The arts (usually) aren’t profitable, and in many cases, they aren’t even (or are barely) sustainable. That’s why visual arts, dance, music, theatre, film and new media organizations look to the government for financial assistance. They can’t do it without them. They can’t operate, produce, educate or distribute. Without government assistance, arts organizations would cease to exist.
The value of art is not measured in dollars and cents. Its value is in its educational, intellectual and emotional contributions to a wider culture. Art doesn’t shape the now, though. The grand collective of a country’s art is not impulsive or immediate — it does not instantly gratify or move a culture but instead adds thread to the fabric of the world. Art today is writing the future’s history.
I know I don’t really need to explain the importance of art. Those of you reading this already know. But I read a comment somewhere (forgive me for not remembering where) that said that our digital culture is basically destined to having our own history erased. And it’s true. Think of all of the documentation media you’ve used throughout your lifetime. Five-inch floppy disks, cassettes, BETA, mini-discs. They’re either obsolete or well on their way. How are people a hundred years from now going to piece together our history if we keep perpetuating this obsolescence within our lifetimes?
The material objectivation we’ve created doesn’t say much about us, culturally-speaking. Aside from our penchant for material objects. But our things don’t say anything about our national culture from an intellectual or philosophical standpoint. They say nothing about us individually or specifically, except for our material taste. What does my IKEA shelf say about my political views or my personal history? Nothing.
Ever since people first put a rock to a rock to create the first form of written communication, people have extracted stunningly vast amounts of information to piece together portraits of long-gone generations. Art happens to be a primary component in the assembling of histories. I think it’s fair to say that art provided key evidence in reconstructing the history of 10th – 19th centuries in Western Europe and beyond.
So what now? Perhaps the Tories have an ideological opposition to certain types of art. Perhaps their opposition is purely fiscal. But by failing to acknowledge how their funding cuts will affect the longterm understanding of our current landscape, they enter into territory that highlights their irresponsibility and unbecoming selfishness.
The next generation of arts groups (if a next generation can even exist) will see a dismal support system from our government. What will they be able to contribute to history? Perhaps the Tories, for their ridiculously narrow-minded ideological agendas, do indeed consider these effects, and in fact hope for the stifling of a next generation of artists/radicals/dissidents.
The thing is — these cuts aren’t just hurting the controversial artists that play with our ethical scale. The cuts are hurting symphonies, ballets, stage productions — things that are generally considered to be “acceptable” forms of art.
What’s so stunningly offensive about the whole thing is how frustrated the Tories have become in the face of opposition. From today’s Globe and Mail:
Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay and Toronto Mayor David Miller’s joint letter to Mr. Harper, which decried a perceived reversal in a generous Conservative approach to the arts, only added to the exasperation of the Prime Minister’s communications director, Kory Teneycke.
“To listen to some in the arts community and the opposition, you would think that there’s blood in the streets,” he said.
Teneycke, there will be blood in the streets, if you’re aware of what a metaphor is. If you think the organizations who once benefited from these programs are going to survive somehow without them, you’re wrong. As arts organizations in Canada dwindle and die over the next few years, people will become unemployed in numbers I can’t even imagine. Jobs available in the arts will become even more impossible to obtain than they already are, and pay rates (which are currently abysmal for amount of work these people do) will likely be cut as well. Is that not blood on the streets?
Lawrence Martin points out in today’s Globe and Mail that Harper’s government started with a $2.8 billion surplus and has plummetted us into a $100 million deficit. I’m sure that artists are to blame. Definitely the artists. It’s not like we have a fucking army or anything.
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Adding salt to the wound, this story is receiving coverage outside of Canada (here and here). As I said in a previous post, the message of cut funding is far more damaging to Canada’s reputation than the offending recipients of the funds ever were.
