The Culturestate
Guy Rundle
July 12
What does it mean to be a cultural practitioner today? In the June edition of Meanjin, Guy Rundle looks at the role of the artist under the ever-growing influence of the state, and what this means for the avant-garde. A brief extract is below and you can read the full essay on our editions page.
Today, what confronts the questing artist is not the indifference of society and the state, but its embrace, and the requirements associated with it. The process of making art now brings with it induction into the business of grant applications, job applications, CV composition and folio preparation. Most creative writers approach these with intensely ambivalent feelings. Unless they are completely narcissistic—a trait accounting for no more than 20 per cent outside the theatre profession—they are grateful for the possibility of getting paid to create art that would otherwise not be commercially viable, for the space of autonomy that art demands. But at the same time, the constant reformulation of the grants scheme has turned the process into the very antithesis of that autonomy, asking would-be grant recipients to unpack a variety of activities—artistic, reflective, spontaneous—into an account of themselves, a form of self-analysis in order to identify their influences and intentions.
This is not a lament about the petty demands of state-authorised philistines. Given that arts grants involve distribution of taxpayers’ money to pay for things most of them would not voluntarily purchase, due diligence is required. My point is that the entire role of the modernist, avant-garde or difficult artist in contemporary society is transformed when decades of bipartisan political commitment effectively render support of it permanent and ongoing (more so than, for example, manufacturing tariffs and industry protection). Avant-gardism lives off the sense that it is challenging existing understandings, relations, assumptions—including those marshalled by the state as ideology. State support and encouragement bring a contradiction into the heart of that practice. Yet were the contemporary arts en masse to take such a changed relationship to heart and surrender an avant-garde self-conception—to decide instead that they were simply decoration and diversion for a specific class of cultural consumers—the whole project would fall apart.
This dilemma began to arise with some force in the 1980s, when the new left—the last political movement to which the Western avant-garde was attached—had all but collapsed, and a self-consciously nihilistic capitalism had established the core set of values. Though some responded by leaving the avant-garde arts altogether—either to continue avant-gardism through the new adventure of theory, or, in the manner of Julian Schnabel, to create an art practice that was both commercial and ironic—others plugged on, and each year their ranks were augmented by the gradual expansion of creative-arts courses and an arts sector of employment.
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Comments
14 Jul 10 at 13:33
Having only been privy to the hoops jumped through for scientific grants proposals (and then only watching from the sideline), I’ve come to view them as a kind of filtering mechanism, akin to how some literary competitions/magazines insist on snail mail rather than email for submissions.
I don’t know if this is applicable to arts grants, but it seems that by being forced take the time to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s, you’ve shown you are ready to put in the hours to continue your work. Those not prepared (i.e. those whose proposals are not well-written, or aren’t complete) are easily filtered into the rejection pile. After that—and please note I’m a horrible cynic when it comes to these kinds of things—it’s down to what kind of breakfast the reviewer had that day.
I find the idea of the structured ‘evolution’ of an artist, through the channels of arts funding, a very strange one. It seems that such an evolution would necessarily alter the artist’s practise—much like a writer can sometimes find themselves writing in a particular style for a perceived larger audience, couldn’t they similarly steer themselves towards more politically attractive projects? It seems to me that there absolutely must be some kind of ‘fringe benefit’ dedicated to people who do not want to fill in forms. And I’m sure there is—like I say, I’m not really familiar with arts grants—I just hope it never gets reallocated.
...15 Jul 10 at 9:31
I do think arts funding is hugely important – especially because it allows so many emerging writers to get their works off the ground. However the clash between administration and how a novel is actually written is always problematic.
Most grants, even those which try to be open/relaxed, still have criteria such as ‘artistic merit’ etc. I always find this difficult and somewhat artificial to pin down, because the writing process is so uncertain and can change direction any time. Equally, I always wonder how this might affect the work – eg. once you stipulate a certain audience/theme and get funded for it, does this influence, whether consciously or unconsciously, your decisions, and your ability to deviate from your original idea?
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