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Wednesday, 02 September 2009
UPDATE: Leonard Jacobs has usefully posted some of the
backstory and some criticism of Courrielche's rhetorical tactics here.
Rolando Teco at the Extra Criticum blog points the way to a 25 August article, "The National Endowment for the Art of Persuasion?"
by Patrick Courrielche on a recent conference call hosted by the National
Endowment for the Arts, the White House Office of Public Engagement, and
United We Serve. About 75 artists, administrators and other professionals
participated in the call. Courrielche writes:
Obama has a strong arts agenda, we were told, and has been
very
supportive of both using and supporting the arts in creative ways to talk
about the issues facing the country. We were "selected for a reason," they
told us. We had played a key role in the election and now Obama was
putting out the call of service to help create change. We knew "how to
make a stink," and were encouraged to do so.
Throughout the conversation my inner dialogue was firing
away questions so fast that the NRA would've been envious. Is this truly
the role of the NEA? Is building a message distribution network, for
matters other than increasing access to the arts and arts education, the
role of the National Endowment for the Arts? Is providing the art
community issues to address, especially those that are currently being
vehemently debated nationally, a legitimate role for the NEA? ...
The NEA is the nation's largest annual funder of the arts.
That is right, the largest funder of the arts in the nation
– a fact that I'm sure was not lost on those that were on the call,
including myself. One of the NEA's major functions is providing grants to
artists and arts organizations. The NEA has also historically shown the
ability to attract "matching funds" for the art projects and foundations
that they select. So we have the nation's largest arts funder, which is a
federal agency staffed by the administration, with those that they
potentially fund together on a conference call discussing taking action on
issues under vigorous national debate. Does there appear to be any
potential for conflict here?
Discussed throughout the conference call was a hope that
this group would be one that would carry on past the United We Serve
campaign to support the President's initiatives and those issues for which
the group was passionate. The making of a machine appeared to be in its
infancy, initiated by the NEA, to corral artists to address specific
issues. This function was not the original intention for creating the
National Endowment for the Arts.
A machine that the NEA helped to create could potentially
be wielded by the state to push policy. Through providing guidelines to
the art community on what topics to discuss and providing them a
step-by-step instruction to apply their art form to these
issues, the nation's largest annual funder of the arts is attempting to
direct imagery, songs, films, and literature that could create the
illusion of a national consensus. This is what Noam Chomsky calls
"manufacturing consent."
Now, if you are for the issues being pursued by
the current administration, you may be inclined to think favorably of what
I am labeling "overreach." What a powerful weapon to fight those that
are opposed to our ideas, you may think. For those in this camp I ask
you this – will you feel the same when the opposition has access to
the same machine? If history is any indication, the pendulum swings both
ways. Is persuasion what the originators envisioned when they brought the
legislation that created the NEA to the floor of Congress?
It is true that it is in the interests of a healthy democracy that the
government encourages debate upon issues of the day; whether this extends
to influence over the content of this debate, however, is a different
question. In part, this reflects an approach to art as an instrumental
means to political ends, and a means of co-opting oppositional art
under the banner of a government imprimatur of that speech or expression.
And, needless to say, the consequent silencing, the rendering
"irrelevant," of art does not conform to that instrumental function.
The recent conference call bears some resemblance to last year's Australia 2020
conference, which also brought artists (among many others) together under
the aegis of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's government. At the time the
conference was met with great enthusiasm from its participants, who
believed that it signalled a new era of government support for the arts
and an acknowledgement of its place in the cultural life of the nation;
only a short time later, the government attempted to suppress the work of Australian photographer Bill
Henson. Clearly, this conference sought not only to acknowledge but also
to define art's place in the cultural life of the nation; at the same
time, the government sought to marginalize those works which did not fit
into the Procrustean bed of its social vision.
As Courrielche points out, funding from the NEA also encourages other
institutions to support aesthetic endeavors through the provision of
matching funds; an NEA grant is a mark of cultural legitimacy, other work
considered unworthy of government support (and therefore
non-governmental institutional or charitable support) in a process
that leads to a kind of
censorship-through-benign-neglect.
Nowhere, it should be said, does any NEA figure mention outright that
this
definition of social relevance would be a criterion for approving or
denying an application for funding, but only the most naïve observer
could deny the inference. From a politically progressive viewpoint, the
social utility of a work of art is a valid mark of its value, but it is
far from the only criteria of aesthetics. Those works which locate the
aesthetic experience not in a political context but in the context of the
individual spirit, for example, can't be said to have any measurable
social utility. And it appears that the Obama administration, through the
NEA, is not only defining function (discussion) but also content ("health
care, energy and environment, safety and security, education, community
renewal," according to the invitation letter for the teleconference).
Courrielche points out in a follow-up to his original post that the NEA is
now distancing itself from the original call, though Courrielche provides
fairly substantive evidence that the invitation did emerge from the
corridors of the NEA itself. The question remains as to whether the
progressive left under the Obama administration now seeks through the NEA
to – like Rudd – not only acknowledge the arts as a cultural
force but also define an
exclusionary cultural policy. Sad that David Levine's Venice Saved: A Seminar is no longer running;
this might have served as an interesting subject for his theatrical
political-discussion table.
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