TOM DURRIE, BA, MA, MMus
307—1683 Adanac Street
Vancouver, BC V5L 2C7
[email protected]
604-215-0019
August 23, 2010
An open letter to the Assembly of British Columbia Arts Councils
Ms. Joan Richoz,
President,
Assembly of BC Arts Councils
PO Box 92 Station A
Nanaimo, BC V9R 5K4
[email protected]
Dear Ms. Richoz:
I am writing to urge you to decline the participation of the Assembly of BC Arts Councils in the dispersing of BC Spirit Festivals funding.
We have recently heard Ms. Jane Danzo, former chair of the British Columbia Arts Council, decry government involvement in arts funding and the erosion of arms-length arts policies and decision-making. “Arms-length,” as I understand it, means that government allocates a budgetary amount for the arts, and that money is administered by an independent body, in our case the British Columbia Arts Council, using peer-assessment juries. Responsible and progressive arts councils will often fund artists whose activities are not necessarily popular or supportive of government policies. If we look at the history of art, it is clear that there are sound reasons for this. Our current government seems to be shying away from subjecting itself to the possibility of a lively, invigorating, and challenging arts scene. Freedom of expression is the essence of art. Would you want to support officially determined limits to this freedom?
In my opinion, the BC Spirit Festivals program is a blatant political project designed to make artists and arts groups throughout British Columbia promote and support the government’s agenda. In other words, the government is offering funding to arts groups that will, as Minister Kreuger put it, “… bring(s) together artists, cultural organizations and all British Columbians to celebrate the spirit of B.C. in our communities.” While “celebrate the spirit of B.C. in our communities” is open to interpretation, one immediately suspects a very strict limit on what artists are permitted to do. To make this even more clear, the application guidelines specify: “A limited number of grants are available to assist community, regional and Aboriginal arts organizations with programs that support the vision of the 2010 Sports and Arts Legacy and the BC Spirit Festivals. ” [emphasis added] Peer juries, in determining awards, will, of course, have to abide by the guidelines.
In light of the fact that artists and arts organizations throughout the province are reeling from severe cuts to their funding, it seems ironic—I’m tempted to say offensive—that the Ministry would now come up with an idea of a celebratory festival. What is there to celebrate?
With this in mind, I urge you to take a strong but polite stance and simply say “No thank you, Mr. Kreuger.”
Sincerely yours,
(signed)
Tom Durrie
Charter member, BC Arts Council (1996-99)
cc:
The Georgia Straight
The Vancouver Sun
The Tyee
CBC
Vancouver Alliance for Arts and Culture
Arts Advocacy BC
Dear Tom,
Thank you so much for this. It’s very important to say the truth and call things for what they really are. I hope the art community will be strong enough to react to this demagogical farce.
I wanted to add my personal comments hoping to contribute to the discourse.
I don’t see my own work and modus operandi through any “business” model
in spite of the fact that unfortunately our societies has been co-opted by the capitalistic model, which in my opinion is deeply undermining and highly detrimental to any artistic/creative impulse. In this particular moment the reality is dramatically calling musicians and artists to question how to function in the public sphere, and hence to raise further critical and important questions:
for whom? – for what?
This could be a good title for an entire Vancouver New Music series of events, and yet it is just an attempt to address deeper questions and at the same time to convey a slight sense of confusion. As a musician and a person, as an educator and artistic director, I feel the strong urge to address this confusion: the confusion I perceive about where art fits in society, what function it should serve, and what and for whom it is for when government bodies seem to acknowledge very little value to the creative energies of our artistic and cultural communities and totally unable to give clear and trustworthy answers to those very questions.
This confusion seems arising from the fact that we might assume we have already answered those questions – or, according to other, that they are totally irrelevant. Unfortunately, the reality of everyday life where brown sugar water and golden fries are sold as the elixir of joyful exceptional performances, is calling us to face the extreme difficulty to define, to assert, and strongly answer why what we do as artists, musicians, composers, educators, performers and improvisers is really important, and what makes all these activities so special.
Again though, in a world that is really turned upside down, the true is a moment of the false. So, paradoxically, all I said till now could be false too. This is where the business model brought us all: an inescapable dilemma which is fostered by a “spectacular” expansion of commodities in every single field of our existence.
I am a musician, I believe in the power of creative energy, imagination, poetry, dialogical process, improvisation, free form, sound thinking, discourse, politics in the original meaning of the word polis: a community united by strong ideals and visions not by the need of making new clients or selling CDs. I also believe these are radical times which need radical positions and I believe our place, here and now, has potential which are yet to be fully explored.
I don’t believe in this spectacle, the spectacle of our miserable politicians
which I would definitely appreciate more in their misconduct if at least had ever read Macchiavelli; or if were able to remember and to quote what is at the core of the 1971 Multiculturalism Act “A policy of multiculturalism must be a policy for all people” But again I just might well be a very idealistic kind of person and I really don’t know what else I could be.
I fear spectacle as the most difficult obstacle in making souls, or if you wish, spirit. The spectacle I’m talking about is the stage at which the commodity has succeeded in totally colonizing social life. And here Marx was right, so very right.
Commodification is not only visible; we no longer see anything else, while our government lost any idea of what cultural policies are about and treat culture(s) as mere tourist entertainment; again, another kind of business I deeply repel. The society’s entire sold labor has become a total commodity whose constant turnover must be maintained at all cost, music became then music industry: another horrifying entity. The specialized science of domination is broken down into further specialties/industries such as sociology, applied psychology, cybernetics, politics, education, art, which – finally alienated from each other – float endlessly in search of the “most” spectacular, the “most” productive, in a quest for the objectified beauty which everyone believes can always be bought, traded or exchanged.
Going back to the first questions “for whom? “ – “for what? “
I like to think we can answer those questions with clear voice and I like to think of any local creative force and organization (as of many other organizations and individuals in the province, in the country and in the world) as an important tool to foster dialogue, collaborative works, and interconnectedness; a creative space where we can really try to answer questions while feeding our artistic behavior as a vehicle for group meaning. A behavior that foster and support a dialogical process, making souls, political (…polis) activism, a real polyphony of different voices in the conviction that the importance of difference (the real one, not the many demagogical ones) is the flower of any society that is able to value creativity, beauty, personal expression and the power of imagination. I hope we all will be able to regain a common voice in finally answering those questions. This seems to be the perfect time to do so.
Giorgio Magnanensi