint
events of these three former institutions (common participation in city or
the state or international celebrations and projects) and better opportunity
to get bigger money from European foundations. The step is warranted on the
thesis that there is not such kind of infrastructure of the State Art
Schools in the countries of EU, even they are trying to prove that the EU
officials are insisting not to support this kind of schools from the state
money and the mostly funny argument is: there is not such a kind of schools
in Denmark (Danish educational system is the standard for the Lithuanian
educational system to be turned into. 10 years ago Danish experts were the
first to came to Lithuania with the money of European foundations to ensure
the way of Danish educational system to be taken as an example).

The methods: the chief of city educational department issued the order for
the heads of the schools to prepare the documentation for the reorganization
of their institutions to look as they are asking for those themselves. I
gave everything to the press what already means in this former soviet
country that I have no chance to win that fight (anyway I've already refused
from the same amount of salary in a new planned Artistic Training Center).
So, I am turning all that activity to a biggest social performance I ever
did - to play the game till the end with the full spread of imagination.

I am inviting everybody to react to the fact in the way they find out
convenient for themselves by writing the letters from abroad - to let the
authorities of the small city of the small country to be seen from a wider
prospective, or to propose them some much spectacular way to deal with the
artistic education. Anyway they are asking now for another alternative ways
what to do with the artistic education?

Please use the following email addresses to send the letters: info at ana.lt
and saule at ana.lt . The addresses are from the local main daily of Alytus
city and for a whole south Lithuanian region Alytaus Naujienos (Alytus News)
- the most influential for the region who have also kindly agreed to work
for that.

Sincerely,
Redas Dirzys
redas_dirzys at yahoo.com
The head of Alytus Art School (still)