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Home > Politics
Friday, 06 November 2009
I am disappointed that my friend Bill Talen did not garner more votes in the mayoral
election this week, but Bill works on the margins — not a bad place
to be at all, for it is at the margins where the most subversive and
radical work is done. In the final blog post of his campaign, the Rev keeps it
coming, reminding us in a way of what theatre can
and should be, whether
it's a rally in Union Square or a 50-seat black-box theatre in
the East Village. This one is for some Australian friends — Cynthia,
Margaret, Caroline and Sarah — who were in town tonight, who
witnessed the election on Tuesday and may be gratified by an alternative
perspective. Quoth Rev. Billy:
I'm ending our campaign today by walking through the three
downtown
parks, Washington Square, Union Square and Tompkins Square. I'll carry my
small electronic bullhorn without a permit, as I have throughout the
campaign. I'll talk to small groups of folks about how our voices carry,
and how our voices don't carry, in this strange $100 million playstation
that Bloomberg's turned our city into. And I'm glad I ran because I've
been
reminded that I'm not the only one still talking. There is a coalition of
immigrants and artists, students and bloggers and parents in the boroughs
— talking back against this expensive media wind. There is a radical
freedom in the most ordinary sounding conversations on the corner. Our
voices are carrying enough when [we] walk together, when we talk across a
subway car.
One part of our city is at war with the rest of us, and
tries to normalize this violence with thousands of hours of
family-friendly images of happy leaders. But we still have the basics
of free speech, the immanence of gestures and language in our bodies.
That's why the police study us so hard — we are considered
incendiary in our flesh. We could do anything. And in fact, gatherings of
people in their physical form in public space — that is how
history's change has always arrived.
It is from our bodies that our voices carry. If they try to
shut down our public air, well, we haven't stopped loving the acoustics in
our public places, the American sound of our rising voice.
Home > Politics
Thursday, 10 September 2009
From Rob Kendt, news that Yosi Sergant has been moved from
his post as the NEA's Director of Communications. The Endowment itself has
issued this brief statement:
On August tenth, the National Endowment for the Arts
participated in a call with arts organizations to inform them of the
president's call to national service. The White House office of public
engagement also participated in the call, which provided information on
how the Corporation for National and Community Service can assist groups
interested in sponsoring service projects or having their members
volunteer on other projects. This call was not a means to promote any
legislative agenda and any suggestions to that end are simply false. The
NEA regularly does outreach to various organizations to inform of the work
we are doing and the resources available to them.
As regards Yosi Sergant, he has not left the National
Endowment for the Arts. He remains with the agency, although not as
director of communications.
And according to Ryan Grim at The Huffington Post, "Sources familiar with
the situation say that the move represents a significant step down and was
the result of the controversy. Discussion about his new duties is still
ongoing."
And the rest is lost in the murk of bureaucracy. Requiescat in
pace, NEA controversy.
Home > Politics
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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