freecooperation mailinglist
archive
< |
> |
Cultural Commons thread
Alan Moore
Feb 13, 2004 10:24 PST
|
Hi folks - I posted Trebor's essay with a forward to the Cultural Commons website, a discussion site of the Cultural Policy gang in Washington, D.C. Under the noses of the arts managers and lobbyists the thread is in Open Forum and called Topic: Artists groups -- collectivity, demi-institutions.[links and options at bottom of this message] For this forum you must register, and it is not very active, but today I got an interesting response: I absolutely agree that artists make enormous contributions to society and that their issues should be of interest to not just those in cultural policy but to the policy community generally. Unfortunately there seems to be some stereotyping of artists as weird, self-centered, snobby and purposefully stand-offish. Right or not, I think that complicates the issue, and has led arts advocates to often pursue a more politic strategy of approaching the issues by talking about how the "arts" or "arts institutions" serve society. I think this strategy has worked in getting policy makers -- particularly at local levels -- to pay attention to cultural issues. My hope is that as the issues get further and further explored, conversation will reach the level of individual artists and their needs. For those who haven't heard of it, the Arts 4 Development group (http://www.art4development.net) might be of interest. According to their website, the organization believes in "the role of the arts and media in reshaping societies and identities in Europe" and tries to help potential collaborators connect. [To this I could not forebear to reply] Thanks, S Kay. To me that is the point. Artists need to be acknowledged in cultural policy discussions. Right now it seems the discourse is entirely one between managers and their trainees. Fortunately the "old mole" never sleeps, and I have in hand George Yudice's new book "The Expediency of Culture" (Duke, '03)which is a dense, ambitious attempt to theorize the conditions of international cultural policy today. I've just started reading it, but already he introduces the concept of "cultural power" (akin to the biopower of Hardt & Negri). He writes, "The very term conjoins what in modernity belonged to emancipation on the one hand, and to regulation on the other." Artists' collective formations consciously recall the utopian heritage of the modernist avant-garde. It is important for artists to remember when they discourse with managers (and what ParEcon people call "coordinators") that indeed they have power -- the power of imagination. Ideas, images, concepts, actions -- these artistic "products" flood frames of reference of the workaday productive world. Last night at a conference on the topic of artists' collectives convened by the LMCC in NYC, Ayreen of 16 Beaver (at 16beavergroup.org) broke the frame continuously. The response by the earnest managers was laughter. But that does not mean that the organization and its structures are really amused.... ///////// To view the new message, please visit the link below. http://www.culturalcommons.org/discussion/viewmessages.cfm?Forum=12&Topic=31 If you would like to un-subscribe from this topic, you may do so by visiting the following link. http://www.culturalcommons.org/discussion/subscribe.cfm?forum=12&topic=31&sub=topic Thank you for visiting Commons Forum. Alan Moore 151 Winter Ave. Staten Island, NY 10301 home (mssg): 718 556 9008
_________________________________________________________________ Optimize your Internet experience to the max with the new MSN Premium Internet Software. http://click.atdmt.com/AVE/go/onm00200359ave/direct/01/ |
< |
> |