The value of arts

I recently observed a very interesting discussion on the economics of theatre, using the thesis that the theatre world needs to be less self-centred when it comes to funding as the Average Joe may not relate to the “WE MUST SUPPORT THE ARTS” point of view, especially when they’re struggling to make ends meet.

While the discussion was primarily America-centric, I see similar debates happening around the world. This was actually the topic of my first assignment at university – about how Australian theatre is struggling to survive and how it needs to adopt models from outside the art world to sustain itself. There are already a lot of organisations that are shutting down or have shut down because they lost Government funding. This startles me – the idea that the loss of one funder can make the difference in your survival.

Chris Ashworth made a few great posts about this situation. He argues that asking for public funding for the arts may be counterproductive:

Go find a nurse and ask her about her day. Or go read “Mountains Beyond Mountains“. Or go have a chat with a social worker advising single mothers, or a middle school teacher trying to teach students who can’t read. Then come tell me our new president should spend a million dollars on dance tours instead of any of those other things.

Indeed, according to Chicago-based theater artist Jay Rasolnikov, no one really cares:

No one really cares about why an artist deserves money except for those in the arts. Really no one does. A factory worker who’s out of a job and about to lose his or her home couldn’t care less about artists getting handouts. Someone trying to get buy on minimum wage working a series of shit jobs probably has very little sympathy for artists also scraping by.

As Theatre Idea‘s Scott Walters points out (using Johnny Bunko), it’s not about you – and indeed, there’s a value to art that artists themselves may not realise:

For much of art history, artists considered themselves to be craftsmen doing a job; many didn’t sign their work. They knew it wasn’t about them. Artistically, as Pink writes, they “give their client something it didn’t know it was missing.” They give a gift. Which brings us back to Lewis Hyde again, and the difference between a gift economy and a transaction economy. One of the many subtitles Hyde seems to have used for different editions of this book is “How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World.” The artist is the conduit, the vessel for the creative spirit. The artist is a midwife that brings into existence a new life.

This is something I struggle with currently as a performance trainee (and in the recent past while applying for the KaosPilots). My work isn’t directly applied or educational or world-changing. I do it because it gives me happiness. It’s an outlet for my silly creativity. It gives me access to a whole bunch of smart, friendly, open, loving people who have welcomed me wholeheartedly into their world. (<3 Scoundrelles and Vulcana!). It lets me fulfill some long-held wishes (I just managed a few handstands on Monday!).

But it’s not solving world poverty or global warming. It’s not going to make a difference in a life-or-death situation. Circus may be gaining respectability (even if too many people assume I’m working as a clown or with animals, neither of which are true) but burlesque is still fraught in many places with controversy over its sex world connections and its respectability. Why should people care that I’m training in circus and burlesque? What’s in it for them – bendy bodies?

Yet without some sort of funding – financially, in-kind, free lessons, room & board, whatever – I won’t be able to sustain myself enough to keep on performing. Life doesn’t come cheap. I feel like I’m caught in a Catch-22 described by Nick in another Chris Ashworth post:

Xan’s argument is that the public expects the arts to do something before it’s willing to fund it, but the arts can’t actually do anything without the money first because of the overhead of putting something together. … People don’t want to pay for a product they haven’t seen, but the product can’t be created with the capital first.

It’s the WIIFM conundrum – What’s In It For Me? . As it is, I grew up in a culture where the only good “self” to be is selfless. Any form of self-enrichment or self-improvement, especially in contemporary arts, is seen as selfish, self-centered, self-indulgent. You live for your community; you do what other people need you to do. There’s no way I’ll get any sort of capital support in Malaysia unless I severely compromise on what I do.

I’ve been looking at grants to support myself (after sifting through tons of “Citizen/PR only” and “No individuals accepted” opportunities, which make me lose out on majorly awesome opportunities like this Australia Council production mentorship – waah!) and almost all of them require some sort of statement on why you should get the grant. What’s so good about you that they should support you. What sort of benefit you bring.

Uh, I’m the only South Asian in Brisbane doing burlesque, so I can inspire other South Asians? What I’m doing isn’t necessarily accepted within similar cultures to mine, and I don’t want to be known as the token Asian or the token “coloured” person.
I am a totally unsporty person jumping into acrobatics? Would it be cheating if I showed my other previous classes, which took some measure of fitness?
I am linking cultures by being a foreigner? It’d help if I actually planned to relocate to Malaysia anything soon without them banning me from the stage for life. And again, tokenism.

I don’t want to turn my work into some overthought plate-of-academic-wanker-beans, but how else do I justify my existence?

So what are the solutions? Does it involve rethinking theatre as a form? Providing funding for universal healthcare and/or education and welfare, so that people don’t have to worry about paying for their living costs and fulfilling the base rung of Maslow’s Hierarchy? What is it?

Does it involve changing public assumptions that artists must work for the love of it and any acceptance of money is “selling out”? That you need to “pay your dues” before getting any back? That we do provide a service – of creativity and passion?

What’s in it for everybody?

Comments

1. Were we still agrarian cultures where we had to till the soil and then we could hang out and drink beer and tell each other stories, the arts could have been more easily supported (then, you’d just have to make sure you were properly entertaining, or else you just didn’t eat).

   Today, however, we have to admit, the arts are a huge privilege to pursue, especially as a lifestyle. The blue-collar worker isn’t sympathetic because s/he works day in, day out, just trying to survive. The white-collar worker imagines his/her work to be better and that artists are supposed to scrap for pieces. Our economies are not based on productivity, nor on goods, nor on people, but on cash and, sadly, debt. As a result, our civilizations are driven by money, which ostensibly goes back into the community.

   Is it a conundrum for those of us who want to make the arts our life? Yes. Are we supposed to accept that our chosen lifestyles are privileged? Yes. Are there solutions? Short of transforming perceptions that go beyond “the arts need to have something in it for everyone”, not really.

   Keeping all this in perspective, why do you feel the need to defend your own choices? Why should you force yourself to justify your existance? We live the way we want to, and every life that’s non-conventional will have its consequences and conditions that we struggle to change. Sure, looking from the lens of the traditional Malaysian (okay, not even that, more like modern Malaysian capitalism), being artsy is selfish and self-centered, but the arts ARE part of any culture. Knowing this, why would you want to get defensive over your own selfish choices? We must make these choices because otherwise we become absolutely unhappy, and who can argue that being unhappy is the “better” way?

   — Jha · Apr 2, 11:52 AM · #