[spectre] // The State of Art //

[simon]

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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