Photographed by Andrew Zuckerman. One of these. Via.
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Art Anna steers us to this.
The Guardian’s caption reads, “A demonstrator holds her arms up during a protest at the Tate Britain.” Though readers may wish to devise captions of their own. For those who missed yesterday’s, um, spectacle, art students “invaded” Tate Britain and organised a series of life drawing classes to protest against proposed cuts to arts budgets:
Supporters of the protest handed out leaflets outside the building warning that higher fees could lead to empty art schools.
A Guardian reader adds,
A brilliant, well executed and peaceful protest from students who are angry at the blatant betrayal and abandonment of the arts.
Yes, trembling readers, artists are angry.
As angry as they were five months ago when protesting against BP’s sponsorship of the arts, estimated at around half a million pounds:
BP’s money is tainted and it is hard to see how the company’s reputation won’t have a long-term impact on those who accept it.
That was dirty money, see? Given voluntarily, unlike taxpayer subsidy, but still, dirty, dirty, dirty. Among those protesting at this insult to moral hygiene was John Jordan, an “artist and activist” and co-editor of We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anticapitalism, an anarchist guidebook to “direct action” and a “collision of subjectivities… charged with inspiration.”
In his Guardian column, Mr Jordan wrote,
Art acts as a great detergent, and being involved with a gallery enables the company to host glitzy events at which it can foster vital relationships with ministers, journalists and foreign dignitaries…
The fiends. Just as being involved with a gallery enables anti-capitalist poseurs a chance to sound important and foster vital relationships with taxpayers’ money.
And worse,
Corporate sponsorship creates an insidious climate of self-censorship that keeps art trapped in the disease of representation: a tool for preserving the status quo rather than showing us how to live differently.
Clearly, recidivist anti-capitalists showing us how to live deserve better than this. They deserve more public subsidy. It’s vital work. Art institutions must not take donations from companies of which some artists may disapprove. That would be wicked, insidious and a cause of artistic disease. Instead, those institutions should encourage the state to take money from the taxpayer, forcibly, and give it to artists and projects of which the taxpayer may disapprove. That would be virtuous and clean, apparently.
Photographed by Michael Siward, September 2009. One of these.
This, since you ask, is crystallised soy sauce, magnified 16 times. Imaged by Yanping Wang. One of these.
Charlotte Gore on the taboo of public spending cuts.
See, whilst many… are psychologically able to ignore, or excuse, or basically discount altogether the taking money from people bit of public spending, there are some of us that just can’t. One day it occurs to ask the question, “What exactly gives them the right to help themselves to whatever they want?” and the answer turns out to be because they can. Then you get a bit angry and frustrated, feel almost entirely helpless, then, just to make things that little bit worse, everyone else in the world comes and slaps you in the face for even daring to consider such heretical notions. The taking from me bit doesn’t count. I don’t matter. It’s the no longer giving bit that counts. Think about how people feel! Think about all the things they could do with that money, or that job, or learn from those people or achieve with the support of those others! Don’t you understand? Have you no feelings? Apparently not. I just keep thinking, “But it’s not your money. How can you live with yourselves taking it?”
Shannon Love on the 1970 Kent State shooting and pathological vanity:
In the end, the idea that the Guard opened fire out of ideological hatred of all that is good and pure is really just a manifestation of the left’s own narcissism and megalomania. They are so convinced not only of their rectitude but of their critical importance to the world that they convince themselves that they are actually important enough for non-leftists to want to kill them. The thought that the Guard saw them not as world changing revolutionaries but just as spoiled, violent children just doesn’t play into the self-hagiography of the individual leftists.
Mick Hartley visits the Tate and ponders a room full of porcelain seeds.
Ah. A powerful commentary on the human condition. I should have known.
Feel free to add your own.
Omar Kholeif, whose plea for racial favouritism in the arts recently entertained us, is enthused by a project named Unrealised Potential.
The project features,
An expansive collection of proposals from a breadth of contemporary artists, writers, musicians and curators.
And how does it work?
The unproduced ideas are lined up in the first gallery, alongside a set of terms and conditions, whereby visitors are invited to purchase the artist proposals for ‘realisation.’ The setting adopts a similar structure to an auction space, where a red sticker is placed on each idea sold, with the purchasing ‘producer’ being offered two years to realise the project, before it returns to the marketplace.
Isn’t it just wonderful? And so terribly clever. Visitors to the exhibition get,
The opportunity to purchase the right to interpret and realise an artist’s idea.
An artist’s idea. Oh fortune, she smiles upon us. Think of it as a remix, but with no original recording, or demo, or evidence of talent. Apparently, this constitutes,
Critical and, at times, contradictory commentary about the commercialisation of the arts.
And not a cheap and derivative hustle. Why, the very idea.
Some readers may recall the ICA’s Publicness exhibition of 2003, which – in ways never quite specified – “interrogated globalisation” and “notions of the public realm.” The exhibition’s four-page press release promised the thrill of “proposals for projects that may never be realised.” In other words, the artists were so heady in their conceptualism they could short-circuit the tiresome business of actually making or finishing anything, and could instead be acclaimed – and paid – simply for airing “proposals.” One almost had to admire the efficiency. After all, it saved everyone – especially the artists – a great deal of time and trouble. Though you can’t help wondering how the artists would have felt had the audience adopted a similar approach to visiting the ICA: “Let’s not bother going and just pretend we did…”
And lets not forget the non-existent giant flying art banana, a theoretical masterpiece that cost Canadian taxpayers over $130,000 and which, had it materialised, would have said something unflattering about the previous incumbent of the White House. Because, hey, artists are just so goddamned edgy.
But back to Mr Kholeif and his keen curatorial insights:
The very act of potentially encouraging complete ‘amateurs’ to consider the delivery parameters of such creative output offers audiences an insight into the graft and expertise required to produce a successful creative project, while simultaneously reminding them of the risk involved… What is worthy here is this notion of process: audiences are granted the privilege of witnessing the multifarious facets of an artist’s psyche.
You heard the man. It’s a privilege. Well, having climbed the heights of Mount Vanity, let’s bask in the glow of that creative lava stream, shall we?
The crested black macaque photographed by Stefano Unterthiner.
Jumping spiders photographed by Tomatito Rodriguez.
Euophrys frontalis (male).
The writer and film curator Omar Kholeif tells us The Arts Need Diversity Schemes:
It is no secret that the new British government is making sweeping changes to arts and culture policies. From budget cuts to the entire restructuring of national and regional arts funding, the unstable future of our collective culture is increasingly debated.
Our collective culture? Really? My own visits to galleries of modern offerings have been remarkably short on feelings of affinity and collective ownership. More typically, the experience has been one of alienating tedium due to the self-absorption of a curatorial caste.
In the midst of that, we must also consider where minority groups fit into the equation.
But of course. There just isn’t enough racial politics in “our” art.
Will policymakers choose to maintain positive action programmes? […] As a young arts professional, I have only recently felt my career taking off, having utilised the often-controversial diversity scheme as a springboard.
Some readers may be surprised to learn that their taxes have been funding racial favouritism.
After graduating with a first-class degree, I spent what seemed like a lifetime twiddling my thumbs in unsatisfying entry-level roles and, like many humanities graduates in my cohort, waiting at the job centre.
Which may shed some light on the value of an arts degree and the wisdom of pursuing that particular line of business.
Without the financial means to fund further my education, or the resources to devote time to unpaid work experience, I ended up taking on opportunities unrelated to my vocation.
See above.
Last year, just as matters had started to improve, I was accepted onto a curating fellowship. It was originally founded in response to a survey in 2005 that revealed only 6% of London’s museum and gallery workforce hail from a minority background – a disproportionate ratio, considering that black and minority ethnic residents make up nearly a third of the capital’s population.
As this is a Guardian comment piece, the density of assumption is of course quite high. Note the implicit belief that every conceivable ethnic category of humankind should be “represented” proportionally in all areas of endeavour – or at least those that suit the author’s current line – irrespective of individual choices and priorities. Note too the implicit belief that if reality doesn’t correspond with this expectation, then something nefarious must be taking place, regardless of whether evidence of such has actually been discovered.
No evidence of foul play appears in the piece and a lot seems to hang on the claim of a “disproportionate ratio” of minority employees. But London offers a range of niche employment for which many people relocate from other parts of the country, where ethnic demographics may be very different and much closer to the offending 6%. If some types of employment in the capital reflect national rather than local demographics this isn’t inherently scandalous or evidence of injustice. In and of itself, the ratio of minority employees in London galleries isn’t the most compelling justification for “corrective” racial profiling.
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