16th may art, the state and citiizen

'One member of the Arts Council was asked by a journalist why they didn't support or buy from the Project, he replied that it was because it was too far away.

The other two galleries were in St Stephen's green. Project was in Abbey Street. Geographically, psychologically and politically out of mind‘ (Ó Briain, 2000).

Brenda O' Reilly

The thing is, when you’re in an Arts Council,

The arts community chucks things at you.

The government chucks things at you.

The public chucks things at you – and the newspapers chuck everything at you.

You’re in a kind of no-man’s-land where people just chuck things at you.”

Wednesday, April 29, 2009No time for faint arts source Irish Times

The arts suffer from their own sense of peripheral status within the State agenda, fearing the meaning/outcomes of the State discretionary spend.

The system of funding for Ireland

paternalistic; the more demonstratively productive areas such as sport and tourism gain greater public awareness, perhaps because they are more readily read as commodity by State and corporate funders.

Inclusion, entertainment, service provision, education, employment and performative cultural capital regional

identity

Competitiveness, creative industries, tourism, performance of......

Frayling says. “They’re increasingly important to the creative industries – that sector of the economy that depends on creativity and innovation. I’ve just come back from mainland China, where they’re currently building 1,300 art and design schools.

They know that when the world economy turns around, creativity is going to be one of the things that will give them the edge. They’re fed up with manufacturing everyone else’s stuff – they want to create their own. So they’ve got the message.”

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Art and the State

Facilitator patron, architect and engineer

facilitator patron architect and engineer

the familial vs the professionals

where is the weight - where is the debate

privileging consensus vs troublesome

commissioning and controversy

sameness and difference

(instrumentalisation, quiet-isation, utilisation)

(cheap shots at polarisation)

rigid + overtly structuredauthoritarian autocratic

heavily mediated

venue basedformally engaged thematic tied/ single issue

fluidity group democratic open communication (Real or performed )

multi-platform(way cool)

mash-up film media audio ... (strong emphases on cross representation documents)

The anxiety and pressure within the arts world emerges with the growing requirement to substantiate its exploits/achievements.

It seems an increasingly supportive State apparatus compounds the hegemonic power dynamic, which emerges then paradoxically to both support and stymie; the ultimate paternalism.

The ideal of perceived autonomy for the practitioner liquidates into the reified spheres of arts and culture. The managerial and administrative systems develop in a highly professionalized manner, then becoming central/primary and thus exclusionary.

These structuring processes, what Bourdieu calls "circuits of legitimisation,"

systems of sponsorship, evaluation, and consecration by means of which power euphemises itself as merit (as intrinsic and proper rather than imposed and arbitrary) and thereby secures its symbolic efficacy.[1]

Self generated?

Polarization poisons politics, makes problems harder

The Economist Apr 26, 2009, page G4

Citizen audience

a healthy public sphere ?

is the cultural capital a public good?

fear

• “Given its prominence within a key public realm in Dún Laoghaire, the choice of Corten steel for the sculpture was a curious one, creating a sense of decay and contrasting sharply with the town’s rich Venetian architecture.”

Fine Gael councillor Mary Mitchell-O’Connor

• retitled Playboy of the West Indies1984 by Trinidadian playwright Mustapha Matura, set down in 1950's Trinidad, retitled Playboy of the West Indies.

• 1994 TV movie entitled Paris or Somewhere. Set in rural Saskatchewan

• An operatic rendition (2003), by Mark Alburger, was premiered from August 23 to 26, 2007, with GHP/SF Cabaret Opera at Oakland Metro Opera House, Oakland, CA

• A musical version of this play, written by Kate Hancock and Richard B. Evans, premiered at the STAGES 2005 musical festival at the Theatre Building Chicago

• In 2006, a Mandarin language version of the play set in a hairdressers shop in a Beijing suburb was performed at the Beijing Oriental Theatre. It was produced by the Irish contemporary theatre company, Pan Pan

• In September 2007 The Playboy returned to the Abbey in a modern adaptation by Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle. Set in a suburb of West Dublin, it tells the story of Christopher Malomo, a Nigerian refugee who claims to have killed his father with a pestle.

cultural capital, national identity and its hegemonic power form pervasive ideologies which frequently have schismatic impacts and stratify the scope of the culture industries.

privileging consensusIs consensus a defining characteristic of the public sphere? What is the role of controversy?

Culture is always something that was,Something pedants can measure,Skull of bard, thigh of chief,Depth of dried-up river.Shall we be thus forever?Shall we be thus forever?PATRICK KAVANAGH

PATRONAGE UNDER FIRE: 1967-73A group thus passes from the sceneWhose likes again shall not be seenFor casual heroic wasteOf public money on private tasteComplacence, arrogance, self-contentment,Begrudgery and pure resentment,We raise a cheer as it departs,The Inquisition of the Arts.MICHAEL KANE

Liberals and libertarians must confront the unpalatable thought that oppressive [political] power

flourishes by enlisting our impulse to freedom rather than by brutally

extinguishing it

Terry Eagleton LRB 30 april 09

“..there is one side of me that is cautious about Utopias because I am also aware of the fact that, though in the past utopias have been capable of furthering the imagination – especially the utopias of artists, which have been massively important in opening horizons and breaking up existing landscapes and continents of epistemological knowledge, and crossing the difficult frontiers to re-map the world – although that is essential to the project of change of any kind nevertheless, another side of the project of change has to be scrupulously realistic about the existing disposition of power ....”

Stuart Hall - Interviews vol 1 Hans-Ulrich Obrist

Partnership for the Arts ?