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October 26, 2009
Since I've given greater space and time to photography I've occasionally wandered over to the Australia Council for the Arts to see how my work connects with what they are doing. After all Australia has become a more visual culture in the last decade and the Council's brief or priority is on nurturing artists rather than on building grand arts centres, impressive museums and large-scale galleries.
I was curious. To be honest I haven't seen much in the way of photography, digital media or innovating with digital technology there. I haven't thought much about that tardiness towards engaging with contemporary culture --even when I stumbled upon Revealing the Arts, which will be webcast live by ABC arts. The theme is "creative conversations and solutions for the digital era."
Marcus Westbury has given this issue some thought. In an op-ed in The Age he says:
the Australia Council sits on narrow terrain that has seismically shifted. The entire world of professional and amateur creation, of ad hoc exhibitions and global audiences opened up by the internet, has been ignored. Changing forms have clashed with archaic art-form definitions. The result is that proportionally less and less Australian art and culture has anything to do with the Australia Council...The reality is that culture is evolving at rapid pace. Artists increasingly work in ways that the Australia Council has little understanding of or interest in. By default, the Australia Council has decided its role lies with protecting and defending the heritage arts and not with being an active participant in an evolving culture.
The Australia Council has retreated to a heritage rump and acted defensively towards the changes wrought by digital technology.
Westbury says that the Council's basic assumptions are rarely questioned:
that the culture, the cultural organisations that deliver it, the cultural needs and infrastructure of Australia will remain more or less fixed. Technology is merely about the marketing, the branding, the language, the revenue and the education programs. The idea that the culture itself is changing and evolving is rarely considered. Technology merely changes the hype and the pitch to keep the kids interested.
The Council thinks in terms of the art forms it wishes to reward or ignore rather than the plurality of http://www.marcuswestbury.net/2009/09/15/niche-cultures-or-why-opera-is-like-comic-books/">niche cultures. From the latter perspective there is a need to rethink the way cultural diversity can be guaranteed in a climate where everyone seems more interested in building a creative industry than a creative culture.
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