Industry that pays, and art that doesn’t - Page 2
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 23: Essentially Creative
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Robyn Archer
IT IS IN RESPONSE TO DECADES OF DISCRIMINATION AND ATTACKS ON ART and its most innovative and challenging constellations that a tendency arises for official channels, or holders of the public purse, not to defend the outer and inner limits of originality and daring. Instead they try to disguise them in the garb of an industry, whose justification is never for its own sake or the ephemeral qualities of life it preserves and extends for its society, but because it can be seen to be the equal of other industries – with potential to compete and make money. This lack of a genuine defence of art is dangerous; the attempt to defend art as something that can be valued in terms of investment and financial profitability weakens the real reasons for valuing it.
We are in a time of change. I have been saying for some time that I believe people will look back on this first decade of the twenty-first century and see that it was a time of profound, seismic change of the same order that governed the changes from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. The charge that lit up Secession Vienna is electrifying us today as new technologies develop apace and are taken up by artists everywhere as a means of expression. One recent and sudden aspect of these changes is the return of respect for ideas and the public intellectual. Following 2020, there's a new show, Fora, on ABC TV, there's a new interest in speakers and talk-fests, and after a time of suppression and ridicule of the public intellectual, people are again encouraged to think and talk about issues of import and interest.
This means that there is support for one of the most important roles of the arts: the arena in which the toughest and most complex issues of individuals and society can be discussed, and more than just discussed, really felt. Of course, there is an obligation for artists to acknowledge that role too and stop working with trivial themes, but traditionally we haven't been good at valuing the ephemeral. When it comes to the kind of massive event mentality that has been encouraged, we allow emotion to be attached to the large and very expensive public display.
For subtler questions of humanity – like the fine lines of ethical dilemma, the moment to raise your voice against injustice, the genuine inner debate about honesty, greed or materialism, all of which most people encounter in the run of their day-to-day lives – we are less enthusiastic and forthcoming. Yet it is in these grey areas of doubt and decision, the place where all the immeasurables of life can be tossed and turned, that art can be of greatest public service. And it's not just in, for instance, the explicit play or novel or small-budget film that overtly discusses such issues. Sometimes it is just in the quiet contemplation of beauty (wordless music, or non-figurative art) that thought and emotions have the space to stray into the dangerous human territories we so cleverly avoid in the business of another day, another dollar.
I believe such qualities of introspection, debate and dialectic are vital if we are to fulfil our potential as human beings. A society devoid of reflection and contemplation is held back – is not benefiting from the exercise of all those skills that humans at this stage of their evolution can deploy. Writer Jeannette Winterson recently said: ‘I think that art is definitely on the side of the inner life ... It's helping us to express that unique human-ness, from the high end, really, to the very modest. It's not just about going around museums or listening to great music, or reading fabulous literature ... It's about a kind of independence of mind, an open-mindedness and above all a capacity to feel. We cannot give our feelings over to the values of cheap soap operas and media strap-lines. If you want to feel deeply and if you want to feel profoundly, then you go to the places where that feeling is deep and profound, and that's in art ...'
When a society actively encourages and enables the highest human development and provides the tools and pathways to stimulate it, it is surely capable of developing advantages in a competitive world. In such a way, the presence of art is a vital tool for a hopeful and prosperous future. Band-aiding the arts away from criticism that they are too ephemeral for an increasingly tough world, and that they are not connected to the real world, disguising them in the short-term garb of particular investment and profitability, actually threatens a society with the loss of the intellectual and emotional tools it desperately needs. These are the tools, the well-exercised muscles for thought, debate, challenge, flexibility and compassion that test our metal in the safe environment of pretend and hypothetical in a way that moves us, makes us feel, gives us catharsis and then stimulus, knowledge and power to act. This is the potential of art. Are we happy to neglect this treasure for the sake of jobs in video gaming?
I am not confusing art with entertainment, because entertainment also differs from art in that it understands its market and plays to it. It wants to satisfy an existing market – and make money out of it. This is almost the definition of entertainment. I'm not decrying it – fun and entertainment have their place, but there is no threat to entertainment. Entertainments tend to be faddish, and they run with novelty; some traditional forms of entertainment are already being superseded by new creative industries, especially screen-based applications. But entertainment as a whole is terrifyingly healthy. In skills training terms, there is a demonstrable demand for unending supply.
No, I am talking about those individuals who, through certain gifts – usually called talent – frequently coupled with energy and persistence, and the smart nurturing of those qualities through the home and education, emerge as adolescents with their sense of curiosity and originality intact, and have the encouragement and the means to forge ahead along wholly original paths. Some remain loners; others meet those of like mind and form bands, companies, collectives, schools, and so on. But these are the ones who are not market driven – and to the despair of their families and their teachers, they simply do not have it in them to tread established tracks. Existing markets do not provide a suitable platform for their new ideas and methodologies – there are no obvious career paths for those who are playing with elemental creativity. Often what they do looks lazy, crazy and unacceptable. Many of them start acquiring skills for the manifest expression of what they are thinking and feeling. This is where arts education comes in – instruments, bodies, methodologies, histories, masters, apprenticeships, research, exposure to other art and ideas, these things are all grist to their urgent and hungry mill.
For as long as it takes for them to develop their skill and their individual voice, as long as it takes to develop an audience or a market for their work, such activity does not make money. It requires subsidy. Along the way, those who encounter the new ideas and forms of expression have the ephemeral benefit, and may be inspired in their own work or creativity. That's already good for society. Some of these artists, in the pursuit of their own inner-driven goal, will make the leap to various creative industries and it is good that those industries are there, working and healthy, ready to accept them.
In other cases, the emerging ideas and new methodologies will in any case simply fetch up in the creative industries through stealth. An advertising executive from one of the major Australian agencies once said that his profession desperately needed the arts to stay edgy and edgier, since that originality was the source of their inspiration. The very best new ideas in art, theatre and music always fetch up a year or so later in a commercial application. But unless a society can ensure that there is a framework in which art, its research and development, its newest and boldest ideas are supported in a raft of different ways – through education, venues and materials, the encouragement of audiences to be open to new ideas – then we simply stifle one of the richest seams of originality and experience, one of the most fertile avenues we possess for the exploration of what it means to be human.
ART – NOT ONLY THE EXISTING CANON AND COLLECTIONS OF THE PAST and their representation and re-interpretation, but every shade of the new, ugly, unloved and unknown, as I call them – needs enthusiastic support. The unsuccessful endeavours, just like research and development in science and medicine, are every bit as important as the huge hits. Those who dare the newest weirdest stuff should be supported and encouraged every bit as much as those whose work immediately resonates and becomes popular and therefore potentially profitable. It is the entire environment that enables success and progress, and there are more than a few these days who have adopted environmental terminology to describe the necessary steps to preserving a healthy eco-system in the arts. I had been resisting the environmental vocabulary until I had the very good fortune to meet Dr Brian Walker, who is currently the Science Program director of the Resilience Alliance and was chief of the CSIRO Division of Wildlife and Ecology. I was drawn to his explanations of resilience thinking and just how applicable it is to the arts.
Resilience is defined as ‘the capacity of a system to avoid disturbance and still retain its basic function'. While this focus has arisen from environmental studies, it immediately struck me as being applicable to all systems – ecological, human and sociological. It is worth teasing out the connection in some detail as I believe it provides an unusually robust defence of how we might approach a resilient arts sector. According to Brian Walker: ‘[We] are all part of some system of humans and nature (socio-ecological systems). How do you approach the task of management in this complex world? Do you assume things will happen in much the same way tomorrow as they did yesterday? Are you confident the system you are working in won't be disrupted by little surprises? Do you appreciate what's needed for a system to absorb unexpected disturbances? ... All of these questions relate to resilience, the ability of a system to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic function and structure. They also relate to concepts of sustainability and the challenge of servicing current system demands without eroding the potential to meet future needs. How can we make the systems that we depend on resilient?'
Walker's theory is that ‘most systems of nature usually proceed through recurring cycles consisting of four phases: rapid growth, conservation, release, and re-organisation'. I see this in arts companies and rock bands. First, rapid growth when things are achieved on the smell of an oily rag, incredible effort for little initial return except developing the quality of the work and its reputation. Next conservation: the period in which growth slows, methodologies settle or, as Brian Walker and David Salt's book Resilience thinking describes it, ‘the competitive edge shifts from opportunists ... to specialists who reduce the impact of variability... [there is] more specialisation and greater efficiencies of large economies of scale ... As the system's components become more strongly interconnected, its internal state becomes more strongly regulated. Prospective new entrants or new ways of doing things are excluded ... Efficiency increases and the future seems ever more certain and determined.'
This is the phase in which a company solidifies its reputation, starts paying people properly, gets an important board and starts to become trendy – at this point, it is harder for younger or different artists to ‘get in' because the work of the company is based on its success so far. This feels confident and lasting, but the cost of efficiency is that the system becomes more rigid and resilience declines.
The transition to the next phase can happen in a heartbeat. The longer the conservation phase the smaller the shock needed to end it. A disturbance that exceeds the system's resilience breaks its web of reinforcing interactions. The system comes undone: fires, drought, insects and disease can undo ecosystems, just as a new technology can derail an entrenched industry. The dynamics are chaotic, but the destruction has a creative side – uncertainty rules; all options are open and leads quickly to re-organisation and renewal. Novelty can thrive. Small, chance events can powerfully shape the future. Invention, experimentation and re-assortment are the order of the day.
Indeed, in Britain recently and in a small way South Australia, this kind of chaotic event was enabled, all bets were off, older theatre companies were reassessed and defunded, new ones supported. That needs to happen more often. No matter how good a company's reputation, if it has ceased making inspirational work then the resources should be released for new energies to make use of them.
What this means is that it is a good thing to pump more resources into creative industries. It is helping promote resilience in that it invests in and promotes the new instead of constantly bolstering the old modes for ageing audiences. But this cannot be at the expense of art, that which requires subsidy and investment with no guarantee of return as an industry. I fear that the current fad for creative industries – which are acceptable because they are profitable – may supplant support for the arts. The disguise of creativity is a potential thief.
Unless we also champion, preserve and support unprofitable art, creative industry is deprived of its prime source of inspiration. Failing to nurture the raw materials and concentrating on the part that is economically attractive is fatal for the system as a whole. It would be healthier if potentially profitable creative industries were situated in the portfolio of industry, and therefore presented no competitive threat to art and culture.
Unfortunately, the pattern often goes like this. A government will strike out with a new initiative to support a new form of activity, and then those with experience, resources, audiences and powerful boards – that is, the most conservative and most businesslike arts institutions – make sure that the new initiatives do not come at their expense. The customary pattern is that resources are bled away from the sector that most needs support – independent, small, ugly and unknown – those who usually do not have the capacity to defend themselves. Yet this is the most vital part of the system – the raw seed that eventually grows to feed the majors and the industries. Wounding and depleting the system at its source is probably the most destructive act.
By all means, make way for new technologies, back the future – but unless we take care of the whole, and especially its feral edge, those vitally important little wildfires that ensure new growth, then we doom our future culture to weakness and bleak instability. If you ask me what a creative society and workforce looks like, all I can do is point to its prerequisite – a society that encourages its leaders to use the money it gives them to ensure resilience – so it can absorb change. Resilience is built by ensuring that not just the tall trees are nurtured, cared for and invested in, but that little experiments are equally supported, so that when the tall trees totter and start to decay – as they will – the saplings are strong enough to keep the forest alive.
A creative society is one that is flexible and generous and values all its collective enterprise and activity – one that prizes resilience, and the positive and continuing support not only of the tallest and most celebrated trees, or the sexy new ways in which one promotes, deploys their strengths and profits from them, but also the small and vital, but as yet largely unnoticed new growth at the bottom of the forest. It is from this floor that the future emerges. Neglect it, deprive it, render it less important and less worthy of investment and, despite your best efforts looking after the canopy, your forest is already dying. ♦