Today’s Word is Chutzpah
An artist has been given thousands of pounds of public money to simply live in Glasgow for a year.
Oh come on. There’s at least one joke in there.
Scottish Government quango Creative Scotland is giving £15,000 to Ellie Harrison after she vowed not to leave the city limits for all of 2016. The 36-year-old believes this will allow her to “increase her sense of belonging, by encouraging her to seek out and create ‘local opportunities’ – testing what becomes possible when she invests all her ideas, time and energy within the city where she lives.”
All her ideas.
It is understood that the project will see her maintain an internet blog and that her whole life here will be a “work of art.”
How staggeringly convenient.
Harrison was born in London but has already lived in Glasgow for a number of years.
There we go.
Update, via the comments:
Writing in the Guardian, Liam Hainey rushes to defend Ms Harrison’s low-effort art project, denouncing “budget butchers” and asking his readers to “look at the bigger picture.” All while carefully ignoring anything that might trouble the assumptions of the freeloading arts community. Mr Hainey, a former Green councillor, dismisses the widespread mockery of Ms Harrison’s hustle as “predictable.” Yet much of the mockery occurs because hustles of this type are themselves so predictable – that what we’re seeing, once again, is a display of arrogant presumption, one that’s routine among a socially and politically narrow subsidy-seeking caste.
These exercises in narcissism are a staple of state arts funding. And the existence of state funding – in which the public has no say, and in which any normal corrective feedback is side-lined – actively encourages mediocrity and cronyism. All of which understandably chafes the chops of those left footing the bill, year after year, many of whom may feel that the recipients of their confiscated earnings are incompetent, parasitic or simply taking the piss. Year after year. Of course Mr Hainey, like Ms Harrison, has no incentive to think realistically about the many stated objections. For the hustle to continue, its participants must become evasive and impervious.
And so Mr Hainey tells us, triumphantly, that the money spent on Ms Harrison’s project isn’t in fact being wasted because it was already earmarked for art that would probably be unpopular and which nobody asked for. The uncomprehending Mr Hainey instead suggests that the hustlers be given more of the money that someone else had to go out and earn. Because they’re artists, you see, and therefore more deserving of your earnings than you are. Presumably, our Guardian columnist imagines himself as virtuous, on the side of the angels, above mere selfishness. It simply doesn’t occur to him that the coercive system he endorses and wishes to see expanded is itself unjust, and that people like Ms Harrison are exemplars not of virtue, but of opportunism, vanity and selfishness.
Via Christopher Snowdon.
Thus.
Via Franklin.
Seattle is spending $10,000 to sponsor a writer or poet in residence for the Fremont bridge, a drawbridge over the Lake Washington Ship Canal. Yes, $10,000 of some poor bastard of a builder’s* money is going to pay for someone to write a pome (I’d bet money – mine – that they will go with a poet because it’s so sensitive) to produce an homage to the 100th anniversary of the bridge.
http://tinyurl.com/gtkzsvn
This has to be the most ridiculous town in the country, if for no other reason than it actually wants to be San Francisco.
*The money is coming from “Art in Public Places” which is a fund created from 1% of the budget of any construction project to fund public art. I told you it’s ridiculous.
This…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgDxvaCsZMI
Educational observations . . . .
Let us hope that Ms. Harrison spends part of her grant on some sorely-needed dentistry; that alone will make the environs of Glasgow more attractive.
Hal, that is not funny, because, er…. it’s true! When I did some teaching the ‘students’ all printed out stuff for their assignments from Wikipedia. They hadn’t clue what it was about but they all wanted to achieve a ‘pass’ so it was fine by them.
The artists in question are of course middle-class Guardian-reading lefties and make all of the usual noises about capitalism, fairness, neoliberalism, etc. And yet despite this display of piety, they think that cleaners in Rotherham and carpet-fitters in Doncaster should be forced to subsidise the recreation and lifestyle choices of middle-class lefties, i.e., themselves and the tiny, unviable audience for “experimental theatre.”
That. 🙂
When I did some teaching the ‘students’ all printed out stuff for their assignments from Wikipedia.
Mostly they paraphrase Wikipedia in my experience, only the odd one will quote it verbatim. You can spot it quickly enough — for example, no NZ kid talks about canyons (we would use valleys) or knows what “albedo” is.
The best is when they leave in the phrase “click here for more information” in their printed report.
It simply doesn’t occur to him that the coercive system he endorses and wishes to see expanded is itself unjust, and that people like Ms Harrison are exemplars not of virtue, but of vanity and selfishness.
That. So much that.
That. So much that.
As I mentioned in an earlier thread, last year I saw some tweets by an artist acquaintance, a leftist, who was upset by the prospect of reductions in public subsidy for the unviable arts here in Britain, including his own projects. He denounced as “idiots” those who think that artists should earn their money – say, by producing things the public wishes to pay for directly, voluntarily, rather than just taking it via the state through coercion and cronyism. Passions were high and there were vague rumblings of militancy and retribution.
This struck me as a bit rich, given that the chap in question, along with his associates, has managed to screw from the taxpayer around £200,000 a year for several years. Such that the total funds extracted from the public – a public almost totally uninterested in what he and his associates do – is well in excess of a million pounds. A cosy gig by any measure. But despite years of being handed vast sums of money that other people had to earn by doing things of market value, there was no trace of gratitude, none whatsoever. Just an expectation of more, stretching indefinitely into the future.
This sense of limitless entitlement is in no way unusual. It’s a default mindset of our artistic Brahmins. And it’s precisely what people like Mr Hainey and Ms Harrison hope to God you won’t notice.
The best is when they leave in the phrase “click here for more information” in their printed report.
Nothing more exasperating than the lazy plagiarist. >_<
> But despite years of being handed vast sums of money that other people had to earn by doing things of market value, there was no trace of gratitude, none whatsoever. Just an expectation of more, stretching indefinitely into the future.
DESPITE?!?
I am Ellie Harrison. You are Ellie Harrison. We all are Ellie Harrison.
It just doesn’t have the same punch that the Dr. Pepper theme had.
Bite me, Ellie Harrison.
DESPITE?!?
Heh. Quite. This obnoxious sense of entitlement has, after all, been encouraged and reinforced by decades of indulgence and inept rationalisation, and maybe it shouldn’t be so surprising. But even though I’ve seen it many times, occasionally up close, I’m still taken aback by it.
[ Added: ]
I suppose it’s one of inadvertent virtues of Laurie Penny. As she’s not quite clever enough to successfully obscure the root assumptions, she just blurts this stuff out. And then it becomes clear it’s basically a caste thing.
she just blurts this stuff out. And then it becomes clear it’s basically a caste thing.
Nailed. We should thank Penny Dreadful. She’s the gift that keeps on giving.
There is a strong element of wishing for the return of feudalism in the left.
Portland, Oregon bit me for a $35/resident arts tax on my way out the door – didn’t matter that I moved out 3 weeks after the silly voters of that silly town willingly voted for the tax by a wide margin. Out of curiosity I checked what my money had gone to – many silly little song and dance outlets such as the “Portland Gay Men’s Chorus”. Can’t really blame them for the gaiety, what with all the magical free money coming in.